Colorado Abduction - By Cassie Miles & Marie Ferrarella Page 0,7

front of him. “Let Carolyn handle this.”

“Like hell I will.”

She slipped inside and ran to answer the phone before Dylan could do anything to stop her.

Chapter Three

Burke would have preferred being inside, listening while Carolyn talked to the kidnappers. But he knew his men would record the conversation. During the next few hours, they’d replay it a hundred times, doing voice analysis and isolating every miniscule background noise.

Right now, it was more important to hold Dylan back. Burke wouldn’t hesitate to kick this cowboy’s ass to keep him from barging in and botching their procedures. He stood in front of Dylan like a brick wall.

“Let me pass.” Dylan seemed dazed, in shock. His pale green eyes—the same color as Carolyn’s—flickered nervously. “I need to be in there.”

Burke didn’t waste time on logical explanations. He doubted Dylan Carlisle could hear anything other than the roar of outrage inside his head. It must be an all-consuming noise, louder than an avalanche.

“We’re staying out here,” Burke said.

“She’s my wife.”

“I understand.” If Burke had allowed himself to become emotionally involved with the people on a case, he would have felt sorry for this guy.

“My wife…” His voice cracked. “I love her.”

Though Burke hadn’t touched him, Dylan staggered backward a few paces. The air deflated from his lungs in a gush of cold vapor. He turned, facing the night sky. His fingers gripped the banister. “We had a fight. Right before she rode off by herself, we argued. I said things. Hurtful things.”

Burke stepped up beside him but didn’t look at him. He stood silently, listening like a priest in a confessional.

“Nicole wants a baby.” The words spilled from Dylan as if he’d been holding everything inside for too long. “We’ve been trying for eight or nine months. But no luck. From the start, we knew she might have to be implanted because she had internal injuries from when she got kicked by a horse a couple of years ago. Kind of an occupational hazard, I guess. She’s a large animal veterinarian.”

Burke heard the pride in his voice. Dylan truly loved his wife.

He continued, “She’s a tiny little thing. But tough. First time I saw her, she stuck her arm into a cow’s birthing canal and pulled a slick, wet, newborn calf into the world.” He shook his head. Something like a sob came through his lips. “You’ve got to love a woman like that.”

That wasn’t Burke’s number one criteria, but he understood. “She was right for you.”

“We were supposed to go to the fertility doctor today. He’d scheduled the implant procedure. But I couldn’t go. Not with the stable fire. I had to be here.”

Actually, he could have called Carolyn. She was more than able to manage the ranch while Dylan was at the doctor with his wife. Burke guessed that something else was going on. Maybe Dylan wasn’t ready for kids.

He continued, “I told her we could do it tomorrow or the next day. Why did it have to happen today? What difference could one day make?”

A big difference. It took less than a day to change someone’s life. Sometimes, less than a minute.

Carolyn pushed open the door and stepped onto the veranda. She trembled. “A million-dollar ransom. He wants it by tomorrow afternoon.”

THE SOUND OF THE KIDNAPPER’S voice set fire to a fuse inside Carolyn. She was furious. And terrified. They had to rescue Nicole. Now, damn it. Right now.

But there were procedures to follow, and she trusted Burke’s expertise. He moved around the dining room, checking the various instruments and conferring with his men in technical jargon that sounded like a foreign language.

Needing something to do, she picked up Burke’s leather jacket from the dining room chair where he’d dropped it. The lining was still warm from his body heat. He glanced in her direction. Was he smirking? In spite of her earlier insistence that she wasn’t an errand girl, she’d been reduced to tidying up. Immediately, Carolyn dropped the jacket and stood tall, arms folded below her breasts.

Sheriff Trainer had joined them. The only other person in the room was her brother. Dylan leaned against the wall by the door, near collapse.

“We’re going to play back the ransom call,” Burke said. “I want you all to listen for any sound that might give us a clue to the kidnapper’s identity or his whereabouts.”

“Wait a minute,” Sheriff Trainer said. “Didn’t you get a trace to tell us where he is?”

One of Burke’s associates, Special Agent Corelli, stepped forward. He was the

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