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Page 49 of Beneath the Mountain Sky (McBride Brother Lumberjacks #1)

I nod. Completely unable to speak. Barely even able to draw in a breath as she sorts through the memories jumbling her head.

Her bottom lip trembles. “I remember who took me.”

Liam kneels beside me, pulling her hand into his. “Who was it, Willow?”

She gulps in heavy draws of air, her gaze flicking from me to him. “It was Earl. Earl Byers.”

“What?” Connor approaches cautiously. “Byers?”

The name rattles around my head, along with the information she just dropped on me.

She thought she was pregnant.

Earl Byers.

Pregnant.

Earl?

The eccentric older man had always seemed relatively harmless. Quiet. A bit reclusive, living with his sister on the far side of the mountain, so it would sometimes be months before he would come into town.

Connor snarls. “You’re sure?”

Willow nods, the movement shifting my hold on her cheek, smearing the blood. “I recognized him. It’s why…Oh, God.” She flattens her hand over her mouth to stop another sob. “It’s why I wasn’t worried when he stopped to help. He was on an ATV and he…he called me Bobby, remember?”

I finally start to process everything she’s saying and nod. “Yeah…”

Connor stills next to Liam. “Wasn’t his wife’s name Roberta?”

A vague image of a friendly woman with dark hair who used to visit with Mom at Claire’s when we were in town as children flickers through my head.

I exchange a glance with Connor. “Yeah, but she left town years ago, when Connor and I were very small.”

Willow shifts closer to me, her tear-filled eyes locked with mine. “He thought I was her.”

“Are you sure?”

She nods. “Almost the whole time I was with him. He was adamant, got angry if I tried to argue with him about who I was and my name.” The look in her eyes shifts, filling with so much pain that the throb in my arm instantly disappears. “He said he wasn’t going to let me take this baby from him.”

Her hands settle over her stomach.

This baby?

“They had a baby.” Her gaze darts across Liam and Connor before finding mine again. “He showed me a picture of the three of them together, and God, I do look like her twenty years ago.”

Connor raises a dark brow. “I never knew they had a kid.”

I shake my head. “Me, either… So, she left and took their baby.”

Willow bobs her head. “I think so. At first, I didn’t realize what he kept ranting about, but I figured out enough to understand he was delusional. Lost in some memory, something in his mind.”

All the bits and pieces of the puzzle we’ve been collecting for weeks start to fit together, but there are too many still missing. Jagged edges. Giant gaps that I can’t see clearly.

I shake my head, trying to clear away the cobwebs. “So, he thought you were her and that you had taken his baby?”

She nods. “I didn’t know if I was pregnant or not, but I thought maybe there was a chance and that maybe he wouldn’t—”—she gulps—“maybe he wouldn’t touch me if he thought I was pregnant with his baby, so I played along. I told him he was confused, and I hadn’t had the baby yet.”

So fucking smart.

Connor squats, bringing himself to our level while maintaining a watch on the area where the shots came from. “And he bought it?”

“He did.” Willow sniffles. “Whatever’s going on with him, the confusion, it helped me convince him that he was mistaken about me having the baby.

I told him he would come soon enough and that he needed to be patient.

I played along with him when I realized he wasn’t going to let me go. I let him believe I was Bobby.”

His wife.

My hand falls from her cheek, and forgetting about my injury, I reach out with both arms and drag her up, clutching her to me.

Visions of what might’ve happened, what he must’ve done to her, flash through my head.

“Did he…”

I can’t even say the words.

She inhales sharply, understanding what I’m asking, and burrows against me, pressing herself so close there isn’t even an inch of space between us. “The morning sickness got so bad within a few days that I convinced him it would risk hurting the baby.”

Morning sickness…

I drag her head back, holding her gaze, assuring that she sees all the love in mine. “You were pregnant?”

She nods, her trembling growing even stronger as panic wells up inside her, matching my own.

“I gave birth to our baby, Killian, up here with that man, two months ago. He kept me locked in the cabin because he was afraid I was going to run with our son. Like his memory knew that his wife had done it before, even though I convinced him she hadn’t and I was her… ”

Our baby.

Our son.

Those words ring in my ears as loudly as the gunshots—the pain of them so intense it’s almost numbing.

We have a son…

Who was up here with a monster.

Until Willow ran.

“H-how did you get free?”

She struggles with another sob, fighting for control over her emotions so she can tell us the important information.

“He would leave for days at a time and return with supplies like baby formula and food. I-I tried to breastfeed and couldn’t.

My milk never came in, so he made sure we had what we needed.

Anytime he was gone, I searched every inch of that cabin for anything to help, and I found some old maps of the mountain. ”

My breath catches.

The maps on the wall of the office flash through my mind.

They led us here.

To answers.

And the ones she found helped her escape.

“I saw where we were.” More tears spill over, soaking my bloody hands and her cheeks. “I knew I could go through the gorge, to the river, and follow it down.”

“Jesus Christ, Willow…”

Every muscle in my body goes taut, anger vibrating through me so intensely that I’m not sure I can contain it.

“The night of the storm, he had gone to town… I managed to pry one of the old boards off the side of the cabin and slip through the opening. I took the baby, and I ran, only…” She sobs, and I cling to her tighter.

“He came back, and he caught up to me near the river. He fired a warning shot. He tried to take our baby from me.” Her voice cracks.

“We struggled, and I fell into the river.”

I drag her face to mine, so close I can feel every frantic breath she takes fluttering over me. “Where’s our son?”

Horrible images of the rapids float through my head…

Of Willow hung up in the water, almost lifeless on that tree…

If the baby fell in with her…

“He has him.” She sobs again. “He has our boy.”

A rage unlike anything I’ve ever felt consumes me.

I begin to tremble as hard as she is.

She had our baby up here.

Alone with that monster.

He took her.

He took my son.

He took my family.

I brush my lips across hers, so desperate to make it all go away and redo the past year. “We’ll get him back, Willow. We’ll get him back, and I’ll make that motherfucker pay for what he’s done to you. I promise.”

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