Texas Baby Rescue (Renegade Canyon #3)

Chapter One

The cribs were empty.

That was the first thing Deputy Judson Docherty noticed when he hurried into the nursery of the Horseshoe Ranch. Even though he had been expecting the empty cribs because of the warning that he’d gotten during the phone call, it was still a jolt to realize the caller had been right.

Get here fast. The babies are missing.

That call had come ten minutes earlier, just as Judson had been heading home after a long shift at Renegade Canyon Sheriff’s Office, and the caller, Addie Jansen, hadn’t stayed on the line.

After blurting out that dire announcement, she had hung up on him, no doubt to do a frantic search for the babies.

But where the hell was Addie now?

Judson hadn’t seen her when he’d driven up to the ranch. Nor when he’d bolted inside through the already-open door of the house. And she hadn’t responded the multiple times he’d called out for her.

Pushing aside that something really bad had happened to Addie and the babies, he raced through the sprawling house that was normally filled with the sounds of foster kids. Lots of them.

But tonight, there was nothing.

It was eerily quiet, and that was in part due to there being only two babies currently in care here, six-week-old twin girls Lily and Rose Alcott. But Addie and at least one of her helpers should have been around.

“Addie?” he called out again.

And this time, Judson thankfully got a response. It hadn’t come from Addie, though.

“Out here,” someone shouted, and silver-haired Etta Jean Milford stuck her head in through the back door.

Judson had known Etta Jean most of his life, since she had been the cook and caretaker way back when he’d been a foster kid at the ranch, nearly thirty years ago.

And even though she was now in her late sixties, she was still going strong and usually looked as steady a proverbial rock.

But not at the moment. Her face was tight with worry and barely controlled panic.

“The babies aren’t here,” the woman told him as she stepped into the kitchen, only to turn around and go to the back porch.

Her breath was gusting, and she was wringing her hands.

“I’ve looked through the whole house, every inch of it, and they’re gone.

” Etta Jean’s voice cracked on that last word, and she began to sob.

Judson hated those tears, hated that the woman was an emotional wreck, but he couldn’t take the time to soothe her. That would have to wait for later.

“Where’s Addie?” he demanded.

Etta Jean pressed her fingers to her trembling mouth and shook her head. “I’m not sure. She thought she saw some tracks in the backyard, and she started following them out into the pasture. She told me to wait here until you showed up. We have to find them,” she tacked on.

Yeah, they did, and that was Judson’s main concern, but at the moment, so was Addie. If someone had taken the babies, he didn’t want her going after a kidnapper alone.

“Call the police station,” Judson instructed, already heading out the back door. “Have the sheriff send out more deputies and do an Amber Alert on the twins.”

That alert might have to be canceled within minutes if he found Addie and the babies right away, but in case that didn’t happen, putting out the word on the missing babies would get a lot of resources in motion to try to locate them.

He didn’t bother taking the steps. Judson jumped off the side of the porch and hurried through the yard, jogging and looking at the ground for any of those tracks that Addie had mentioned to Etta Jean. And he soon saw them.

Footprints in some mud.

It had rained just a couple of hours earlier, a good soaker that’d left the ground a soggy mess and had put a damp chill in the mid-October air. Not cold, exactly, but it sure as heck wasn’t ideal conditions for babies to be out in this unless they were wrapped in blankets.

Would a kidnapper have done that?

Judson had to push that concern aside and just focus on finding Addie. Then he’d know what they were dealing with.

Well, hopefully he would.

Sometimes birth parents came after their kids who had been removed from their care.

But that didn’t apply in this case. The parents were dead, killed in a car accident shortly after the mother had been released from the hospital and the twins were still in a neonatal unit.

The parents had been making a quick trip home to get a change of clothes and had ended up dying in a head-on collision caused by a drunk driver.

Lily and Rose had ended up here at the Horseshoe Ranch with Addie just two weeks ago while the courts were sorting out next-of-kin issues.

But maybe the next of kin, whoever that was, had decided to take matters into their own hands and snatch the girls.

The odds were higher for that than abductions orchestrated by a stranger.

“Addie?” he shouted once he made it to the barn.

Again, there was no answer, but he saw more of those tracks in the mud. Not one set but two. Hell. Addie was following the kidnapper.

Judson picked up the pace, running now while keeping an eye out for more tracks and listening for, well, any damn thing.

Every bit of this pasture and the thick woods beyond it were familiar ground to him.

Addie and he had spent a good chunk of their childhoods here, since she’d been in foster care as well.

Those days, Mellie and Frank Carsten had run the place and had run it well, but after they’d died, Addie had stepped up to continue their legacy.

And Judson knew Addie would do anything to protect the kids in her care.

Anything.

That’s why he had to get to her.

Because she would absolutely confront a kidnapper if it meant getting the babies back. A confrontation that could get her hurt or killed.

He kept moving, even faster now. Kept following the tracks that led into the woods.

There were old ranch trails threading through the trees and thick underbrush, and Judson headed toward the trail that was closest to the pasture.

Again, he knew it well since it had become a favorite make-out spot for Addie and him when they were teenagers.

“Addie?” he tried again after he reached the trail.

This time, he got a response.

“Here,” a voice said.

Relief flooded through him, robbing him of some breath, but it also got him moving in the direction of her voice. She was alive. That answered a whole bunch of his prayers, but Judson figured this ordeal wasn’t over.

And it wasn’t.

He soon saw that when he bolted through a cluster of trees and spotted Addie. She was standing on the trail, her gaze volleying in each direction. She stopped glancing around long enough for her gaze to land on him.

Judson saw the tears in her eyes, some on her cheeks, too, and there was a sense of sickening dread coming off her.

“I have to find them,” she muttered, her voice a tangle of nerves and raw fear.

“We will,” he said, though at the moment Judson had no idea how they were going to do that.

Addie looked so distraught. So broken. He wanted to pull her into his arms, to try to comfort her, but the best comfort he could give her was to figure out what had happened to the babies.

“Give me any details you have,” he insisted, moving up the trail so he could look for more tracks. He saw some footprints but no signs that a vehicle had recently been here.

Addie moved, too, heading off the trail, her attention pinned to the ground. “I was, uh, getting the mail. Etta Jean was in the laundry room with the monitor while the twins were sleeping,” she started but then stopped. “God, Judson. Rowena’s out of jail.”

That got his attention, not in a good way, either, and he whirled back around to face Addie. He didn’t have to ask who she meant—Rowena Matthews was Addie’s mother.

Except she wasn’t.

When Addie was six, the truth had come out: that Rowena had stolen Addie when she’d been only a few weeks old. And Rowena had killed Addie’s bio mom during the abduction.

“How the hell is Rowena out of jail when she’s serving a life sentence?” Judson asked. “Did she escape?”

Addie shook her head. “No. She was released. I don’t know the details, but someone from the parole board sent me a text. I got that about a half hour before I realized the twins were missing.”

Damn it. That was tight timing. Of course, Rowena could have gotten out days ago and managed to set all of this up. Still, the woman had been in prison for twenty-eight years, and Judson would have thought her first move wouldn’t have been to abduct another child.

But it was something he had to consider.

His phone dinged with a text, and he saw his boss’s name on the screen. Sheriff Grace Granger. “The Amber Alert has been issued,” he relayed to Addie after reading the message. “And Grace and the other deputies are on their way.”

That didn’t put any relief in Addie’s eyes, probably because she understood it was going to take time to get a proper search organized.

Time when the kidnapper could be whisking the babies away so they would never be found.

That’s why Addie and he needed to keep on looking, because every second counted.

While he kept moving, he also listened for any unusual sounds, along with firing off a text to Grace. Rowena Matthews is out of jail. We need an APB on her.

Grace might not immediately recognize the woman’s name the way Judson had, but it wouldn’t take his boss long to figure it out. And Grace wouldn’t have any trouble getting an all-points bulletin or maybe even an arrest warrant for someone with Rowena’s criminal history.

“You go that way,” Addie said, pointing to the left. “And I’ll go there.” She then pointed to the right.

Judson definitely didn’t like that plan. If it was Rowena who had done this, she had killed before and might kill again. Besides, the trail on the right led to the road, which was about a half mile away, and that was their best bet. The kidnapper could have left a vehicle there.

“We go together toward the road,” he insisted, and to save Addie from arguing with him, he took off running in that direction.

Thankfully, Addie followed, staying right behind him.

He definitely didn’t want her out of his sight if they were dealing with Rowena.

Or any other kidnapper, for that matter.

Someone willing to sneak into a foster home and steal kids was probably desperate enough to kill anyone who got in their way.

This part of the trail was just that—a trail—no more than a foot wide in some places, and it was littered with fallen leaves, twigs and rocks. Unfortunately, there was no mud here to showcase footprints, but Judson thought he saw some spots where someone could have stepped.

“Other than Rowena, who might have done this?” Judson asked. “Have you had any run-ins with anyone?”

It wasn’t an out-there question. Sometimes birth parents and family members threatened foster caregivers and social workers.

“No,” she insisted as they kept moving.

“What about the twins’ next of kin?” Judson pressed. “Any threats from any of them?”

“No,” Addie repeated. “Just the opposite. Child Protective Services has located a couple of distant relatives, but none of them is interested in taking the girls. They’re basically wards of the court for now.”

So, an abduction likely wasn’t linked to anything to do with the next of kin. But that left other possibilities. Bad ones. And Judson had to push those aside, too. He refused to even consider that the babies had been harmed.

He stopped when he reached a mudhole, and Judson spotted footprints—headed straight toward the road. That confirmed that Addie and he were heading in the right direction.

Judson paused to send Grace another text so she could get some deputies to that particular part of the road, but he stopped when he heard something. At first, he thought it could be some small animal, so he lifted his head and kept listening.

He heard it again.

And this time he was certain of something. That it wasn’t an animal. It was a baby, and it was crying.

Addie’s gaze sliced to his for just a split second. There was both shock and some relief in her eyes that Judson was sure was mirrored in his.

Without a word, they both took off running in the direction of the baby’s cries, but they’d barely made it a few steps when Judson heard something else. Something that had his stomach twisting.

A car engine.

And it was speeding away.