then.” He had the timeline in his head, got to his feet. “I’m going to let you take this girl home. We’re going to need to talk to the nanny, and the others still at the house. I’d like to do that this morning.”
“Whenever you want.”
“Let’s say around eight? Give you all time to settle in, get a little sleep.” He looked back at Cate. He had brown eyes, and put a smile in them for her. “I might need to talk to you again sometime, Cate. That okay with you?”
“Yes. Will you catch them?”
“That’s the plan. Meanwhile, you do some thinking, and if you think of anything—any little thing—you let me know.” He pulled a card out of his pocket. “That’s me, and the number at my office, and the number at home. Got my email, too. You keep that.”
After giving her leg a pat, Red got up, eased around the table. “We’ll be there around eight. We’re going to need to look around the place, especially where Cate saw the man who took her. And we’ll need to talk to everyone in the household. Get that list of guests and staff and so on.”
“We’ll have it ready.” Hugh passed Cate back to her father, got to his feet to shake Red’s hand. Then he walked to Dillon, did the same. “Thank you for doing everything right.”
“Oh, that’s okay.”
“It’s more than okay. Thank you all. I’d like to come back again in a day or two.”
“Anytime,” Julia told him.
“We’re just going to give you a police escort home.” Red winked at Cate. “No sirens, but how about we run the lights?”
She grinned at that. “Okay.”
Outside, Red got behind the wheel, waited for Michaela to get in beside him. Hit the lights.
He headed down the ranch road behind the fancy sedan. “We’ve got us an inside job, Mic.”
“Michaela,” she muttered, then blew out a breath. “Yes, sir, we sure do.”
CHAPTER FOUR
Snuggled in her father’s arms, Cate fell asleep before they reached the end of the ranch road.
“She’s exhausted,” Aidan murmured. “I want to have a doctor look her over, but . . .”
“She can sleep first. I can get Ben to come to the house. He’d do it for us.”
“I was afraid . . . I know she’s only ten, but I was afraid he—they—might—”
Reaching over, Hugh squeezed his arm. “So was I. But that didn’t happen, they didn’t touch her that way. She’s safe now.”
“She was close all the time. Just a few miles away. God, Dad, she was so brave, so damn clever and brave. She saved herself, that’s what she did. My fearless little girl saved herself. And now I’m afraid to let her out of my sight.”
Hugh slowed when they approached the gates securing the peninsula, waited until they opened for him. “They had to have a way in and out. They couldn’t have done it without the security code, or clearance. All the people coming and going today of all days.”
Lights bloomed along the road winding up, winding away from the sea toward the multileveled house on the rise.
A house, Hugh thought, his parents had built as a sanctuary for themselves, their family. Today, on the day they’d honored his father, someone had invaded that sanctuary, despoiled it, and stolen his grandchild.
The sanctuary would be his now, and he would do whatever he could do to make certain no one ever marred it again.
“Let me get your door,” Hugh began as he pulled up, but family already streamed out of the house. While his wife, his sister, his brother-in-law rushed to the car, Hugh walked to where his mother stood, at the entrance portico.
She looked so frail, so tired.
He caught her face in his hands, used his thumbs to brush away tears. “She’s safe, Ma. She’s sleeping.”
“Where—”
“I’ll tell you inside. Let’s go inside, and let Aidan get her upstairs to bed. Our girl’s had a hell of a time, but she’s safe, Ma, and she’s not hurt. Some scrapes and bruises, nothing more.”
“My legs are shaking. It’s always after my legs start shaking. Give me a hand.”
He helped her inside, into her favorite winter chair by the fire, with the view of the sea beyond the wide window.
When Aidan carried her in, Cate’s head on his shoulder, her body loose in that rag-doll way of a sleeping child, Rosemary pressed a hand to her lips.
“I want to put her to bed,” Aidan said quietly. “I need to stay with her in case she wakes up.