Hatfield and McCoy Read Online Free PDF

turned around. “She was wearing her navy sweater,” she said.
    Martin Nicholson gasped softly. “That’s right, Louisa, she was. She told me she was going to get her sweater while I was fixing the pipe out back. She ran in and put it on. I’d clear forgotten until now. We gave the other officers the wrong description of her clothing—”
    â€œIt doesn’t matter,” Julie said quickly. “What matters now is that we get her back.” She glanced at Robert. He was watching her carefully, his eyes narrowed. But he didn’t try to shut her up. He was unimpressed with her knowledge about the sweater, certainly, but he didn’t seem to mind her presence so much anymore.
    â€œThere were originally scuff marks in the dirt on the shoulder of the road?” McCoy asked quietly. He didn’t say it reproachfully, and he didn’t let on that valuable clues might have been gained had the dirt and grass and the shoulder not been so trampled. It was a foolish waste, but it wouldn’t do any good to tell the Nicholsons now.
    Louisa nodded and sniffed, then suddenly the tears she had been trying to hold back came streaming down her cheeks. “She fought him. My baby fought him. He must have hurt her, oh, how he must have hurt her—”
    â€œNo, no, Louisa!” Julie said quickly. She sat beside Louisa on the plush old comfortable couch, taking the woman into her arms. “No, please, trust me, believe in me. Yes, Tracy was frightened, and she did fight. She’s a wonderfully tough little girl, and the two of you have taught her to be so resourceful. But he hasn’t hurt her. He’s going to ask for a ransom. He wants money, not to hurt anyone. You wait and see. It’s all going to come out all right.”
    â€œThe phone line has been tapped?” McCoy said.
    Martin Nicholson nodded. “The police did that right away. Petty told us there would be a man listening in every time our phone rings and that if a ransom demand came, they’d try to trace the line immediately.”
    â€œThat’s good. That’s real good,” McCoy said. “Well, I think we’d better get started on what we have.”
    â€œOfficer Smith is still out searching the woods around the house with some volunteers,” Martin Nicholson said.
    â€œFine,” McCoy said. “Have you got a picture of Tracy for me?” he asked.
    Louisa leaped to her feet and hurried out of the room. She returned quickly with an eight-by-ten photograph in a bronze frame, handing it to McCoy.
    â€œMay I keep this for now?” he asked.
    â€œOf course.”
    â€œStand by your phone,” McCoy said, shaking Louisa’s hand, then her husband’s. “We’ll do everything in our power.”
    He started out. Julie lingered, shaking Martin’s hand, too, and impulsively giving Louisa a hug. “We’ll find her,” she promised. Hope sprang into Louisa Nicholson’s big brown eyes. Hope, and belief. Julie could have kicked herself. She’d had no right to make such a promise. Things could go wrong. Things did go wrong. Petty was convinced that the kidnapper was the same one who had taken the two young women. And one of them had been okay …
    And one was still missing.
    She’d had no right! No right to give that woman so much hope for her child. A beautiful little child with red hair and hazel eyes and those few adorable little freckles over her nose.
    â€œMiss Hatfield!”
    It was McCoy. He was at the door, waiting for her.
    She offered Louisa a rueful smile. “Now I know why the feud began!” she whispered softly. She was rewarded with another half smile before she and McCoy left.
    McCoy waited until they started down the walk before muttering darkly, “I wish to hell the ground hadn’t been trampled to mush! We could have learned if she really was grabbed—”
    â€œShe was. Right here,” Julie