Sawyer by Delores Fossen

innocence.
    “April thought Willy had kidnapped us so he could get revenge for her cheating on him with me,” Bennie went on. “She was afraid that once Willy got his hands on the ransom money, he’d kill us all. So we waited until the kidnappers were distracted with a phone call, and April cut me loose from the ropes, and we tried to escape.”
    That must have happened just minutes before Sawyer and she had arrived back at the Tumbleweed.
    “April cut you loose?” Sawyer questioned. “How? With what?”
    Part of her wanted to stop these questions and get Bennie to the hospital, but her brother no longer seemed in pain. In fact, he sat up even farther to answer Sawyer. “She had a knife hidden under her top. I didn’t ask her where she got it. I was just thankful to be out of those ropes.”
    “What happened next?” Sawyer asked when Bennie didn’t say anything else.
    “I’m not sure. It was raining, and when we were running, April and I got separated in the woods. I figured that she’d managed to get away, but one of the kidnappers found me. I think it’s the one you have in custody now. He put a gun to my head and dragged me back to where they’d left their vehicles. It wasn’t long before I heard a shot.”
    Yes, Cassidy had heard it, too, and she’d thought her brother had been killed.
    Bennie swallowed hard. “When the other kidnapper came back, April wasn’t with him, and he had blood on his clothes.”
    It was so hard for Cassidy to hear all of this. From the moment Bennie and she had been taken captive, she’d been terrified that someone would die.
    And it had happened.
    Still, there was something about all of this that didn’t make sense. “Why did the kidnappers have me take the baby to Sawyer for that photograph?” she asked.
    “I figured it was because Sawyer was the baby’s father, and they wanted to milk some money out of him, too. Maybe they planned to use the photo to show his boss or something. It wouldn’t have looked good for an FBI agent to have fathered a baby with a woman with a criminal record who was now dead. Murdered, at that.”
    No, it wouldn’t have looked good. But that meant the kidnappers must have truly believed that Sawyer was Emma’s father. Or else they simply wanted to make it look that way.
    Oh, mercy.
    Maybe the photo was meant to give Sawyer a motive for killing April.
    One glance at Sawyer, and she realized he’d already come to the same conclusion. Even if he wasn’t Emma’s father, it might look as if he’d murdered April when she tried to blackmail him with the child.
    But Sawyer wouldn’t have done that.
    Cassidy wanted to feel the same way about her brother. And she did, for the most part anyway. However, she still had that niggling feeling that there was something Bennie wasn’t telling her. Probably because Bennie had a history of keeping things from her and involving himself with the wrong people.
    Bennie’s attention shifted back to Willy. “Or maybe the kidnappings, the photo, all of this was just a way for you to get more revenge on another of April’s lovers.”
    “April and I weren’t lovers,” Sawyer snapped.
    “But he thought you were.” Bennie tipped his head to Willy. “And when it comes to April, Willy would do just about anything to get back at her. Including murder.”
    “If I’d wanted revenge,” Willy quickly answered, “you damn sure wouldn’t be here talking about it. You’d already be in the grave.”
    “Enough of this,” Sawyer growled, and he motioned for the medics to get moving. Cassidy tried to follow, but Sawyer stopped her. “The kidnapper could come after you at the hospital.”
    Cassidy shook her head. “But what about Bennie? The kidnapper could come after him, too.”
    “I’ll arrange for some security,” Grayson said, taking out his phone. He made the call as Cassidy watched the ambulance drive away.
    The moment that Grayson was finished with his call, he took Willy by the arm. “Come on. I