Missing In The Mountains. Julie Anne Lindsey

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      “Do you want to talk to him?” Kate asked. “He can tell you more about whatever Sara was doing.” Her bottom lip poked out. “You must be trying to get your mind around her last few days.”

      “They weren’t her last days,” Emma snapped, surprising herself with the force of her words.

      Kate started. “I didn’t mean that,” she said. “Not like that.”

      Emma stared, biting her lip and collecting her calm. “Sorry. I’m on edge. You understand.” She flicked her gaze to Mr. Harrison, a normally kind man who looked suddenly agitated inside his office. “I don’t think I’m ready to talk to anyone else.” It might’ve been her restless night, her emotional state or sheer paranoia, but the branch manager seemed to have fixed his angry eyes on her, despite the line of patrons moving between them. If Mr. Harrison had anything to do with what had happened to Sara, then Emma wasn’t in a hurry to run in there and ask about it. Better to let the police or Sawyer do that.

      She lowered her eyes to the tidy piles on Sara’s desk. “Did the police go through her things?”

      “They looked,” Kate said, “but they didn’t take anything. They were more interested in how she’d been acting lately or if anyone had come to see her here that potentially upset her. Angry ex-boyfriends, things like that.”

      Right, Emma thought, because the police didn’t have the notebook. She’d only located it last night while waiting for Sawyer to arrive. The police didn’t have a reason to wonder if someone at her work was involved when they’d visited. Maybe Emma didn’t either. Maybe the notebook was something else completely, and Emma was reaching for threads, for some way to feel more useful, when in truth there was nothing to do but wait.

      She’d get the notebook to the detective in charge as soon as possible. Let him take it from here.

      A door slammed and Emma gasped. She and Kate swung in the direction of the sound.

      Mr. Harrison’s door was closed.

      “Kate?” A teller waved from across the room.

      Kate frowned. “Sorry. I’ll only be a minute,” she told Emma.

      “I’ll be fine.” A minute was all Emma needed. She swiveled on her sister’s chair and stared at the desk. “Drawers first,” she told Henry. Then she opened his empty diaper bag on the floor and began dropping everything with Sara’s handwriting into the bag. She took memory sticks from the middle desk drawer and the appointment book from the desktop. Anything remotely personal could be a clue, and maybe she’d see something in Sara’s notes that the police hadn’t. Then she might be able to give them a lead, in addition to the notebook, that would help identify Sara’s abductor. Emma shuddered at the memory of the man’s awful growling voice. Who did you tell? Her gaze jumped to Mr. Harrison’s closed office door. Could he know who took her sister?

      She blinked through another threat of tears.

      A framed photo of Sara, Emma and their parents sat on the corner of her sister’s desk. Their mom had been gone just over five years. Their dad had been gone much longer, but the holes their parents had left behind were permanent. Emma tucked the frame into her purse, unwilling to stow her parents’ image with the hodgepodge of who-knew-what from Sara’s desk.

      Across the room Kate started back in her direction.

      Emma kicked the bottom drawers shut on either side of her, then heaved the bulging diaper bag back onto her shoulder. She gave the middle drawer a shove with her free hand.

      “Did you find your key?” Kate asked, coming to a stop at the cubicle’s opening.

      “No.” Emma tipped her head and stroked Henry’s fuzzy brown hair. “I guess it’s lost.”

      “Have you checked her car?” Kate offered. “If she’s anything like me, it’s probably in a cup holder. I find everything from hair ties to business cards in there.”

      “Good idea.” Emma pushed Sara’s chair in when she rose, then made a show of fussing over Henry on her way out, hoping to keep Kate’s eyes on her adorable baby boy instead of her suddenly crammed diaper bag.

      She hurried back onto the sidewalk with a feeling of victory and rush of relief. The local marching band played their high school fight song a few blocks away, adding an excellent backdrop to her enthusiasm. They were probably entertaining at the farmer’s market to raise money again, but it certainly felt personal. Emma smiled a little wider.

      She arranged the too-heavy diaper bag in the crook of her arm, having nearly dislocated her shoulder with the number of note pads and notebooks she’d confiscated. “I’m going to call this a success,” she told Henry, dropping a kiss onto his tiny forehead.

      Heavy fingers clamped hard around her elbow. “Don’t say a word, or your baby’s going to take a mighty fall.” A man’s low voice growled in her ear. He moved into her periphery, pulling her against his side and keeping pace there.

      Ice slid through Emma’s veins. It was the voice. Who did you tell?

      She scanned the street for Sawyer, but the man’s head turned at the eruption of a bass drumline. His thick arms crossed over his chest as the marching band carried their tune to a crescendo.

      A moment later, the man tugged her around the building’s edge and into a small alley.

      “Don’t hurt him,” she pleaded.

      “Give the bag to me.” The man moved into her view; his face was covered in a black scarf from his chin to his nose. The dark hood of his jacket hung low over his forehead.

      “No.” Emma needed the things in that bag. The fact he wanted the bag was a sure sign that she finally had what she needed to find Sara. “Where’s my sister?”

      His hand moved from her elbow to the back of her neck, compressing and squeezing until shooting pain raced up the back of her head and she cried out for him to stop. “I wasn’t making a request.”

      He released her with a shove. “Hand over the bag, or I squeeze your baby’s head next.”

      Emma stumbled forward, twisting at the waist to put more distance between the lunatic and her son.

      Henry screamed.

      The man curled meaty fingers around the straps of Henry’s diaper bag and jerked hard enough to leave material burns along her forearm as it slid. Before he separated it from her completely, Emma clenched a fist around one strap. “No!” she screamed.

      “Stop!” Sawyer’s voice blasted through the white noise of the street beyond the alley. A heartbeat later his livid face came into view across the crowded road. “Stop!” His eyes were fierce, and his voice boomed with authority. “Help her!” he yelled, motioning to Emma in the alley.

      A few confused faces turned in her direction, gawking from the safety of the sidewalk just a few yards away.

      Emma tried to hold on, tried to stall her attacker ten more seconds, just long enough for Sawyer to reach her, but the man’s expression turned lethal. He reached a giant hand forward for her baby, eyes narrowed and darkening.

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