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      Dear Reader,

      While a civilian crime analyst for the Oklahoma City Police Department, I snagged an assignment to a task force investigating the abduction of two preteen girls from the state fair. During that time, I was in contact with the distraught parents. Their despair and suffering touched my heart and gave me an insider’s view of what it means to lose a child to an unknown evil.

      That experience inspired me to tell the story of a divorcée whose small son is kidnapped for ransom. And the only person she dares turn to for help is the ex-cop who walked away a decade ago with a piece of her heart.

      The Ransom is the story not only of the struggle to save a little boy’s life, but of the rekindling of a love that refuses to die.

      Warmest regards,

      Maggie Price

      To Pam Hopkins, my supersonic agent whom I’ve

       been blessed to have in my corner for over a decade.

      CONTENTS

      PROLOGUE

      CHAPTER ONE

      CHAPTER TWO

      CHAPTER THREE

      CHAPTER FOUR

      CHAPTER FIVE

      CHAPTER SIX

      CHAPTER SEVEN

      CHAPTER EIGHT

      CHAPTER NINE

      CHAPTER TEN

      CHAPTER ELEVEN

      CHAPTER TWELVE

      CHAPTER THIRTEEN

      CHAPTER FOURTEEN

      CHAPTER FIFTEEN

      CHAPTER SIXTEEN

      CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

      CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

      PROLOGUE

      Cross C Ranch

       Layton, Texas

      KATHRYN CONNER was coming home.

      Kathryn Conner Mason, the man sitting on the ranch house’s shady front porch amended. He had one hand clenched around a coffee mug and that morning’s newspaper draped across his blue-jeaned thigh.

      He could hear himself breathe.

      Feel the sweat trickle from the pores of his underarms.

      Taste his fear.

      His spine stiff, he propped a shoulder against one of the porch’s vintage white columns and stared out across the pristine lawn.

      The July sun beat down without mercy, but the smothering heat couldn’t touch the icy fear that crouched darkly inside him. He owed a Dallas gambling syndicate over a half million dollars and he had less than three weeks to come up with the money. In full.

      He could no longer sleep. Had lost interest in food. Could barely breathe. For weeks he’d been popping pills that did little to ease the smothering sensation of being buried in a pit from which there was no way out.

      And then he heard about Mrs. Devin Mason’s imminent return to Layton, Texas. Kathryn was coming home.

      And bringing her son.

      Dropping his gaze to the newspaper, he focused on the picture that showed the smiling images of Kathryn, her pretty-boy actor husband and their son. Ex-husband now. The divorce had become final just weeks before Senator Sam Conner’s death.

      Kathryn hadn’t even come home for her grandfather’s funeral. Had never stepped foot on the Cross C after she went off to college ten years ago.

      Why, he didn’t know. Couldn’t care less. All that mattered was she would arrive the following day.

      And she was filthy, stinking rich.

      Kathryn was his lifeline. She would save him.

      And so would her son.

      CHAPTER ONE

      KATHRYN CONNER HAD vowed to never again set foot on the Cross C Ranch until her bastard of a grandfather was dead.

      Now he was.

      “You’re home,” Owen Daily remarked, braking his black Cadillac beneath the massive oak that shaded one end of the porch of the two-story ranch house.

      Home. The word leaped into Kathryn’s mind while she sat in heart-pounding silence beside the man she’d hired to handle her Texas legal affairs. Staring out the windshield, the knots in her stomach clenched tighter while she struggled to come to terms with her surroundings.

      Bathed in afternoon sunlight, the house with its wraparound porch looked welcoming. For Kathryn, it had only felt that way when Sam was away in Austin dealing with senate business.

      Always the wood had been painted white with butter-yellow trim. The wide porch had latticework at the eaves and long, sturdy columns. The swing—where