ROCKY MOUNTAIN RESCUE by Cindi Myers

Stacy’s arm. “We’d better go.”
    She nodded, and didn’t try to pull away when he turned her toward his room.
    “Shouldn’t you wait for the police?” the clerk asked.
    “You can tell them everything they need to know.” Patrick hurried with Stacy down the walkway and into his room, where he shut and locked the door. Then he led her into the brightly lit bathroom. “Tip your head back and let me have a look,” he said, one finger under her chin.
    She winced with the effort, but lifted her chin and let him examine the wound. “I imagine it hurts, but it’s not very deep,” he said. He grabbed a hand towel from a stack by the sink and handed it to her. “Put that around your neck to stop the bleeding, and then we’ve got to get out of here before the police show up. They’ll ask a lot of questions we don’t want to answer right now.”
    She pressed the towel to her neck. “Thank you,” she said.
    “For what?”
    “For not involving the police.”
    “I’ll have someone from my office contact them to see if they learn anything about Forest and his companion, but for now I don’t want to waste any time with them. Get your things and let’s go.”
    They passed the police cruiser and the ambulance on their way out of the parking lot. Stacy, the bloody towel in her lap, watched over her shoulder until the motel was out of sight, then faced forward once more. “Neither one of those men looked like the man who took Carlo,” she said.
    “I didn’t think so, either,” he said.
    “So who were they? What did they want?”
    He checked the mirror. So far, so good. They weren’t being followed. “Two possibilities come to mind,” he said. “Carlo was too much to handle, so whoever orchestrated the first kidnapping sent those two to get you.”
    “Then I would have gone with them. I could have helped Carlo.”
    “The other possibility is that the first two guys screwed up. They weren’t supposed to leave you behind as a witness, so these two were supposed to finish the job.”
    She sucked in her breath and touched the cut on her neck. “What are we going to do now?”
    “We need to find another place to stay. We need sleep and a shower and you need to take care of your wounds.”
    “I can’t sleep, not when I could be out looking for Carlo.”
    “You can’t help him if you’re half-dead on your feet. And we aren’t going to find anything wandering around in the dark. Tomorrow morning we’ll start fresh. I’m going to call my office and arrange to get another car. The desk clerk will tell the local police about this one and they’ll probably be looking for it, to talk to us about Nathan Forest.”
    “I’ll bet that’s not his real name.”
    She was smart enough to figure that out, at least. “Nathan Bedford Forest was a Confederate general during the Civil War,” he said. “Maybe this guy’s mother or father was a history buff.”
    “Or maybe he made it up.”
    “Probably he made it up.”
    “And after we get a new car?”
    “I think we’d better go see your Uncle Abel and find out if he knows anything about what’s going on.”
    “Uncle Abel? Do you think he’s behind this?”
    “He’s the closest living relative to Sam Giardino—the one Sam threatened to put in charge of the family business. And didn’t you say he has a ranch somewhere around here?”
    “Crested Butte. Do you think he has Carlo? Or knows who does?”
    “The man who took Carlo had mud on his shoes—mud mixed with manure. The kind of thing you’d find on a ranch.”
    “But that could be anywhere—it doesn’t have to be Abel’s ranch.”
    “You’re right. But it’s the only clue we have right now. Talking to Abel seems a good place to start. If he doesn’t know anything, maybe he can tell us who would be interested in the boy. You said Sam threatened to pass the family business on to Abel?”
    “I don’t think he was serious. Everyone always said the two brothers weren’t on good