Page 95 of The Cowboy and the Baby

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.”