Special Forces Father - By Mallory Kane Page 0,34

need you to listen...to...me! Do you understand?”

“Yes, I understand.”

“Now.” The man took a long breath and let it out. “The trial date has been moved up—”

“What?” Kate vaulted to her feet. “When? When did that happen? Nobody told me anything about—”

“Shut! Up!”

Travis stood beside her, but she waved him off. “I’m okay,” she mouthed silently. She wasn’t okay, not by a long shot. But the more she interrupted, the more she protested, the longer it would be before she could speak to Max. And if she made the man angry enough, he might hang up without letting her talk to her little boy at all.

“The trial date has been moved up to Monday,” he said. “That’s only five days from now. Are you ready?”

Five days from now. That meant if she did everything that this awful man wanted her to, she’d be able to get her son back five days sooner than she’d thought. “No,” she said, as calmly and professionally as she could. “I’m not ready yet. I haven’t finished going through the case file. And I need to talk to Senator Stamps and the witnesses.”

“Come on, Doc. How hard is it to stipulate that he was temporarily insane when he shot that guy? You don’t need to read all the witness statements and reports. You sure don’t have to talk to them.”

Kate frowned at Travis. The man sounded like an attorney. Or maybe someone in law enforcement. He was comfortable with the correct terminology.

“I like to have all the facts before I present my findings,” she said.

“That’s admirable. But really, is there any question about what your findings are going to be in this case? After all, if you testify that Stamps was sane, then we no longer have an agreement, right?”

A stabbing pain caught Kate in the pit of her stomach. She gasped. “Please,” she said pitifully, then caught herself. She took a long breath. “If I don’t show that I’ve evaluated Senator Stamps and the situation thoroughly, I could be reversed on appeal.”

The man laughed. “I know that, Doc. But I don’t give a crap about appeals. You swing the temporary-insanity plea and I’m outta here. Look. I don’t have a dog in this fight. I’m doing what I was hired to do. Now I’m suggesting you do what I’ve told you. And you’re going to have to do it faster, because the trial date’s been moved up. What you’re going to do hasn’t changed, now, has it?”

“No,” she said. “It hasn’t changed.”

“Now I’ll call you again, and when I do, your phone better not be in someone else’s hands. Is that clear?”

“Yes,” she said, her breath hitching with rising panic. Don’t hang up, she begged silently. “Yes, it’s clear.” Dear God, she wanted to ask him, to beg him, to let her speak to Max. But he’d already warned her once. She held her breath, waiting to see what he was going to do.

She heard a soft scraping sound, as if he’d put a finger over the speaker, then nothing but silence. It went on for so long that she looked at the display, afraid that he’d hung up. But just as she put the phone back to her ear, she heard a woman’s voice, far away, as if she were in another room.

“Settle down. I’m coming,” the woman said, then, “Come on, honey.”

Max. Kate’s heart squeezed so tightly in her chest that she thought she might pass out. She felt Travis’s hands on her upper arms. He guided her back to the couch and she sat. She switched the phone to her left hand. The right one was cramping from holding it so tightly.

“Max?” she breathed.

“Okay,” she heard the man say, holding the phone away from his mouth. “Just a couple seconds. Got it?”

“Yeah, yeah,” the woman said irritably. “Honey,” she said tenderly, “say hi to Mama, okay?”

“Mommy?”

The small, anxious voice took Kate’s breath away. She put her hand over her mouth to stop the sobs that escaped her throat. “Ma-ax?” she stammered, then held the phone against her chest, trying to muffle the speaker so her baby wouldn’t hear her cry.

“Mah-mee?” Max’s whine, muffled by her blouse, ripped through her like a razor blade.

“Oh—” she wailed, every inch of her body aching with the pain of being separated from her child. She squeezed her eyes shut. Travis took her right hand in his and held it to his chest. She could feel his heart beating through his skin, through his ribs, through the