ROCKY MOUNTAIN RESCUE by Cindi Myers Page B

on the gas station first—those guys in the canyon aren’t going anywhere.”
    “Sure thing,” Sullivan said. “What’s up?”
    “I talked to the clerk, Marne, a few minutes ago, and she told me she was working this morning when a man brought Carlo into the store to use the restroom. But when Stacy Giardino went back there to talk to her just now, there’s a clerk—with no name tag—who swears there’s no one named Marne there, and he’s the only one on duty.”
    “You think someone set you up?”
    “I do. See what you can find out and let me know.”
    “Where will you be?”
    “We’re headed to Crested Butte. I’m more and more convinced the boy is there.”
    “You could be headed into a trap,” Sullivan said.
    “It feels that way, but I’ll be careful. Something big is going on here, and I want to know what.”
    “I’ll get right on it.”
    He ended the call and slid the phone back into his pocket, then turned to Stacy. “You should have threatened that clerk,” she said. “Made him tell you where Marne was.”
    “I’m sure that’s what Sammy would have done.”
    She folded her arms across her chest. “It would have worked. The clerk would have talked.”
    “Maybe. Or someone watching in the back room would have opened fire and killed us all.”
    She pressed both palms to her forehead and moaned. “I don’t understand what’s happening,” she said.
    “I’m not sure,” Patrick said. “But I think Marne was a plant. Someone told her to tell us about seeing Carlo and one of the kidnappers. Once she’d done her job, she was paid off and sent away.”
    “But why do that?”
    “I don’t know. Maybe to make sure we headed in the right direction. To lure us. All of this seems orchestrated to keep us eager to get to Crested Butte.”
    “But that doesn’t make sense. Those men in the canyon tried to kill us. They must have been waiting to ambush us. And before that, we got the phone call warning us away.”
    “They tried to kill me. They wanted you alive. They tried to kidnap you. And maybe the warning was really to get me away—they still wanted you, but they needed to find a way to separate us.”
    “They threatened me. I think they wanted to take me away and torture you.”
    “Men like that think threats will make a captive more compliant and easier to handle. I’ll admit, I’m impressed you got away from them.”
    “I’ll do anything to save my son.” She shifted in her seat and looked away.
    “Since they couldn’t kill me and they failed to bring you in, maybe plan B is to lure us to where they can try again.”
    “Are you saying the kidnappers want us to find them?”
    “I think they want us where they can pick us off and shut us up,” he said. “Whether or not Carlo is being held at his great-uncle’s ranch, a remote property in a rural area sounds like an ideal place to get rid of the two people who have been interfering with the kidnappers’ plans.”
    She pinched the bridge of her nose between her thumb and forefinger. “Are you saying the woman was lying, too—that she never saw Carlo?”
    “I don’t know. Maybe she saw him and maybe she didn’t. Her job was to make us believe Carlo and the kidnapper passed through here so we’d keep following the trail of breadcrumbs.”
    “And are we going to keep following it?”
    “I think we have to, but I want more information first.”
    “What kind of information?”
    “I want to know who’s behind this, for one thing.”
    “I thought we’d decided Uncle Abel was behind it. Isn’t that why we’re headed to Crested Butte?”
    “But why would Abel want Carlo? He doesn’t need him to step in and take control of the Giardino business. He’s the only surviving Giardino male. He could just show up and start giving orders.”
    “I don’t care why he’s doing this—I just want my son.”
    “I want your son, too. But we can’t go barging into an ambush. We need to know more about what we’re dealing