Chapter 31
CADE
Hernandez arrived twenty minutes later, which was a record, considering the length of the drive, the increasing wind, and the lowering temperatures. He hustled onto the porch, knocked twice, and Noelle was already pulling it open.
“I’m Noelle,” she breathed, “the baby is mine.”
Although Dagny was married to Jayson Hernandez—we all called him Hernandez—Noelle hadn’t met him when Lily stayed at his place. He stepped inside with a reassuring smile, nodded to me.
Cody and Wyatt hurried around the kitchen, dragging dishes from the table to the counters, stashing condiments into the fridge, and clearing space for the maps I gathered out of Morgan’s old room.
Hernandez turned to Noelle. Her heart pounded in her throat, and her breath was uneven and frightened, but she kept herself together. No tears. No frantic screams. Cold, hard desperation.
Hernandez had a steady voice and kind eyes when he requested, “Tell me what’s going on, Noelle.”
Noelle calmed, and impressed me with her recitation, stumbling only once or twice. Hernandez asked several questions, acknowledged something in his radio that we couldn’t hear. His lips turned down a little.
“Are your parents dangerous?”
Noelle’s voice pitched higher.
“Dangerous?”
“Are they drunk, on medication that may alter their behaviors, or have a known history of violence?”
“N-no.”
“Okay. Have they ever attempted to harm Lily?”
“No. They . . . well, they said they came to see her.” Noelle waved a limp hand toward the bedroom.
“Then they took her without telling us. They passed her through a bedroom window and left, telling me that she was asleep. I don’t think they have a car seat.
I . . . I didn’t see one in the Jeep they rented. ”
He scrawled several things on his notepad, nodding.
“No car seat is concerning, and might be something we can mention if we find them. She certainly wouldn’t be safe without one in this weather, which shows questionable judgment.”
He hesitated, then looked at both of us, square in the eye. My stomach immediately tanked. Whatever he said next wouldn’t be good.
“I’m sorry this has happened, Noelle, but I’m going to be very clear: we can’t send out an Amber alert for a child in the middle of a custody battle, even if your parents aren’t the ones formally petitioning for custody.”
“Why not?” she cried.
“Because they are her maternal grandparents and also have a legitimate blood claim. Taking their granddaughter, while ill-advised in this situation, doesn’t constitute a full crime that I can respond to.”
“But she’s not supposed to be with them! She doesn’t even know them.”
“I hear you. But custody fights are drawn out, difficult to act on, and often very fuzzy for officers. It’s a different side of the law. There’s nothing they’ve done that’s criminal for me to act on tonight.”
Fury rose, but Hernandez held up a hand.
“That doesn’t make this right,” he said quickly, anticipating my instant rebuttal, “but it doesn’t make it dangerous for Lily, either.
Nor does it mean we can’t do anything. I’m going to help you with this, and we’re going to work hard.
But our help might not look like what you’re hoping for.
First, do I have any reason to think that she’s in immediate and grave danger? ”
Noelle’s nostrils flared for a moment, her eyes flashing, fists clenched. All the ire bled out of her in a breath.
“If they have a car seat? Then, no. If they don’t?
Then maybe. Maybe not grave danger, but she’s certainly not safe.
I don’t think they’re going to harm her.
I think they’re trying to make a point to me.
” With a hollow laugh, she added, “They may be working with the paternal grandparents, for all I know. My dad wants me to return to my old job. I . . .” She shrugged. “I don’t know what they’re doing.”
He nodded. “I’m sending out a BOLO, or a be on the lookout. It’ll warn state troopers to be watching out for the Jeep, particularly at the airport. We’ll see if they returned the Jeep at the rental car services there, or if they are inside with Lily.”
“Thank you,” Noelle whispered.
He nodded. “I’m also going to call their home county, see if we can intercept them there.”
“Then what?” I asked.
“We do everything we can to get Lily back to Noelle.”
Noelle’s grip almost crushed my hand. She said, “Thank you, Hernandez. I’ll contact my attorney right away.”
Hernandez opened his mouth, closed it again. The skepticism was written in his eyes. I knew what he must be thinking. What could our attorney do at this moment? Her parents weren’t even the ones fighting for custody of Lily. Yet, it would give Noelle something to do.
Evening had fallen, and with it increasingly dangerous weather conditions. Her parents now had a forty-five-minute head start on us, wherever they went. I doubted it was the airport. Too easy to stall them there, and too obvious.
If Noelle truly didn’t think her parents would bring harm to Lily then what could we do? Wait until police in their home county found Lily, perhaps?
And then?
A spiral of frustration and defeat nearly drove me to punch a wall, but I schooled it with all the other simmering pressure.
Channing may represent Noelle on the civil side of this line, but that didn’t make this a straightforward abduction that we could act on immediately. Noelle had a reason to worry about grandparents taking Lily after all, but we’d suspected the wrong grandparents.
“Thank you, Hernandez. Feel free to stay here, or stay in touch.” Over my shoulder, I called, “Boys? You got the table cleared? I need some space.”
The bottom line remained clear: Hernandez would do everything he could.
But we would do the rest.
Hernandez stepped out to his vehicle to make a few calls and issue the BOLO, while I entered the kitchen with Noelle in tow.
Wyatt frantically wiped the table off with a washcloth as I grabbed the maps, flicked them with a wrist, and let them unfold. Cody, seeing me struggle to keep it flat, called, “Hey, hoss. Catch.”
He flung me two heavy glasses. I caught them, set them on top of the map edges.
Noelle recoiled when she saw the empty table and spun around.
Wyatt and Cody continued to sling food into different containers with surprising agility.
For once in their lives, they showed a modicum of class and training.
Perhaps all those lessons after dinner had been worth it.
She fluttered over, said, “Let me do it. I need to stay busy. Help Cade.”
They were too eager to obey, and came to my side. I turned my attention to the maps as they joined me.
With my pointer, I tapped on the ranch.
“We’re here.”
I dragged my finger along a thin line and said, “This is the highway, and it leads to the interstate all the way over here.” My hand crossed several inches of map.
“In conditions like this, it’s unlikely Ashley and Richard have made it that far yet, which gives us an advantage.
” My gaze flickered to the clock. “They have over an hour on us.”
Wyatt and Cody’s grim expressions reflected the somber mood. Wyatt asked, “Think they’re at the airport?”
“I don’t.”
“How come?”
I shook my head. “A hunch. Richard would know we’d try to catch them at the airport; that would make it too easy.
There are several routes he could take to drive home, and I think he’d choose the one that is least obvious.
Or the route that’s the most difficult to follow.
In the end, I think he’s using Lily as leverage to force Noelle to go back and do what he wants. ”
Glancing back, I sent a silent query to Noelle. She shrugged. “Maybe? I have no idea. But . . . it seems likely. Considering he came yesterday and attempted to pull me back to the old job again.”
“Is your work this important?”
She hesitated, thought, and finally nodded. “For this particular clinical trial? Yes. I’m the one that knows it best. But I’m not the only person on the planet who could do that work.”
“All right, then we have five routes your parents could have gone. Hernandez is sending out the BOLO, so state troopers can pull them over and check for a car seat, and security at the airport will be on the lookout. He’s also contacting the deputies in their home county.
But we can search elsewhere in the meantime. ”
I pointed to each of the five roads that led away from the ranch through various routes.
Two paved, two dirt, and a rough two-track that anyone who didn’t live here wouldn’t know about.
Inches of ice and snowpack already covered the paved roads, and more snow would complicate the dirt roads, with the potential for over a foot of snow on each.
Wyatt tapped the two paved roads with bent fingers. “If they go this way, they’ll be on either of these two highways.”
“State troopers are watching there. Plus, if they went that way, they’ve already slipped past us. With this weather, we couldn’t catch up in a safe way.”
Cody pointed to one of the dirt roads. “I was just here yesterday. It cuts across the ranch and down, past the Montgomery’s. It was impassable without a tractor. Not even with a truck.”
“Jeep?”
He scoffed. “Not with prissy rental tires.”
Wyatt said, “That makes the main highways the most likely, then.”
“No,” I said quietly, so only Cody and Wyatt could hear. My focus fixated on the two-track they’d both dismissed. “There’s this one.”
Cody frowned. “Cade, that’s wild. If the dirt roads are impassable, the two-track will be doubly so. I’ve seen the three-to-four-foot snowbanks down there. Remember how it goes across that old ditch? They’ll sink or crash into it. Besides, it angles into the mountains. Why would he take that way?”
Wyatt shook his head. “I’m with Cody on this one. There’s no way, hoss.”
Stirring intuition said otherwise. I planted my hands on the table.
“Why not? Think about it! He grew up on this ranch, so he’d know it existed. We use it to access the back edge of the property all the time, right?”
Cody hedged an uncomfortable, “Right.”