SEAL's RESOLVE - Rebecca Deel Page 0,93

cost to himself.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Rafe scanned Angie Hale’s medical file. When Angie had given birth to Roderick at 16 years of age, Travis Cain had been 25. Only one reason why Angie had kept Cain’s identity a secret when she was in high school. Angie thought she was in love with him and had protected him from prosecution for statutory rape.

Sick at heart over the whole situation, he returned to the kitchen. Kristi sat at the table with tears trickling down her face. Jackson had his arm from her shoulders, offering silent comfort. “Kristi?” Rafe started to go to her, but Eli waved him toward Jon. Oh, man. The security feed. What had Kristi seen?

“Show me,” he murmured to his teammate. On Jon’s computer, Rafe watched as Alan Stewart stumbled from an elevator. Blood streamed from a wound on his scalp, streaking down one side of his face. At his side walked a man in a Ward Security uniform with a baseball cap pulled low on his forehead. The guard’s arm was around Stewart’s shoulders as though assisting him to his car. The position of his other hand, though, indicated the guard had a pistol shoved against the executive’s side.

Rafe watched until the two men moved out of camera range. The guard’s baseball cap prevented a positive identification. “Do other cameras show the guard’s face?” He suspected the kidnapper was Hale, but Rafe wanted proof.

“Elevator camera gave me this.” Jon’s fingers danced across the keys and brought up more camera footage.

On screen, Stewart practically fell into the elevator. He spun and tried to shove the guard from the car as the doors started to close. The guard punched Stewart in the face. The executive hit the elevator wall and slid to the floor as his attacker turned with a smirk and jabbed a button on the wall panel.

Rafe scowled. “Run it again in slow motion.”

“This is what you’re looking for,” Jon murmured. He clicked the mouse, and a still shot of the guard’s face filled the screen.

The picture was fuzzy. Why was the picture out of focus? “Can you clean that up?”

A minute later, the man’s image was clear. “Hello, Roderick Hale,” Rafe said. “Is he the only one involved?”

“Nope. Look at this.” Jon opened another file.

The screen shifted to show the lobby of Stewart Group headquarters. Mike Fleming stood at the front desk with Richard. Behind the guard, a light flashed on one of the screens Richard should have been watching. When Richard grabbed his cell phone to answer a call, Fleming slipped behind the desk and did something at the keyboard to stop the flashing and typed a few more commands. Fleming was involved with the kidnapping. He must have tinkered with the security system so it showed that Stewart left the building at 7:00. The time stamp on the footage indicated that Hale kidnapped Stewart shortly after the workday ended.

Jon glanced at him. “Fleming has computer skills.”

“How do you know?”

“I had to piece together the footage we needed. Someone did a good job of corrupting the footage, then deleting it from the server.”

“Fleming. You found the footage and cleaned it up,” Rafe said, indicating the frozen screen shot on Jon’s computer.

“Fleming’s good. I’m better.”

Eli placed a box of tissues in front of Kristi and patted her shoulder.

“Thanks,” she said, her voice thick.

Time was running out before Hale or Fleming called her with a ransom demand. Both men wanted easy money at the very least. With Stewart’s financial accounts locked, the men would turn to Kristi. Didn’t take a genius to know she’d pay any amount of money to free her father.

Trevor Cain was Hale’s biological father. Did the security guard also want revenge for a perceived injustice? Rafe frowned. If Hale had contacted his father, Cain likely gave his son a different version of events than was in the record. Hale might feel that the abuse charges were trumped up and the 30-year prison sentence unfair.

He looked at Eli. “Call Adams. Tell him what’s going on. If he can call Hale or Fleming and keep him on the phone long enough, we can track the signal. Ask if Adams is willing to talk to me.”

“While I do that, you need to talk to Kristi.”

Her eyes widened. “Why? What’s wrong?” She grimaced. “Besides the obvious.”

Eli was right. Rafe couldn’t delay the conversation any longer. “Come outside with me for a few minutes.” Rafe led her to the outdoor couch on the deck.

Sitting beside Kristi, he gathered her against his