Kidnapping in Kendall County. Delores Fossen
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stormed into the cottage and found Austin and her in bed. If the guard had been wearing that during the attack, then someone would have already been alerted to a problem. The people behind this would soon link that problem back to Austin and her.
And Janice.
Rosalie added a quick prayer that the nanny had already made it to safety with the babies. Too bad she didn’t have a way to contact Janice, but maybe they could do that soon.
“Thank you,” she whispered to Austin.
“Don’t,” he snapped like a warning. “Because I’m not doing either of us any favors here.” He paused and, even in the dim light from the dash, she saw his jaw muscles stir. “They’ve killed people, Rosalie. And they’ll kill again.”
That reminder caused her heartbeat to kick up a significant notch, and she thought there was even more that Austin had to say. But he didn’t say it.
He just kept driving.
The rain was coming down harder now, the wipers slashing at the fat drops, but it was still hard to see. It got even harder when Austin turned off his headlights and slowed down. Using just the parking lights to guide them, he turned onto another road, drove about a quarter of a mile and then brought the truck to a stop.
He cursed.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, but Rosalie was afraid to hear the answer.
“There should be vehicles.” Austin got his gun ready, opened the door a fraction and looked around them. He killed the parking lights. Inched closer.
Once her eyes adjusted to the darkness, she saw the silhouette of what appeared to be a large metal barn. Austin was right—no vehicles. No lights, either. The place looked deserted.
He reached over, his hand brushing her leg, and he grabbed a flashlight from the glove compartment. He flicked it on and turned it toward the ground.
That set off another round of profanity.
“There are plenty of tire tracks that have dug into the muddy road,” he relayed. “We must have just missed them.”
No! It felt as if someone had just clamped a fist around her heart, and Rosalie tried to choke back a sob.
“Maybe they left records.” She hoped so, anyway.
Austin inched the truck closer to the building while he kept the flashlight aimed at the ground. He turned it off only when they reached the front of the barn.
The double sliding metal doors were wide-open, and it was pitch-dark inside. If anyone was lurking in there ready to attack, Rosalie couldn’t see them.
“Get down,” Austin ordered.
She did. Rosalie got onto the floor as Austin drove right into the building.
“Empty,” he mumbled.
But then he hit the brakes.
Rosalie lifted her head to try to see what had captured his attention. It appeared to be a white piece of paper nailed to one of the walls.
Austin turned on the flashlight, pointed it toward the paper, and she saw the words scrawled there.
You’re a dead man, John Mercer.
“John Mercer,” Austin repeated. “That’s the name I’ve been using at the baby farm.”
That hardly had time to register in her head when she heard the slight hissing sound.
“Hold on!” Austin shouted. He threw the truck into reverse and slammed his foot on the accelerator.
Just as the wall of fire shot up in front of them.
Austin held his breath and prayed that he’d get Rosalie away from the building in time.
The truck bolted through the doors, and the moment they were outside, Austin spun the steering wheel to get them on the road. He hit the gas again and got them moving.
Not a second too soon.
Behind them, the building burst into a fireball.
Obviously, someone had put a hefty amount of accelerant inside, and it’d worked. It wouldn’t take long for anything left inside to be destroyed.
Hell.
These goons were trying to cover their tracks, and in doing so they might have erased the very information that he needed to find his nephew.
“Call 911,” he told Rosalie, tossing her his phone. Austin kept watch around them to make sure they weren’t about to be ambushed. The narrow road was lined with trees on both sides, and that meant plenty of places for the shooters to hide. “Tell them we need the fire department and the locals out here. I want this entire area sealed off.”
Austin wasn’t sure how she managed it because her hands were shaking so hard, but Rosalie made the call. Maybe, just maybe, there might be something left to recover.
“I have to find out if Janice made it to someplace safe,” Rosalie said the moment she finished the 911 call. “Oh, God,” she added in a mumble. “What if the local county cops are in on this?”
“Don’t borrow trouble,” Austin reminded her.
He took his phone, scrolled through the numbers, located the number of his partner at the FBI, and gave the cell back to Rosalie. “Text him. Tell him to BOLO Janice Aiken and that she’s driving a black truck registered to my undercover alias, John Mercer.” Austin rattled off the license plate. “I want him to call me the minute he finds her.”
“BOLO,” she repeated while she wrote the text. “Be on the lookout.”
She’d obviously picked up some cop jargon from Eli or maybe her stepbrother Seth. Austin figured Seth wasn’t going to like Rosalie’s rogue investigation, and Rosalie wasn’t going to like it when Austin called her stepbrother so that Seth could force her to back off. Since she wouldn’t listen to him, he had no choice about doing that.
“These baby thieves know you’ve betrayed them,” Rosalie said after she finished the text.
Yeah, they did. The note proved that.
You’re a dead man, John Mercer.
And while the idiots behind the baby farms probably didn’t know his real identity, it wouldn’t be long before they figured out he was FBI. After all, they had countless images of him from those surveillance cameras.
Of Rosalie, too.
“You shouldn’t have come here,” he insisted. Obviously, he was repeating himself, but Austin hoped she realized just how much danger she was in.
“You came,” she pointed out.
Austin tossed her a scowl. The only thing he knew about Rosalie was what Eli had told him. That she was the quiet, shy type who was downright squeamish about his job as a federal agent.
Well, she’d clearly changed a lot.
This was no quiet, shy woman next to him. Or maybe Rosalie had just managed to put her squeamishness aside so she could find her daughter. Still, that wouldn’t happen if she got herself killed.
“What do we do now?” she asked. “What if there’s no evidence to recover from that building or the baby farm?”
Austin slowed as he approached the junction that would take him back to a main road. “I continue the investigation, and you go home.”
She huffed and would have no doubt argued with him about that if the movement hadn’t grabbed their attention.
Austin was almost at a full stop at the intersection when someone darted out in front of the truck. He automatically pushed Rosalie down onto