The Colton Ransom by Marie Ferrarella Read Free Book Online Page A

curving. “Anybody have it in for you, Garth? Some employee you fired or an unhappy maid you might have paid a little too much or too little attention to?” Drucker pressed.
    Gabby spoke up, interrupting the chief’s questions. “The kidnappers didn’t know they were taking his daughter.”
    Interest heightened in the chief’s dark-circled eyes. “Oh? And why’s that?”
    This was the hard part. It took everything she had not to just break down, or melt down, or whatever the current correct term for this sick feeling she presently had going on in the pit of her stomach.
    “Because I put Avery down for a nap in Cheyenne’s crib.”
    Drucker turned to look at her, a spark of fresh interest in the man’s tired eyes. “And why would you do something like that?” he asked.
    Another wave of frustration and helplessness washed over Gabby. If only she hadn’t done this, if only she’d put the baby in the crib Faye had found for her, Avery would still be safe, and Faye wouldn’t have had to sacrifice her life trying to save the infant.
    If only...
    She was making herself crazy. Just answer the question, Gabby silently ordered.
    “I thought I was doing something nice for her. I would have never dreamed I was putting her in any sort of danger. If I’d had the slightest inkling, then I wouldn’t have—”
    “Of course you wouldn’t,” the chief acknowledged kindly, politely cutting her off. “Nobody ever expects these kinds of things to happen to them. Just like those kidnappers didn’t expect to take the wrong baby,” he emphasized. “Hell of a surprise for them when they realize they did.”
    The panic Gabby was trying so hard to bank down began to flare up again, threatening to consume her.
    “Do you think they will realize it?” With each word she uttered, she talked faster, as if she were trying to outrun the idea, the suggestion that the kidnappers would suddenly be struck by the difference in the two infants, which was minimal at best. “The babies do look alike and they’re the same age—maybe the kidnappers won’t even notice.”
    There was an expression of pity on Drucker’s face, as if he couldn’t see how she could believe the charade would continue indefinitely. There was a very real fly in the ointment. “They’ll notice when your daddy refuses to pay the ransom, saying his grandbaby is all nice and snug at Dead River.”
    The horror of the scenario he’d just tossed out so cavalierly appalled Gabby.
    “My father won’t refuse to pay to get Avery back,” she insisted. The idea was too terrible for her to entertain even for a moment.
    The look of pity briefly intensified in the chief’s gray eyes. “We talking about the same Jethro Colton?” he asked with a barely suppressed smirk. “’Cause the one I know would have trouble parting with money to rescue his own kin. There’s no way he’d do it to bring back someone else’s,” Drucker stated flatly.
    Gabby raised her chin, something within her temporarily galvanizing. She refused to accept what Drucker was saying. That would make her father a monster. “You’re wrong.”
    The chief shook his head, as if he thought she was being delusional, but for now he kept that to himself. Instead, he looked at Trevor.
    “For your daughter’s sake, I sure hope so.” But his very tone said that he sincerely doubted that he was wrong.
    It was at that moment, while the chief was predicting Jethro Colton’s far-from-stellar reaction to the situation, that Trevor suddenly realized the truth of his feelings.
    He wasn’t resentful of the burden Avery represented or indifferent to her existence. The thought of possibly permanently losing Avery made him come to grips with the fact that he actually loved the little girl. What he’d been struggling with these past two weeks was not that he didn’t want her but that he realized this tiny little human being was going to wind up changing the whole world as he knew it.
    But now, if the chief’s