Claiming Sarah (Ace Security #5)(71)

And the man wanted Sarah. For what purpose, Cole didn’t know.

But he couldn’t have her. Sarah was his. From the top of her head down to her pretty little toes, she was his.

Cole read down the piece of paper he was holding. It was the list of things Sarah had received from Owen. Mentally, he paired her list with the pictures she’d emailed to Ace Security.

Cookbook. Check.

Note. Check.

Coat. Check.

Peanut butter. Check.

Letter. Check.

Jewelry. Check.

Flowers, Candy, Lego set . . . check, check, and check.

The list went on and on. Some of the items were bizarre, like the bedpan with the can of chicken soup inside. But others simply seemed like a gift a boy would give to a girl, like the dried wildflowers, and the pine cone he said he’d found and thought was pretty so he’d wanted to give it to Sarah.

Cole was about to put the paper aside and concentrate on something else when a gift on the list caught his eye.

Dollhouse.

His brows furrowing, Cole stared at the word. He didn’t remember reading about this present before. Did they have a picture of the dollhouse? He didn’t think so, because someone probably would’ve said something about it.

Rummaging through the papers, he tried to find the folder that held all the pictures of the presents she’d gotten.

“What’s up?” Ryder asked, watching him riffling through the contents of the table.

“Where’s the folder with the pictures of everything he sent her?” Cole asked.

Ryder helped him look for a moment and pulled it out from under a stack of other papers. “Here.”

Cole took it and quickly flipped through the contents. Then he did it again, slower. Then he did it a third time, with the paper containing the list of gifts. He checked off each one, matching the pictures to the list in his hand.

When he was done, the only thing they didn’t have a picture of was the dollhouse.

“Where’s the dollhouse?” Cole asked Ryder.

“What dollhouse?”

He pointed to the list. “Right here. She wrote that she’d received a dollhouse. Where is it?”

Ryder sat up straighter. “No clue.”

“She didn’t take a picture of it?” Cole asked.

“I don’t know. I don’t remember seeing one. It might’ve gotten erased if she had.”

“She had to have done something with the dollhouse,” Cole said, feeling adrenaline course through him for the first time in days. “It’s not in her house or up in the attic. We would’ve found it.”

“Don’t get your hopes up,” Ryder said, but Cole could tell that even he was excited at the prospect of something new to look into.

A dollhouse wasn’t normally something a boy would give to a girl . . . unless it had some sort of meaning for him. They’d already puzzled out the significance behind most of the other gifts. Other than a few items that seemed to be picked as sweet gestures, like the flowers and jewelry, all the rest of the presents had one thing in common—they could all be used in some way for Sarah to take care of Owen.

The jar of peanut butter was perhaps something he liked to eat.

The cookbook so she could cook for him.

The coat so she would stay warm.

The bedpan was obvious, as was the chicken soup.

But what did a dollhouse have to do with anything?

Unless . . .

Could it really be that obvious? Had they overlooked the one thing that was practically screaming at them from the get-go?

Then something else occurred to him. “Ryder,” Cole said, “there was a tax payment on the bank statements somewhere, right?”

“Yeah, I think so. Why?”

“Was it for the house in Castle Rock?”

Ryder nodded.

“Are we sure?” Cole asked. “Because I’ve been thinking . . . what if Aubrey had a second house? I mean, if Owen was giving Sarah gifts that had deeper meanings, things that would help her take care of him, wouldn’t a house be a huge part of that? A dollhouse? Even if Aubrey paid off a second house, she would have been paying taxes on it. What if Owen’s taken Sarah there? There are hundreds of small cabins up in the mountains west of here. It’d be a great place to hide out.”

“Shit. You’re right. And the dollhouse has to mean something. I’ll take another look at the tax records and see if we can get more information on the property they were paid on. You can track down that dollhouse and see if there’s anything we can get from it.”

Cole nodded. He still didn’t exactly feel great about the search for Sarah, but he was at least feeling a little more hopeful now that they had something new to go on.

“Hang on, sweetheart. I’m coming,” he said softly as he got to work trying to figure out what Sarah had done with the dollhouse Owen had given her.



As the sun rose on the seventh day of her captivity, Sarah took a moment to pray that today was the day Cole would find her.

Surprisingly, living in the cabin with Owen hadn’t been all bad. Besides the fact she couldn’t walk because of her ankle and, of course, the boredom, Owen had been extremely attentive. He did what she asked of him without complaint, including cleaning all the dishes he’d dirtied in the first few days after he’d brought her here.