Page 81 of Winning His Wager

But the smallest one wasn’t there.

He touched Darcey’s shoulder. “Where’s?—”

“Fletcher!” Darcey held up one hand. “We were just about to call you.”

Ben was there. He wrapped his hand around Fletcher’s shoulder. “Fletch, I don’t want you to panic, but you need to listen to me now.”

Fletcher just knew. She needed him. Now. “Where is she? What happened? Where is she?”

He was almost yelling it now.

“We’ve just called the police,” his brother said. Ben had him by the arms. Holding him steady. “Someone grabbed her and shoved her into a stolen car a little over forty-five minutes ago. We’ve called the police, but they are down by the Sublette County border working a multiple car accident.”

“That’s a damned hour away.”

“Chandler went to grab my rifles out of my gun safe,” Ben said. “Martin and Linsey are calling in search parties. Arthur and Shane are already out looking for the car that took her. We’re all going out. We’re going to find her. We’re not waiting for the cops, bro. We’re not. We’re going to find her. Them.”

“Them?” Quade asked.

“Abby Vanderguard was taken by someone else,” Ben said. “We also found her brother’s truck broken down in the parking lot. We don’t know where he is. But we can’t tell from the security video—it might be Will Vanderguard who took Dylan. But someone else took Abby.”

Ben looked at Dylan’s sisters, who all just stood there, looking terrified as the light snow fell around them. “Go inside. Call every damned Tyler you can find. Tell them what is going on. There are enough of us, we can cover just about every corner of this county and the ones south and north of us, if we bring in the second cousins. They’ll help you.” He pointed to some women who had just pulled in. Fletcher’s sister and a handful of his cousins—Perci and Pan and Maggie. Their husbands were with them. Clint, Maggie’s husband and a former cop, walked with authority.

“We’ll find her,” Fletcher told her mother. “And when I do, I am never letting her out of my sight again. I promise, Geena. I’m going to get her back.”

He couldn’t lose her now.

64

Well.This was not how she had intended to spend her night, damn it.

Dylan waited until Will climbed out of Braelyn’s car before she acted. She was Arthur Whateverhisnamewasforreal’s daughter, after all. She knew how to think for herself—whether her father liked it or not. He had taught her to be resourceful. And well, Will hadn’t tied her feet or gagged her or even tied her hands behind her back or anything.

As an abductor, Will really wasn’t very good at it.

At most, he just came across as desperate and sad. Which was both terrifying and helpful at the same time.

Will was going to be even more unpredictable, and all her talks about psychology with Devaney really hadn’t prepared her for the mental workings of a desperate abductor of Dylans.

It took her less than a minute to grab the edge of his leather belt with her teeth. She pulled it tight, just enough to slip the tongue out of the loop.

Just like that, her hands were free. She was in a trunk, but it was a hatchback. All she had to do was climb over the back seat. Easy enough to do, even though Braelyn’s car was small. So was Dylan, after all.

And that surprisingly just kept coming in handy lately.

She had to get out of there.

To hide. Until she could get to help, or she could get someone to come get her.

She checked her watch. She didn’t have her phone, and the Scraggle-Popp watch had to be near the “parent” phone to really work. It was why she always carried her phone, damn it, even though she loved the watch her sisters had bought for her too.

She did have just enough signal to operate the 911 feature. It would send a signal, even if she couldn’t get a message out. It was a built-in safety feature. She’d also preprogrammed the watch to send an emergency alert through the app to another phone.

She just hoped that other phone was close enough to make a difference. She really wanted Fletcher right now.

She sent the message and then searched the front seat. The ass had taken the keys to the car he’d stolen with him.

After he’d called friends of his to join him. To help him. Told them they owed him big and promised them a lot of OPJ if they hurried.