Force of the Falcon

by Rita Herron

  And with the feeling that he didn’t care if she reconciled with Stan if he asked.

  She swiped at the tears streaking her cheeks, struggling over what to do. She couldn’t beg Brack to love her, but she couldn’t go back to Stan even if he did want a reconciliation.

  And he might not. Maybe he’d phoned for another reason. Maybe he simply wanted to forge a relationship with his daughter. She couldn’t deny him or Katie that.

  The phone on the nightstand trilled again, and she raced to it and snatched it up. Her mother’s number. “Mom?”

  “Sonya…” Her mother’s voice broke, a sob escaping. “Honey, it’s Katie…she’s gone!”

  “What?” Cold terror seized Sonya, and she squeezed the phone between clenched fingers. “What do you mean, gone?”

  “It was dark, and he came in the window and attacked me,” she sobbed. “He knocked me out and took Katie! Oh, baby, I called the police and they’re on their way now!”

  Sonya slid down onto the bed, trembling from the inside out. “Mom, did you see the person who attacked you?”

  “No…I’m so sorry, honey, Oh, God, Katie…she’s out there with him. No telling what he might do….”

  Her mother sounded hysterical. “Mom, are you alone? Did you call someone?”

  “The EMT just arrived.”

  “Good, have them check you out. Then phone a friend to stay with you. I don’t want you to be alone.”

  “But the police—”

  “Give them my number. I’m going to hang up, Mom. This guy wants me. He probably took Katie to lure me to him.”

  At least that was what she hoped.

  She disconnected the call, then threw off her robe and dragged on clothes. Jeans. A sweater. Socks. Her heart raced. Where were her boots?

  And where was Brack?

  The phone trilled a second later, and she knew who it would be before she answered. She snatched the phone. “Hello.”

  “I have your daughter.”

  “Listen to me, you hurt one hair on her head, I’ll rip out your throat.”

  A nasty chuckle rumbled over the line, then a wheezed-out breath. Next came his muffled voice. “You’re the one who should listen. If you want to see your daughter again, then you’ll do as I say.”

  “Anything,” Sonya whispered. Terrified and desperate, she dropped her head into her hands.

  “You have to come alone. You tell anyone, you bring that Falcon man, and you’ll never see your little girl again.”

  Tears poured down her face, nearly choking her, but she gulped them back and summoned her courage.

  Katie needed her, and she couldn’t let her down.

  Time for her to put an end to this terror and the deaths.

  “Just tell me where to meet you, and I’ll be there alone.” She took a deep breath and pushed to her feet, then reached inside the nightstand and grabbed Brack’s gun. “If you release Katie and she’s safe, I’m all yours.”

  A BAD PREMONITION hit Brack in the gut, and he turned and saw a falcon soaring over the ridge near Sonya’s house. Two more hawks took flight, gliding toward Falcon Ridge.

  A good three miles away from the house now, he broke into a jog. He had to get back. Check on Sonya. Apologize for leaving her bed like a jealous lover.

  What the hell had he been thinking? He’d left Sonya alone and a killer was out here. Although Falcon Ridge’s security was top-notch, any security could be breached.

  Dammit. He’d let his emotions get the better of him and hadn’t been thinking rationally. No, he’d been thinking about Sonya’s touch on his body and the memory of their lovemaking on his skin, and he hadn’t been able to stand the fact that her ex had called while he’d been in her bed. He’d wanted her to tell Silverstein that she’d replaced him.

  But why would she? She’d whispered her love in the dark, yet he’d said nothing in response. Made no promises.

  No, he’d been terrified, so he’d turned sullen and had left her without a word. Except to first mutter that she didn’t owe him anything since they’d just slept together. As if their coupling had just been raw sex.

  But their night together hadn’t been simple sex, and he’d known it.

  The emotional connection had scared the hell out of him.

  He increased his pace, his heart racing as he noticed another falcon taking flight over the drive. The wind burned his cheeks and whistled through the low branches of the trees. A storm cloud rolled above, obliterating any remnant of the sun trying to peek through. He ran faster, his heart roaring in his ears as he broke through the clearing. Sonya’s car was not in the drive.

  Where was she? Had he hurt her so badly she’d gone back to Silverstein?

  He raced inside to see if she’d left a note. The downstairs was empty. No coffee brewing on the counter. Just the dead embers of the cozy fire they’d built the night before. And the imprint of her body on the rug where they’d made love. Where’d she’d given herself to him.

  And whispered her love.

  He sprinted up the steps, hoping she’d left a note in the bedroom. But there was nothing. Her suitcase looked as if she’d torn things from it in a hurry. Her cell phone was gone.

  He glanced at the caller ID log on his phone, and checked it for recent calls. An unknown.

  Then Sonya’s mother. Maybe Sonya had decided to spend a few days with her mom and Katie after all. God, he hoped that was where she’d gone.

  He grabbed the phone and punched in her number.

  “Detective Cyrus Gladstone, Denver Police Department.”

  Brack’s gut knotted, and he identified himself. “What’s going on?”

  “Mrs. Simpson’s granddaughter has been kidnapped,” the officer said.

  Brack’s blood ran cold. The unknown call. It was from the lunatic who’d taken Katie. The one obsessed with Sonya.

  He jerked the drawer to the nightstand open to get his gun. He had to find her. But his weapon was gone.

  Sonya must have taken it. And she’d left to meet this madman and rescue her daughter, alone.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Tears nearly blinded Sonya as she drove toward Vulture’s Point. Images of her daughter played through her head, spurring her forward. Katie when she was just a tiny baby. So sweet, so small, so fragile. Katie growing inch by inch, laughing when she played peekaboo. Katie learning to crawl. Her development had been delayed, but it had been a magical day when she’d pushed her tiny body up on all fours and crawled across the room.

  Katie’s first birthday. She’d smashed her fingers in the cake and icing and smeared it on her chin. Sonya had laughed and taken a dozen photographs.

  She gulped back a sob, battling the wind as its force banged the car and tried to drive it off the road. She hit an icy patch and slowed, her breath tightening in her chest as the mountain ridge dropped off to the side. Go over it and she’d never rescue her daughter.

  More snippets of Katie flashed back. Katie speaking her first word. Mama. Katie learning to eat solid food, hating peas, loving homemade applesauce. Katie learning to color. The two of them decorating sugar cookies for Christmas. Katie’s first ornament, the baby doll she’d loved so much when she was two, Katie giggling as Snowball licked her cheek. The tea party they had planned to have…all the things that they hadn’t yet done…

  On the heels of her memories, an image of the mangled dead women’s bodies materialized, and she fought the panic. She needed her composure to confront the maniac who had her daughter, had to remain calm for Katie.

  The clouds opened up and began dumping more snow, making the visibility a foggy mess. She blinked and turned on the defroster, then downshifted, taking the curves slowly, winding around the mountain as she climbed toward the ridge. Finally, she spotted the point where she was supposed to meet the caller.

  She shoved Brack’s gun in the pocket of her coat, then careened over the bumpy road and parked at the curve overlooking the mountain. He’d told her there was an abandoned mine shaft a
bout seventy feet away, and she hit the trail toward it in a dead run, anxious to make sure Katie was still alive.

  Then she’d shoot the lunatic who’d kidnapped Katie and take her daughter home. Maybe they’d leave Tin City, go someplace new. Start over.

  Someplace where she could forget Brack. Forget that she’d confessed her love and he hadn’t reciprocated. Forget that this violence had tainted her little girl’s life.

  Her feet skidded on the ice, and she grabbed a tree limb to maintain her balance, then jogged down the hilly embankment. Her pulse hammered when she spotted the entrance to the mine shaft. She tightened her fingers around the gun and summoned her courage, then descended the last twenty feet with more caution.

  She scanned the woods surrounding the mine shaft for signs of Katie’s kidnapper. Katie had to be alive. She had to be. If she wasn’t, Sonya would die herself.

  The wind whistled shrilly; the sound of a coyote howling boomeranged off the mountain. She bit back a sob and leaned her head into the entrance. “Katie?”

  Nothing.

  Panic clawed at her, but she tiptoed inside. The mine was so dark, she couldn’t see a foot in front of her. The stench of rotting vegetation, maybe a dead animal, assaulted her. She moved deeper into the shaft, heard the ping of water trickling down rock, of pebbles hitting stone, then spotted a small figure lying on the ground, curled and wrapped inside half a dozen blankets.

  Her daughter.

  She froze, for a moment afraid to move forward. “Katie?”

  But Katie didn’t respond, and Sonya hurled herself forward, then dropped to her knees beside her in pure panic.

  God, please, no. Katie had to be alive. She couldn’t lose her daughter….

  ANGUISH FILLED Brack. What if this maniac killed Katie and Sonya? He’d never forgive himself.

  He had to do something to find them, but he didn’t know the psycho’s identity yet.

  Rage tightening his throat, he forced himself to pick up the phone, to call Deke and explain the situation. While he and Deke talked, Brack retrieved an extra weapon from his office, stuffed it in his jacket pocket, then strapped on his ankle holster and slipped his small revolver into it. A knife went into a strap on the other ankle.

  “Meet me at Cohen’s office. We have to get all the suspects together and interrogate them.” That is, if they could be found.

  “I’ll pick up Viago,” Deke said.

  Brack hung up and phoned Cohen. For once, Cohen didn’t argue, but agreed to meet him at his office and to pick up Dr. Waverman on the way. “I’ll have my deputy find Tripp and bring him in.”

  “And I’ll find Dr. Priestly,” Brack said.

  He hung up, phoned the Denver police, explained his theories and asked them to pick up Stan Silverstein for questioning.

  One of the men had to be their guy. He couldn’t allow himself to consider the consequences if he was wrong.

  He jumped in his SUV and phoned Priestly, but the man’s answering service responded. “Tell him to call Brack Falcon as soon as possible. This is an emergency.” His tires screeched as he maneuvered the corner and barreled into the police station parking lot. He jumped out and ran inside, his pulse pounding.

  Cohen rubbed sweat from his neck as he escorted Dr. Waverman inside. “My deputy said that guy Tripp is not at the B and B. He’s looking through town now.”

  “What the hell’s going on?” Dr. Waverman bellowed. “You have no right to drag me out of the ER and down here—”

  “This maniac has Katie, and Sonya has gone after her,” Brack snapped.

  “Damn.” Waverman dropped into a chair beside the desk and ran a hand over his neck.

  Brack folded his hands around the edge of the desk and leaned forward. “If you know anything about this killer, speak up now, Waverman.”

  Waverman’s cheeks bulged with anger. “What makes you think I know something?”

  “You wanted Sonya for yourself. You didn’t hire someone to scare her into coming to you for comfort?”

  Waverman balled his right hand into a fist as if he were going to punch Brack, but Brack straightened to his full height in a dare.

  “That’s crazy. You’re wasting time even suggesting it.”

  Brack turned to Cohen. “Did you get anything back on the DNA or writing samples?”

  “I’ll call the lab now.”

  Brack paced the office, trying to think. If he knew the identity of the killer, he could figure out where he’d taken Sonya.

  Dammit. He knew neither.

  But the killer had to be someone in town, someone right under their noses. Who in the hell was he?

  “KATIE?” Sonya pressed a tentative hand to her daughter’s chest to make sure she was breathing. Her body ached as she waited. Katie was so still, pale, curled up and cold, but her chest slowly rose up and down. Thank God, Katie was alive!

  Relief surged through her, and she gasped out the breath she’d been holding.

  “Mommy?”

  “Yes, baby, I’m here. Everything’s going to be all right.”

  Behind her, the shuffle of footsteps crushed the dirt. She jerked around and stood, jamming her hand into her coat pocket. In the corner, hidden in the gray abyss of the shaft, a shadow lurched.

  “Stop hiding and face me,” she said through clenched teeth.

  He remained still, watching her, waiting, a silent stalker taking his time just to torture her.

  “Are you too much of a coward or a monster to show your face?” Her finger closed around the gun handle, and she slipped her finger into the trigger.

  A long, agonizing second passed. Her breathing rattled into the cold, dank air. His followed. A wheezing sound that grated on her already spent nerves.

  “You drugged my daughter, didn’t you, you bastard? What did you give her?”

  “Just some cough syrup to make her sleep.” He moved slowly toward her, his craggy shape like a monster in the dark. He wore a long cloak—no, maybe a cape—covered in feathers. And a mask shielded his face, a birdlike beak protruding as if he were a hawk.

  She shivered. He was deranged. Completely delusional. Probably psychotic or high on drugs.

  She slowly pulled her hand from her pocket and aimed the gun at him, although her hand was shaking. “You’re going to let us both leave here, or I’m going to shoot you.”

  Before she could pull the trigger, he suddenly pounced. She tried to fire off a round, and a shot pierced the mine shaft, echoing shrilly off the wall. A vile animal-like screech pierced the air, and he knocked the gun from her hand with his sharp talons, then threw her to the ground and kicked the weapon into the dirt away from her.

  She lunged for it, but he grabbed her arm and jerked her to her feet. He grabbed the gun, stabbed it against her back, then dragged her through the darkness the opposite way from the entrance. She screamed and beat at him, but he dug the talons into one arm, and she gulped back a sob as he cocked the gun and jerked her forward.

  “Shut up, or I’ll go back and kill the kid.”

  Pure panic seized Sonya. “We can’t leave her here, she’ll die in the cold!”

  “When we get away, I’ll let you call. But only if you stop fighting me.”

  Sonya went stone still. “How can I trust you? You’re a monster!”

  His hot breath fanned her cheek. A drop of blood surfaced where he’d sliced her skin. “You don’t. But fight me, and you both die.”

  AN HOUR LATER, Brack was frantic with worry. He couldn’t shake the terrifying images of the killer’s sadistic ways from his mind. Was Sonya hurt? Was little Katie all right?

  Were they still alive?

  Denial made him stiffen his spine. He couldn’t accept the fact that he might be too late to save them.

  Deke stalked in, half dragging Jameson Viago beside him.

  “Who the hell do you guys think you are?” Viago barked.

  “Listen to me, you little piece of scum,” Brack said as Deke shoved the guy into a wooden chair. “A wom
an and child are missing, possibly in the hands of the sicko who is copying your MO, and we need answers. Do you know where they are?”

  “No!” Viago cursed. “Like I told you, I write the Talon Terror, but I’m not him.”

  “The person who wrote that fan letter we confiscated is, though,” Cohen cut in.

  Brack jerked his head up.

  “I have the results of the DNA analysis and writing sample.” Cohen frowned. “It’s not Viago.”

  “I told you,” Viago snapped.

  “How about Tripp?” Brack asked.

  “No match. And no match with our vet.”

  Brack muttered a string of vile words. If not those men, then who the hell was he? And how would they find him in time to save Katie and Sonya?

  Dr. Waverman looked up from the files on the desk and gestured toward the letter. “This is the letter the killer wrote?”

  Brack nodded. “Why, do you recognize something about it?”

  “The way it reads…this guy sounds delusional.”

  “Tell me something we don’t know,” Brack muttered.

  “No, I mean delusional as in psychotic.” Waverman stood, ran his hands through his hair. “He might be on medication. Or perhaps he’s seen a doctor or recently been treated at a mental facility.” He strode across the room as if gaining momentum in his theory. “In fact, it seems like one of the paramedics mentioned a guy applying but being turned down for the EMT program because of his medical history.”

  Brack slapped the desk. “Let’s check it out, guys.”

  Waverman unpocketed his cell phone. “I’ll call the hospital, see what I can find.”

  Cohen rubbed at his forehead, and slumped down into his chair.

  “What is it, Cohen?” Brack asked.

  “I was just thinking about this kid a few years back.” He scratched his chin in thought. “His father turned up dead in the woods beyond that farmhouse Ms. Silverstein rented.”

  Brack stiffened. “Did you question the kid?”

  “I tried, but he disappeared. I’d already run him in for some petty crimes. An old lady who used to live around there accused him of killing her cat. And someone else reported their chickens being poisoned.”