Greyson (The K9 Files) - Dale Mayer Page 0,33

backyard, and, all of a sudden, Kona’s ears perked up, and she growled, pulling hard on the rope and dragging him to the rear veranda. All the commands that he gave her went ignored. She was on a mission, and he could do nothing but try to stay close to her. She raced up to the door and barked at the glass. He quickly opened the glass door to see a very startled Jessica looking at him in surprise.

“Something is wrong,” he snapped. “Have you checked on Danny?” She gave him a startled look and bolted up the stairs. Greyson and Kona were right behind her. As she went into the bedroom, she started screaming, and he knew. He let Kona’s rope go, and she jumped onto Danny’s bed and barked.

Searching, Kona went racing back downstairs and clawed at door to the garage. Greyson picked up her lead, opened the door, and went in. By now the garage door had been opened with the remote, and her car was gone. He stood at the empty driveway and stared. Kona was at the door, sniffing back and forth, looking hard, but she had lost the trail at the car. Greyson turned to see Jessica shaking and screaming in a muffled tone.

“What’s your license plate?” he snapped out.

She shook her head.

He reached over, grabbed her shoulders, and gave her a hard shake. “This isn’t the time to break down,” he said, “Danny can’t be very far away. What’s the license plate?”

She stammered it out, and he quickly phoned Badger and explained. He gave him the license plate number and then called the cops. With that done, he said, “I’ll go get my vehicle, and I’m taking the dog with me.”

“I’m coming with you,” she said.

“You get ready. I’ll get my truck and meet you out front in two minutes,” he said.

He headed out the back door with Kona at his side. They raced through the backyard and down around the corner where the alley was. He got into his grandfather’s small truck and put Kona in the jumper seat of the extended cab. He pulled out through the alleyway and headed up the block. When he came around to the front of her house, she stood there waiting impatiently. He unlocked the door, and she quickly pulled it open and hopped in.

“Nobody has called me yet on his direction,” he said. He looked at Kona and said, “Kona, which way? Left or right?” It was almost as if the dog understood because, when he would go left, she barked terribly; so he turned right instead, and the dog sat and watched.

“Does she really know?” Jessica asked, tears silently running down her face, her fingers clenched together tightly, knuckles quite white.

“She knows, but she can’t necessarily confer what she knows,” he said. “Tell me about your car.”

“It’s just a Pontiac sedan,” she said.

“Do you keep the keys in it?”

“No,” she said. “But they’re hanging on a hook just inside the kitchen door.”

“So, it wouldn’t have taken much time for him to grab the keys and get out.”

“No,” she said, crying. “Dear God, he’s got Danny.”

“We’ll find him,” he said. Just then his phone rang, and he put it on Speaker. “Badger?”

“Yes, we’re running satellite right now,” he said.

“I don’t suppose you have anything from like fifteen to twenty minutes ago, do you?”

“We’re running traffic cams. At the moment I don’t have anything visual. I wanted to confirm that a car seat is in the vehicle, right?”

He turned to look at her, and she nodded.

“That doesn’t mean the kidnapper put the child in the seat though,” Greyson reminded him.

“No, but it’s another identifying mark for the rear window view,” Badger said. “I’ll call you back in a few minutes.”

Greyson kept driving forward, trying to reconstruct the block in his mind to figure out where it ended. He thought a cul-de-sac was up ahead. “Is there another way out of this block?”

“If you know the area, yes,” she said, sniffling, her crying down to a silent stream down her face. “This alleyway connects to another street.”

He quickly followed her instructions and came out on a different street. “And, if he’d been casing the area,” Greyson said, “he would have known.”

“But he should have had his own wheels, right?”

“But that would make him highly visible,” he said. “Besides, the cops may have taken it away already.”

“So mine was the next-best bet,” she said bitterly. “God, I checked on Danny so many times.”

“You couldn’t have known,” he