Losing Control - By Robyn Grady Page 0,60

pass famous in Aussie Rules Football. Tate was doing well, stepping into the action, getting his punching fist almost right. They'd been out an hour. Given Tate wasn't nearly tired yet, Cole was thinking about teaching him a torpedo punt kick when his cell phone buzzed.

"This might be your dad," he called out to Tate, who was perhaps twenty yards away. But when Cole answered without checking the ID, the voice on the other end wasn't the one he'd expected.

"Liam Finlay here."

Cole's every sense zoomed in to concentrate fully on this conversation. "What's up?"

"My lawyers are with me. There's another conflict, page 103, item 24."

Cole's mind flew back, trying to identify the passage.

Liam went on to inform him that now the Players Association weren't happy with their cut, given the exclusivity clause relating to live games televised. Cole replied they'd been through this just last week. He'd already bumped his offer up. Liam said the dotted line was still blank. Now was the time to iron these creases out. Cole said he didn't want to increase his offer. He didn't believe anyone would. Liam said that was up to him. He could give him an answer now or come to the headquarters and talk it through.

A red soccer ball shot up and hit Cole in the shin, on the same leg that bore that old cubby house scar. In that instant, Cole remembered his brothers, Dex, Wynn, Tate -

His head snapped up. He looked left, right. Then the panic, cold and creeping, began to seep into his bones.

Cole spun a three-sixty. Looked down low. Up high. Behind benches and trees. His world shrank then funneled out fast. That tiny five-year-old was nowhere to be seen.

He held his stomach as it pitched and pitched again. He didn't often pray but now he looked to heaven and, as the strength seemed to drain from his body and his brain began to tingle, he vowed he would give anything - everything - if he was only overreacting and Tate would magically reappear.

On the ground, a toss away, Cole spotted his cell. His scattered thoughts pieced together. If Tate was indeed missing - and given recent history, that idea couldn't be discounted - there was a logical step he must take. Sending another swift glance around, he scooped up the phone where he'd dropped it then frowned at the noise coming out. Finlay was still bleating on the other end?

Cole didn't think twice.

He ended that call.

While he strode around, asking the ice-cream vendor then a man walking his dog if they'd seen a little boy in a bright red tee, he dialed the three-digit number to connect to emergency services. As he spoke to the representative on the other end of the line, sickening panic crushed in again, but this time it was peppered with resolve. If Tate was lost, if he'd been taken, he would find his brother. If he had to ask every person in this park, cut down every tree, check on each -

Cole's tracking gaze stopped and he froze.

In the parking lot some fifty yards away, a big black van was reversing out. The windows tinted an impenetrable shade, Cole couldn't make out the plates but, through the windshield, he saw the shaggy-haired driver wore dark glasses that covered half his face. His father had said one of the men who'd tried to abduct Tate had shaggy hair, big black glasses. Cole also knew those men had driven a black van.

Cole belted off. He heard Tate's name called out. Twice. Three times. Limbs pumping, he realized that voice was his own.

He slammed into the van before it could leave, thumped on the sliding door and didn't stop. The driver, an angry weedy man, soon appeared.

"What the hell you doing to my vehicle?"

Cole grabbed him by the scruff of his shirt and pulled him up so he could talk to his weasel face. "Open that door. Do it now. Now!"

If he was right, if Tate was in there, he'd deal with weasel-man after his brother was out in the light again. But when he flung aside the door, peered inside, the space was empty other than an old washing machine dumped in one corner.

Cole stormed over, his footfalls echoing through the metal cage. He flung open the lid of the machine and then -

His heart dropped to the ground. He staggered back.

Empty.

Cole wandered out into the sunshine feeling sucker punched. He was the son who always had things under control. He