Colorado Abduction by Cassie Miles Page B

Everybody we know has been trying to get in touch with us. Those calls are going straight to voice mail.”
    “How will the kidnapper get through?”
    “If the number he used last night comes up, Corelli will let it ring. He does the same with any call that isn’t from a familiar number.”
    Burke circled the dining room table and stood beside her. “Dylan and I practiced how to handle a call from the kidnappers.The same way I showed you last night. I think your brother should take the next call.”
    “I want to hear his damn voice,” Dylan said.
    She lifted her chin and studied her brother for a long moment. She approved of what she saw, and nodded. “Fine with me. In about a half hour, I need to get busy talking to the bankers about that million-dollar ransom.”
    Burke stood close enough to smell the lilac fragrance of her shampoo. He needed to get her alone to make his pitch. “Before you get started with the finances,” he said, “I want you to take me to the field where all the sabotage started.”
    “Shouldn’t you be here at the house? If the kidnappers call, Dylan might need your expertise.”
    “Agent Silverman is a trained negotiator. And Dylan knows how to handle himself.” Burke checked his wristwatch again. Managing time gave him the illusion that he was in control, even though he knew that the only agenda that really mattered was dictated by the kidnappers. “If we leave now, we can get back by the time the banks open.”
    “I suppose I could take you over to the south pasture. Actually, I wouldn’t mind getting outside.”
    Dylan dug into his pocket, took out a set of keys and held them out. “Use my truck. It’s parked in front.”
    “Burke, you can drive,” Carolyn said as she pulled her cell phone from her pocket. “That way I’ll have my hands free to get started with my phone calls.”
    They made their way past the two cowboy bodyguards with their walkie-talkies and rifles on the porch, and then drove to the front gate where they encountered two more cowboy guards. Both of them tipped their hats to Carolyn.
    “Take a right, Burke.” She cast a rueful gaze at the guards. “With all these guns and the surveillance, it feels like we’re conducting some kind of military operation. Baghdad in Colorado.”
    He appreciated the protection, even if it was excessive. But that wasn’t what he wanted to discuss with her.
    Burke needed to get inside the SOF compound and take a look around. Using force was out of the question. Survivalist groups were notoriously volatile, and he didn’t want to provide an armed standoff. Carolyn had a natural inroad. She could use her influence with Sam Logan to set up a meeting. Unfortunately, from what she’d said yesterday, he didn’t think she’d be too keen on talking to her former boyfriend.
    The two-lane road curved around a thick stand of pines. When they came around the trees, the view took his breath away. Snowcapped peaks reached into a cloudless sky of pure blue. Forested foothills bordered a terrain of brownish grass and shrubs. The leveled, cultivated earth beside the barbed wire fence was surprisingly verdant with long rows of two to three inch shoots. “Green? In December?”
    “Winter wheat,” Carolyn said.
    When Burke was growing up with his single mother in Chicago, he’d spent several summers in Wisconsin dairy-farming country with his grandparents. They were schoolteachers and lived in town, but he’d spent enough time with local kids to learn the basics of riding horses and life on a farm. “I’ve never seen the winter wheat.”
    “Soon enough this crop will go dormant when we get more snow, but I love the way it looks right now. The green promises new life. And hope.”
    They were approaching the herd. Across an open space, he saw the boxy black silhouettes of Angus cattle. He’d been told there were only a couple of hundred head on this pasture. Only? It looked like a lot of cattle to him. The magnitude of this sprawling