Special Forces Father - By Mallory Kane Page 0,50

for Max.

“Preferably tonight. Then we can make our move at daylight tomorrow, hopefully while they’re still asleep.”

“You’re sure you can pinpoint the location that closely?”

“I hope so. I think your map is going to help, plus I’ve got my best agent, MacEllis Griffin, standing by in a helicopter.”

“A helicopter?”

“He’s going to do a flyover of the triangulated area and try to spot the sedan.”

Travis was impressed, although he should have known Dawson would think of everything.

“I need to let Kate know what we’re doing. I know she’ll want to be there for Max.”

Dawson paused for a split second. “Now, Travis, Ryker and Reilly are going to be handling the ambush and taking the kidnappers into custody. This is off the books, but Ryker is arranging to have a female officer there to take charge of Max.”

“That’s not going to work for Kate,” Travis said with a wry laugh.

“Well, how you handle Kate is up to you. And trust me, I understand completely about a woman who won’t sit by and let you do the rescuing. But we don’t know anything about this guy. I doubt Ryker is going to want either you or Kate on the scene.”

Travis thought maybe his cousin could convince Kate that she should wait until the danger was over, but he’d be damned if they kept him from being there. He might not be a cop, but he was probably better armed barehanded than they were with their weapons.

“Oh, and I heard from Lucas,” Dawson went on. “He got some information from his friend in Chicago. It seems that a woman named Shirley Hixon shares an address with an ex-cop named Bentley Woods. He was fired several years ago for taking bribes and protection money. Since then he’s been a suspect in a couple murders that seemed to be gun for hire, but in both cases the ID was weak, so they couldn’t prosecute. He said that Woods claims to be doing private-investigator work, but that word on the street is he’ll do just about anything if the price is right.”

“He sounds dangerous. I don’t like it.”

“We think the Hixon woman is taking care of your boy. She and Woods have shared the same address for nine years. If they’ve been doing kidnappings for hire for that long, I’m amazed they’ve never been caught.”

“Yeah, well, that’s going to change this time.”

He heard Dawson sigh through the phone. “Just don’t forget what I said. Ryker’s not going to want you there for the takedown.”

“Ryker and I will have to have a conversation about that,” Travis said.

Chapter Nine

By the time Kate got home that evening, it was after six o’clock. She’d spent all morning at the bank. She’d gone straight to the bank manager and asked him for a loan of two hundred thousand dollars. She offered the house she’d inherited from her folks as collateral and when that didn’t work, she tried to mortgage it.

When the manager insisted on knowing what the money was for, Kate told him she wanted to remodel the house. He lectured her about the struggling housing market and the dangers of mortgaging a house for more than it’s worth.

When she’d been able to get a word in edgewise, she’d asked him, “Are you telling me that there’s no way I can get any type of loan for that amount of money?”

“That’s right, Dr. Chalmet,” he’d told her. “It would be virtually impossible, no matter where you went.”

So she’d withdrawn the sixty-eight thousand dollars in her savings account—in cash, despite the manager’s disapproving expression.

After leaving the bank, she’d gone to the credit union, but they were less helpful than the bank had been. She’d thanked them and withdrawn the five thousand she had allowed to accumulate in her checking account.

Then she’d gone to her office for a few hours to work on her findings for court, although she wondered whether there was any need for her to continue with her determination of Stamps’s state of mind when he’d shot Paul Guillame, now that the kidnapper had decided to target the Delanceys for ransom for their first grandson.

Back at home, she wearily took her cell phone out of her purse and set it on the kitchen counter next to the day’s mail, then glanced at her watch. She figured she had about an hour before the kidnapper called. Kate had no idea if seventy-three thousand dollars would be enough to tempt him. She hoped she could tell him it was only part of the