Free Mending Hope (Contemporary Western Romance) (License to Love Series:Book 2) by Amelia Rose Page A

and then Melinda spoke up. “I’m sure she’s fine,” she told him, trying to keep her voice calm.  But after all of these years of her working as mother hen to the brothers, he recognized when she thought that it was going to be something bad and tried to change the outcome for them.  This was definitely one of those times. 
    He dropped the phone on the desk and ran to the car.  If Melinda was driving from town it would take her longer to get to the farm than it would him.  He started the car and stomped on the gas simultaneously.  In less than a minute, he was barreling down the road towards the farm.
    Please be okay, please be okay.
    He kept chanting it to himself over and over again as he sped up the farm’s driveway.  As soon as the car was in park, he jumped out and ran into the house not even taking the time to shut the car door. 
    “Alyssa!” Woody yelled, flinging open the kitchen door.  His shoe slipped on something, and it took him a moment to process that there was a good amount of blood on the floor.  It was smeared and halfway across the room on the floor was a small knife. 
    Frantic thoughts started to race through his mind, but he pushed them aside and ran down the hall to her apartment.  “Alyssa, are you here?!” he called out into the empty room, waiting for a response.  Everything within him prayed that she would answer him. 
    But after a couple of moments of frantic searching throughout the house without a response, he began to experience a heavy sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach.  Something was not right.  He walked carefully from room to room, looking for a clue as to what might have happened. 
    When he went into the bathroom, he noticed a pregnancy test lying on the counter.  Confused, he picked it up. 
    Why would Alyssa be running a pregnancy test if she wasn’t able to get pregnant  he asked himself.  However when he looked down at the test he saw that it was one of the digital readouts, and the word PREGNANT was flashing across the screen in large bold letters. 
    He coughed, blinked, and then looked at the test again, his mind trying desperately to wrap itself around everything that had just happened.  If this test was in fact Alyssa’s, then that meant that she was pregnant and possibly kidnapped.  For a moment the world stopped and he could hear nothing but the whooshing of his heart.  He shook his head and looked back down at the test again, unsure as to what he had just seen but the readout was still the same. 
    “Where are you?” he asked the stale air of the apartment.  He might not have been sure of what happened, but he knew one thing with absolute certainty, he was going to get her back.
    “It’s looking very much like she might have been here when Charles Sanders came by,” a voice behind him startled him. “There are signs of a struggle and we can’t find Alyssa at all.” 
    Melinda’s voice had caught him off guard.  He turned to face her while at the same time shoving the test into his pocket.  The last thing he needed right now was for Melinda to question him about the possibility of Alyssa being pregnant.
    “And the blood in the kitchen…?” his voice trailed off. 
    “We’re testing it.  We’ll know soon enough whether or not it’s hers.”  Woody nodded his head, but his train of thought was already ten steps ahead.  The knife that was in the kitchen was still there, which meant that it was most likely used for self-defense.  That was the rationale he was going to cling to. 
    Melinda was still talking, but Woody’s brain had turned what she was saying into background noise.  The only thing he could hear now was the roar of his blood racing through his veins.  He was already trying to think of places in the area he would go if he were injured and on the run.
    “Since we can’t find Alyssa’s car, we’re assuming that he took it and left the other car here.  But you need to go home and check to see, if you