Free ROCKY MOUNTAIN RESCUE by Cindi Myers Page A

and tossed them out the window.
    “You can’t just throw them out the window,” she protested.
    “I’m sorry, but we can’t risk keeping the phone when someone can use it to trace you.”
    “No, I mean, you’re littering.”
    She looked so genuinely distressed, he bit back his laughter. “I’ll write myself a ticket later. Come on. We have to get out of here.” He put the Jeep in gear and made a U-turn, headed back the way they’d come.
    * * *
    S TILL REELING FROM hearing Carlo crying for her, Stacy struggled to understand what was happening. “What are you doing?” she asked Patrick. “Where are you going?” Surely he wasn’t giving up the plan to go to Crested Butte.
    “That was in case anyone was watching. I want them to think we’re acting on their threat and retreating. I looked at the map while you were in the shower this morning and we can get to Crested Butte another way, using back roads.”
    She sat back, though truly relaxing was impossible. Carlo had sounded so upset.... She swallowed a knot of tears. She couldn’t break down now. She had to keep it together, for her little boy’s sake.
    Patrick patted her arm—though whether this was a gesture of reassurance or merely to get her attention, she wasn’t sure. “Did you recognize the woman’s voice?” he asked.
    “No.” There had been nothing familiar about the voice at all.
    “Is Abel married?”
    “He wasn’t the last time I saw him, but that was five years ago.”
    “He was living with his mother then.”
    “Yes. And she didn’t sound like that. She was old.”
    “How old?”
    “Seventies? Abel is fifty, at least. Maybe we’re on the wrong track.” This new idea increased her agitation. “Maybe Abel doesn’t have anything to do with this and we’re wasting time, while whoever does have Carlo gets farther and farther away.”
    “That’s possible. But whoever has him knew—probably from your phone—that we’d left Durango and were headed toward Crested Butte. And they wanted you to go away. That tells me we’re headed in exactly the right direction.”
    “What if they do have someone watching us and he—or she—figures out we didn’t really turn around?” She looked around, as if expecting to see someone spying on them. “They might hurt Carlo.”
    “I don’t think so. They took the boy on purpose, for a specific reason. If they’d wanted to kill him, they could have done away with both of you in your hotel room before either of you woke up. They’re making these threats to scare you and keep you away, but I think they want the boy alive.”
    “But why would they want him? He’s just a baby.” Her voice trembled on these last words, but she sucked in a deep breath and continued. “He can’t tell them anything or give them anything.”
    “What about Sam Giardino’s will? Does Carlo inherit anything now that Sammy is dead, too?”
    “You’d know the answer to that better than I do. Doesn’t the government confiscate ill-gotten gains?”
    “If they can prove a link to a crime, yes.”
    “It’s not as if Sammy had tons of cash and money in bank accounts. He lived well, but most of his money was in the business. And Elizabeth is still alive. She’s bound to inherit something.”
    “But the majority would go to his son, or his son’s son, I would think.”
    “Yeah. Sam was a chauvinist, all right. Though he’d have said he was following tradition.” Women didn’t rate as high as the family dog in the Giardino household. “But even if Sam had decided to leave his money to Carlo, he wouldn’t just hand everything over to a three-year-old,” she said. “There’d be a trust or something to tie the money up until Carlo was old enough to take control.”
    “Then maybe money isn’t the driving force here. What else?”
    “I can’t think of any reason why anyone would want to take Carlo.” He was her baby. No one loved him or cared for him more than she did—why would anyone else even notice