Page 17 of High Country Escape

“Is it possible there were other children he kidnapped?” Dalton looked as if the idea pained him.

“Anything is possible. I was only with him for three months. If Debra could find Alice and talk to her, Alice might know something. She was with Ledger for three years.”

“What happened to her?” Dalton asked.

“I don’t know. Both of us were in the foster system, without families to worry about us. I think Ledger targeted us because of that. We went back into the system after we escaped. I was lucky enough to end up in a good situation, with caring foster parents. Not everyone is so lucky. And I never knew Alice’s real name. The police and the attorneys made it a point to keep ouridentities secret. So even if I had wanted to, I couldn’t look for her.”

Not that she had tried that hard to find Alice. “After the trial, I wanted to put everything having to do with those months behind me,” she said, “I wanted to forget.” Though, of course, she never could. But she had worked hard to build another reality, one in which those three months with Ledger were only a small part of a much bigger, fuller life. For the most part, she had succeeded.

“That’s certainly understandable,” Dalton said.

“I really am tired now,” she said. “I think I need a nap.”

“Then I’ll leave,” he said. He pulled out a phone. “Let me text you so you’ll have my number.”

“All right.” She rattled off her number and moments later, her phone pinged with a message.

“Call me anytime,” he said. “I don’t have a brown belt in jujitsu but I can act intimidating when I have to. And I’m a good listener.”

“Thanks.”

She walked with him to the door and locked it behind him, then watched him drive away. The warm feeling he had kindled in her lingered, comforting. She liked Dalton. She felt closer to him that she had anyone in years. But being with him felt dangerous. She had always been careful to not involve others in the ugly side of her life, yet here he was, ankle-deep and ready to wade in further.

After the lasttour every afternoon, Dalton and Carter had to wash the Jeeps and get them ready for the next day’s tours. After a brief lull at the beginning of September, business was picking up again as tourists signed on for drives through forests of golden aspen in the high country. Tuesday afternoon, Dalton did the work methodically, his mind on what always occupied himthese days: Roxanne. Was she really safe by herself, so far from town? Had William Ledger really been the man who ran her off the road? Where was he now?

A blast of cold water hit him in the back and he jolted upright. He whirled and scowled at Carter, who held the hose, water directed off to the side now. “Watch what you’re doing!” Dalton said.

“You’re the one who’s in la-la land today,” Carter answered. “You’re a thousand miles away. I asked you four times to hand me the window cleaner and you completely ignored me.”

Dalton shook his head and passed over the bottle of window cleaner. “I was just thinking, sorry.”

“Are you thinking up a new computer program?” Carter squirted fluid on the Jeep’s windshield, then attacked it with a cloth. “Imagining how you’ll spend your riches?”

Dalton began wiping down his Jeep with a chamois. “Not that.”

Carter stopped and stared, eyes wide in an exaggerated imitation of shock. “Don’t tell me it’s a woman!” He grinned. “Has the boy genius been struck dumb by Cupid’s arrow?”

“What are you blathering on about?” Dalton turned away.

“I’m just saying it’s about time. And I can relate.”

Dalton thought of Carter’s fiancée, teacher Mira Veronica. It was true that during the early days of their relationship, most of Carter’s attention had been focused on her. Maybe his brother did understand, at least a little.

“I met someone I’m interested in, but she’s not really ready for a relationship,” Dalton said.

“Is she on the rebound?” Carter asked. “Sick? Tell me she’s not married.”

“She isn’t any of those things.”

“Then what is it?”

She may be being pursued by her former kidnapper.But that wasn’t Dalton’s story to share. “It’s complicated and I don’t want to talk about it.”

Carter was going to do his best to wheedle the truth out of him. Dalton knew his twin. But just as his brother had straightened and started toward him, both their phones alarmed with the tone reserved for search and rescue. Simultaneously, they dug phones from pockets and checked the screens.

“Looks like a hiker with a sprained ankle in a canyon off County Road 3,” Carter said.

“Roxanne lives off County Road 3,” Dalton said.