Special Forces Father (14 page)

A clear and focused mind, sir.

Right now Travis wasn’t sure he could clear his mind, much less focus.
All he could see was Kate, terrified and possibly hurt, in the hands of the kidnapper. He should have been here. He should have never allowed her to kick him out. If he’d stood up to her and forced her to listen to Dawson’s plan, the kidnapper would never have found her alone.

He flexed his right fist and eyed the wall next to the front door, but he stopped himself. He was reminded of something
that Kate had told him, long before he joined the army’s Special Forces division.

You don’t have to give in to the anger, Travis. It is not stronger than you are.

He’d always given her hell for
psychoanalyzing
him back in college, but now he knew she was right. It had taken him a long time and a lot of specialized training to understand that anger was not only wasted energy, but wasted
effect, as well. He had to look at this situation rationally. Kate had been taken by the same kidnapper who held their son. He needed to talk to Dawson and get the rescue operation started. For a few moments, he carefully studied the living room, searching for clues to where the kidnapper had taken her, but found nothing. As he headed for the door, he spotted Max’s wooden toy car on the floor next
to the couch. Kate had told him the car was Max’s favorite. Travis picked it up and put it in his pocket.

* * *

F
ROM
THE
MOMENT
the man had shoved her into the backseat of his car, Kate had been too sleepy to pay attention to anything around her. It seemed to her they’d driven a long way. But she kept drifting in and out of sleep, so she couldn’t be sure. At one point she’d roused enough
to push herself to a sitting position so she could see out of the windows, but the vehicle’s backseat windows had been covered with dark plastic. She tried to look out the windshield, but the brightness of the sun forced her eyes closed and once she closed them, she drifted back to sleep.

Something different in the rhythm of her sleep woke her. She opened her eyes and remembered she was in
the kidnapper’s car. She had no sense of how much time had passed. “Where are we?” she asked, but the man didn’t pay any attention to her. He killed the engine, got out of the car and opened the driver’s side rear door.

“Let’s go,” he said impatiently.

“Where are we?” she repeated.

The man shook his head. “You’re mumbling, Doc. I got no idea what you said. Time to get you into the
house and into bed, so you can sleep off that sedative. Come on.” He wrapped his thick fingers around her upper arm and pulled.

“Ow,” she whined. “That hurts.” She leaned toward him, trying to take the pressure off her arm. Her eyes were blurry and so was her head. “I need water,” she said. “My mouth is so dry.”

“Come on, Doc. Try to walk and stop mumbling. I think it’s going to be about
four or five hours before you can speak clearly. Meanwhile, you need to sleep. They told me the damn pill would last a long time, but I didn’t know they meant
hours.
” He snaked an arm around her and half carried her toward an old, rusted and peeling mobile home, the kind that could be towed behind a truck.

Squinting, she saw that its far end had been backed into the thick woods and underbrush
that surrounded the small trailer park. Her hazy brain couldn’t figure out why. If it was supposed to be hidden, it wasn’t.

Once she was up the metal steps and at the door, he let go of her. She did her best to stay upright. But when she lifted her head, everything started spinning dizzily and she felt queasy and faint. He opened the door and shoved her inside.

Kate’s feet felt too heavy
to lift, but with the man behind her pushing, she managed to stay on her feet inside the house. But when he crowded in behind her, she stumbled and almost fell face-first into the orange carpeting.

“Get up!” he growled, then louder, “Shirley? Where are you? Get out here.”

Shirley peeked out from a room off the living room through a flimsy aluminum door. “Bent, hush!” she hissed. “Oh,”
she said when she saw Kate. “You must be Dr. Chalmet.”

Kate met her gaze. “Where’s my son?” she asked, concentrating on speaking clearly to her.

Shirley poked a thumb backward, in the direction of the tiny bedroom.

Kate tried to move in that direction, but the kidnapper, Bent—or whatever the woman had called him—kept a firm hold on her arm. “Let me go!” she cried, hearing the slurring
mumble of her words, almost incomprehensible to her own ears. She jerked her arm but it was no use. All she earned for her effort was the feeling that, if he wanted to, Bent could dislocate her shoulder with almost no effort.

The woman eyed the way Bent was holding her, then crossed her arms and stared at him. “Well?” she asked him.

“What?” he grunted.

“Are you going to let her
see the kid?”

At the woman’s words, Kate’s sluggish mind perked up and she almost cried out. But then a thought occurred to her. If she could keep them thinking that she was overwhelmingly drowsy for a while, maybe she could gain an advantage over them. She did her best to show as little reaction to the thought of being able to see Max, to hold him, as she could.

“Hell, I don’t know.”

“Come on, Bent. I’m getting sick of being a babysitter. After a while that whining can get to you. Let’s lock them in that back room and we can have the bedroom back.”

Kate tried to see the man’s face by barely opening her eyes to a slit, but when he turned toward her, she closed them again and just stood there, swaying slightly, as if in a stupor.

She felt and heard Bent shift.
“She might try to get out the window,” he whispered.

“I don’t think so,” Shirley said. “These bedroom windows are the tiniest windows on the planet, and they’re over six feet off the ground. She wouldn’t drop the kid that far and she’s not going to leave him.”

“There’s nothing but woods and bushes outside that window, too,” Bent agreed. “Hey, Doc,” he said to her.

She lifted her
chin slightly and opened her eyes as if each lid had a two-pound weight attached to it.

“Wanna see your kid?”

Don’t react too much,
she warned herself. Slowly she opened her eyes and squinted at him. “Max?” she whispered, letting all the longing that had been building in her for the past two days color her voice. “Max?” She opened her eyes wider. “Where is he?”

“I knew you could
wake up if you wanted to.” The man’s words were so flat and cool that Kate was afraid he was baiting her. That he wasn’t going to let her see her son after all.

“Please,” she begged.

“Go ahead,” he said to the woman. “Put them in that back bedroom. Make sure there’s nothing in there she could use as a weapon.”

“Way ahead of you, Bent darlin’,” the woman said sarcastically. “There’s
nothing in there but piles of clothes and a stack of empty boxes.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yeah. Check for yourself if you don’t believe me.”

“Okay. Get the kid and his stuff. Not the train. That’s metal. I don’t want her to have anything she could use on the window or on us.”

Kate waited, hardly daring to breathe as the woman went into the bedroom. Kate could hear her talking to Max.
As heavy as her limbs were from the sedative, Kate had to use all her willpower not to go tearing through the door to her son. She held it together until she heard the woman say, “Honey, want to see your mama?”

Then she heard Max’s shriek and she couldn’t be still another second. “Max!” she cried and started to run toward the door, but she’d forgotten the kidnapper’s hand on her arm. She
jerked against his grip.

Then Max appeared in the doorway, his big dark brown eyes wide as saucers, his mouth open in a huge, excited grin. “Mommy!” he shrieked. “Mahmm-eee!” He threw himself at her.

“Maxie,” Kate cried and held out her arms and she bent down. Max ran, nearly knocking her over.

“Mommy! You’re here!” He wrapped his little arms around her neck and pushed his face
into the curve at her neck and shoulder.

“Max,” she whispered, pushing her nose into his baby-fine, sweet-smelling hair. For a long time she just crouched there, holding him, reveling in the familiar, sweet smell of her little boy. Then she opened her eyes and met the woman’s gaze. She had kept him clean and fed and as happy as he could be without his mommy. Kate gave the woman a nod. Shirley
raised an eyebrow and sniffed. She looked away.

“Okay,” Bent said. “That’s enough. Get up.”

Kate closed her eyes again and pressed her nose against her baby’s hair.

* * *

W
HEN
T
RAVIS
GOT
to the warehouse, it was after eight o’clock. Ryker was there. He was dressed in a sport coat and tie and was looking at the laptop, where Travis had left Google Maps on the screen. When Ryker
saw Travis, he stood and held out his hand. Travis took it and they shook hands.

“Dawson filled me in—” Ryker started, but Travis broke in.

“He’s got Kate.”

“What?”

“The kidnapper’s got Kate,” Travis repeated. “He must have gotten there while I was here talking to Dawson. There was a smear of blood on a water glass, so he may have hit her.”

“What else did you see?”

“One of her shoes was lying in the middle of the living room. Her purse and phone were gone but today’s mail was sitting on the kitchen counter. So she’d been home a little while before he grabbed her.”

“Do you think she opened the door to him?” Ryker asked.

A terrible thought occurred to Travis. “He probably rang the bell. She’d have thought it was me.”

“So she opened the door without
question.”

Travis nodded bleakly. “I’m sure she did.”

“Okay, so we now have two to rescue.”

At that second the door to the warehouse opened and Dawson came in with a young woman dressed all in black. She had midnight-blue hair and about seven or eight gold studs running up and down her left ear, and one long feather earring in her right. She was also wearing black fingerless gloves
and black motorcycle boots. Both she and Dawson carried large, hard-sided metal cases.

“Hey, Ryke. Trav. This is Dusty.”

Travis was surprised. He probably shouldn’t have been, but he’d have sworn he’d heard Dawson refer to his computer wiz as
he.
He nodded to her. She met his gaze and he saw that she had pale gray eyes—they were almost colorless. She nodded back.

“Hi, Dusty,” Ryker
said. “We met a few years ago when I was helping Dawson on a case.”

She nodded at him, then walked over to the table and set the case down on it. She popped the locks and started unloading electronic equipment. Dawson set the other case beside hers and opened it. “I’ll leave you to set up the equipment,” he said. “We’re going to talk strategy.”

Dawson pulled a chair to the far side of
the long table. Ryker sat in a chair next to him and Travis sat next to Ryker. Just as Dawson opened his mouth, the door opened again and Lucas came in.

Travis had known he was coming, but he still felt self-conscious and embarrassed to face his older brother, after coming back to New Orleans without calling him or anyone else in his family.

“Trav, you son of a gun,” Lucas said, grinning.

Travis got up and went to him, holding out his hand. Lucas grabbed it then pulled Travis into a full-on bear hug. Travis gave it right back to him. “Hey, Lucas,” he said.

After about thirty seconds, Lucas pushed Travis to arm’s length and looked at him. “What the hell happened to you?” he asked. “Last time you were home, you were bulked up like a bodybuilder. You look like you’ve lost
twenty-five pounds.”

“Twenty,” Travis corrected him. “I had a rough tour.”

Lucas nodded and narrowed his gaze. “You were captured,” he said, not a question.

Travis waved a hand. “I’m fine,” he said. “Let’s get started figuring out how to rescue Kate and Max.”

“
Kate
and—?” Lucas said.

“Kate and Max?” Dawson spoke over Lucas. “What do you mean, Kate and Max?” he finished.

“When I got to Kate’s house this evening, she was gone. Her car was there but her purse and phone weren’t. One of her shoes was in the living room and a glass of water had a blood smear on it. She spent all morning and most of the afternoon at the bank and the credit union. I think she was gathering all the cash she could. I don’t know if she has savings or got loans, but she told me yesterday
that she was taking care of the kidnapper, so I’m sure he called her and she told him she had money.”

“Damn,” Dawson said on an exhalation.

Lucas used more colorful language.

“Yeah,” Travis said. “So what are we going to do?”

Ryker stood and smoothed his tie. “First of all, Travis, I think we need to talk about how we’re going to handle this. Reilly’s waiting with two off-duty
SWAT team members who volunteered to help us out. They’re at Airline Highway and U.S. 51, waiting for my signal to go in.”

Travis rounded on Ryker. “You’re sending a SWAT team in? What are you thinking? You can’t do that. My four-year-old son is in there. If half a dozen men storm in, dressed in full SWAT regalia, how do you think it will affect him?” he demanded. “I’ll go. You find the house.
I’ll get in and rescue them.”

Ryker was shaking his head before he finished. “No,” he said. “I can’t risk sending in a civilian—”

“A civilian?” Travis spat at the same time as Lucas muttered, “Uh-oh.”

“Ryke—” Dawson said in a warning voice.

Travis glared at his cousin. “Ryker, I’m an army Special Forces operative. I’ve had the most specialized training available. I know how
to make myself virtually invisible. I can walk through a tangled wood without breaking a twig. I can sneak up on a building set in the middle of an airport runway—no cover anywhere. I can pick any lock. I can break a man’s neck with one hand.”

“No disrespect, Travis, but you’re too close to the situation,” Ryker said in a calm but firm voice. “I can’t risk you going off half-cocked, or—”