Special Forces Father - By Mallory Kane Page 0,48
and the North Shore covered.”
“What about the locals?”
“So far we don’t know which local police department we’ll be dealing with. We’ll bring them in, but obviously it’ll be at the last second.”
“They’re not going to be happy,” Travis said.
Dawson nodded grimly. “No kidding. And once they know about the kidnapping—”
“It becomes their case and we have no more control.”
“Exactly.”
Travis sighed. “Kate’s going to hate me even more before this is all over.”
“That’ll be better than her being destroyed by grief, if she can’t save her child.”
* * *
TRAVIS WAS AT Kate’s house by eight o’clock the next morning. He was in Dawson’s van, dressed in the white coverall and ready to look busy and preoccupied as he studied his clipboard. When he turned onto her street, he saw the dark green sedan that belonged to the kidnapper.
His hands tightened on the steering wheel. There was nothing he wanted more than to go drag the man out of his car by his collar, toss him onto the ground and stand on his neck until he revealed Max’s location. But Travis knew expert interrogation techniques from both sides—as a Special Forces operative and as a hostage. He knew that there was a very real chance that the man wouldn’t give up the information no matter what. There was also the risk of alerting his partner by preventing a phone call or some other prearranged signal.
No. Travis had to work slowly and methodically to be sure the kidnapper wasn’t alerted. The last thing they needed was for Max to be harmed or whisked away to another location. So he casually drove past the kidnapper’s car and stopped a dozen houses away near the end of the block. Travis wasn’t skilled at tailing, so he was going to have to be extremely careful as he followed Kate and the kidnapper.
It was eight-thirty before Kate came out of the house and locked the door. She didn’t pay any attention to the car with the real estate sign on its side, parked a few houses away from hers. She backed out of her driveway and drove off. The kidnapper pulled away from the curb and followed her.
Travis followed the green sedan at a safe distance. He expected Kate to drive to her office, but she didn’t. Instead, she led them to a bank and parked in its parking lot. Again, the green sedan parked half a block away and Travis drove on past and turned at the next light. He pulled into a small parking lot and quickly changed the magnetic sign from City of New Orleans to Upton Upholstery—Uptown Style for 15 Years. He slipped out of the coverall, took off the Saints cap but left his sunglasses on, then made the block and parked at a fast-food restaurant across the street from the bank. He walked into the restaurant and bought a burger and a soft drink and went back to the van to eat while he waited.
He knew what Kate was doing and he wasn’t happy about it. He’d done what he could to keep her from having to deal directly with the kidnapper, at the very least trying to be there when he called.
He couldn’t believe she had enough money to come close to tempting the kidnapper away from Travis’s wealthy family. Even on a psychiatrist’s earnings, there was little chance she could scrape up a decent fraction of what the kidnapper might demand from the Delanceys. What frightened him the most, though, was that the kidnapper would decide that two birds were better than one and he’d kidnap Kate, as well.
And he knew that for all his training and all his carefully honed restraint, he would kill the man if he hurt Kate or their son.
Kate was inside the bank for over two hours. Travis had moved from the fast-food parking lot to a side street a couple blocks away from the kidnapper where he couldn’t see the bank’s parking lot. When the kidnapper pulled away from the curb, Travis followed him. As soon as they came to a straightaway, he saw Kate’s car in front of the green sedan. She went directly from the bank to a credit union, where she only spent about forty-five minutes. Then she went directly to her office, oblivious to the two vehicles following her.
Once she walked inside her office building, the kidnapper, who’d been idling at the curb half a block away, pulled into the street and headed away. Travis started the van and