Free Kidnapping in Kendall County by Delores Fossen Page A

answer. “I need to talk to you
now.
Get here to my place as fast as you can. And hurry. They’re coming to kill us.”
    Vickie hung up but not before Rosalie heard a sound on the other end of the line that sliced right through her.
    A crying baby.

Chapter Eight
    “You don’t have time to ditch me,” Rosalie repeated. “We have to get to Vickie and stop her and that baby from being hurt.”
    She’d been saying variations of that same thing during the entire half-hour drive from the safe house to Vickie’s house. Austin figured she was right, but still he couldn’t risk taking Rosalie into yet another dangerous situation.
    That’s why he’d called for backup from the San Antonio cops.
    Once Austin arrived at Vickie’s place, he could hand Rosalie off to the officers and then find out what the heck was going on. Maybe it wasn’t too late to help Vickie and get her and the baby out of harm’s way.
    Of course,
They’re coming to kill us
wasn’t the kind of thing someone said unless the person was already in harm’s way. If he couldn’t get to her in time, maybe SAPD could.
    Austin pushed the accelerator as hard as it was safe to do, speeding toward Vickie’s house on the outskirts of San Antonio. He also kept watch around them in case the gunmen were using this as some kind of ruse to draw Rosalie and him out into the open again. Rosalie kept watch, as well, her gaze firing all around them while she kept a white-knuckle grip on the armrest.
    “The baby could be Sadie,” she mumbled.
    Yeah, she’d been repeating a version of that, too, since Vickie’s call.
    “Don’t get your hopes up,” he said, doing some repeating of his own. There were likely dozens of babies connected to this operation, and the odds were slim that it was Rosalie’s daughter.
    “Hope is all I have.”
    Her voice was small and shaky. Barely a whisper. However, Austin heard every drop of the raw emotion in it, and he knew it was going to be a bear to keep her out of this situation. He understood her need to see if this was Sadie, but at the moment he had an even greater need to keep her safe. Then, he could rescue Vickie and the crying baby.
    His phone buzzed, and without taking his attention off the road, Austin answered it.
    “I’m Detective Hernandez, SAPD,” the man said. “We’re at Vickie Cravens’s house now, but she’s not here.”
    Rosalie made a sharp sound of concern, mimicking the way that Austin felt. “She could be hiding inside.” Austin hoped. Hiding and unharmed.
    “We looked,” the detective explained. “Her back door was wide-open so I went in and checked every room. She’s not here.”
    Austin hated he had to ask his next question. “Any sign of foul play?” And he held his breath, waiting for the answer.
    “Not really, but her purse and car are here, and there’s a can of baby formula opened on the kitchen counter. Looks like she left in a hurry.”
    Or was taken in a hurry. Austin wasn’t sure where Vickie had been when she’d made that frantic call to him. It was possible she’d been somewhere else and heading to her house and that’s why she’d told him to go there. If she’d seen any signs that it wasn’t safe to go inside, she could have escaped. Or maybe the escape had happened after the danger was right on her. Either way, he refused to believe, yet, that the worst had happened.
    “Maybe she has two vehicles,” Austin suggested. “And she could have used the second one to get away.”
    “She only has one car registered to her,” Detective Hernandez explained. “The houses out here are pretty far apart, but we’ll canvass the area and talk to her neighbors. She might be with one of them or may have borrowed a car.”
    Maybe. But as determined as these baby farm guards were, Austin had to admit to himself that they would have already gone after her no matter where she’d tried to flee.
    If Vickie had told the truth, that is.
    After everything that Rosalie and he had been