Special Forces Father

by Mallory Kane

  “What is this?” she demanded, studying the small tablet the kidnapper showed her. She couldn’t identify it.

  “You don’t know? It’s a sedative. A very fast-acting one. About five or so minutes after you take it, you’ll start feeling really drowsy. You should just go with it. You’re not going to get to find out where we’re going, anyhow. But if you swallow the pill, you can ride in the backseat. If you won’t, I’m going to put you in the trunk. Do you understand?”

  For a brief instant she considered refusing. He’d have to force her out to the car. She could fight and maybe attract attention from the neighbors. Maybe one of them would call the police. But as soon as that thought entered her head, she rejected it. She didn’t dare do anything that might put Max in danger. She looked at the tablet in his hand. “I don’t want to be drowsy when I see my son,” she said. “Can’t you just blindfold me?”

  He shook his head. “No way. I can’t risk someone seeing you with the blindfold on. Now take it or I’ll put you in the trunk.”

  “No, you won’t. Somebody might see that, too.”

  His face flushed. “Then I’ll shove the pill down your throat. Nobody’ll see that, will they?”

  She shook her head. She picked up her glass and ran some water into it from the tap. She held out her hand and the kidnapper gave her the tablet. She swallowed the tablet.

  “Okay,” she said. “I swallowed it.”

  He grabbed her by the back of the neck. “Open up and let me see.”

  She opened her mouth. He stuck a beefy finger in and swept between her cheeks and gums, the roof of her mouth and under her tongue.

  Kate shuddered and did her best not to gag. She didn’t quite succeed.

  “What?” he demanded, squeezing her neck as he grabbed her jaw in his other hand. He leaned in so close that his face was only about two inches from hers. She swallowed audibly. “You too fancy for the likes of me? You don’t like my taste?”

  She closed her eyes.

  “Open your damn eyes and taste this,” he grunted, then put his mouth over hers and kissed her with brutal force. He drew back and grinned at her. “What do you think about that?”

  She felt dizzy and her eyes were getting heavy, but she managed to spit at him.

  He jerked her backward by her neck, slapped her with his open hand. Then he fastened the handcuffs around her right hand again.

  Tears sprang to her eyes.

  “Watch out or I might have to really hurt you. Now let’s go get in my car. And don’t attract any attention. I don’t want to shoot anybody and I know you don’t want me to.”

  Despite her fuzzy head and heavy eyes, Kate felt panic gushing up from her throat like an active volcano. She didn’t think the kidnapper would shoot anybody in the middle of a quiet neighborhood in daylight, but she couldn’t take the chance. She clenched her jaw and let him lead her out to his car. He kept her body close to his to hide the handcuffs from view.

  He pushed her into the backseat just about the time the fuzziness covered her brain and her legs decided to give way. He locked the doors with the electronic key, then got into the driver’s seat and pressed a couple buttons on the console. “Gotta love child-safety locks.” He looked at her in the rearview mirror. “You have a nice nap, now. By the time you wake up, we’ll be there.”

  “I’ll get to see Max?”

  “If you’re good, Doc. If you’re good.”

  * * *

  TRAVIS GOT TO Kate’s house a few minutes after seven. When he pulled into the driveway behind her car, he noticed that all the lights were on, which seemed odd. Kate never left a room without turning off the light—never.

  He went up to the front door and knocked. He didn’t want to use his key and take the chance of startling her, since she wasn’t expecting him. But when she didn’t answer after a second knock, he unlocked the door and went inside. Immediately, he knew something was wrong. Her left shoe was on the floor in the living room. He didn’t see her purse anywhere, but a glass sat on the kitchen counter. By itself, the glass wasn’t a cause for worry, but he saw something streaked on it. He walked over and looked closely at it.

  Burning fear ignited at the base of his spine and coursed upward to his scalp. Travis had no doubt what had happened. While he’d been talking to Dawson, the kidnapper had come here and taken Kate. He clenched his fists and closed his eyes. Focus, he told himself. Anger didn’t accomplish anything. He could hear his sergeant’s yell.

  Soldiers! Listen up. What’s your best weapon? These? He’d held up a rifle and a grenade.

  No, sir! the recruits cried.

  These? He held up his fists.

  No, sir! they cried again.

  Then tell me! he bellowed.

  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.

  * * *

  FROM 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.

  * * *

  WHEN TRAVIS 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, grinn
ing.

  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.”