Special Forces Father - By Mallory Kane Page 0,61

looked down at her. “Are you okay?” he whispered. “Is Max?”

It was Travis—solid, strong, real.

“Oh,” Kate gasped, so overwhelmed by his presence that she could barely breathe. Then, when she got her first good look at his face, she shook her head in disbelief. He had a black cloth tied tightly around his head and black stripes, smeared like war paint, across each cheek and down his nose. She felt a feeling that was at once nauseating and exhilarating. Her chest was heaving and her head was spinning. Travis couldn’t be here, but he was. She put her hands to her temples and pressed.

“How did you do that?” she asked, gesturing toward the window. She felt as though someone had punched her in the stomach.

He reached out a hand and touched the back of one of hers. “I climbed the tree. That branch was barely long enough for me to reach the window and climb in,” he said.

“Trav—” she managed to say, but then her throat totally closed off again and it was all she could do to get air into her straining lungs. “But—the glass. What did you do?” she asked.

“Glass cutter and a suction cup.”

Kate frowned.

“I stuck the suction cup on the glass, then cut a circle with the glass cutter. You probably heard the squealing of the cutter. Then I lifted the circle of glass out and reached in to unlock the window.”

“Oh,” she said, not really taking in everything he said. It didn’t matter. He was here.

“Where’s Max?” he asked, looking past her. For an instant, her motherly instinct rose up and she had the odd notion that she needed to protect her child from the paint-smeared apparition that stood in front of her. Travis must have felt her stiffen, because he stood still and held out his hands, palms toward her. “I promise I’ll do my best not to scare him,” he whispered. “But we need to get you both out of here—now.”

Kate closed her eyes tightly and willed herself to believe that he was real. Then she held out a hand. He took it in his. She felt his warmth, his strength, his solidity. The lock on her throat released.

“How did you find us?” she murmured and reached up to wrap her arms around his neck. He stiffened at first, but then he must have realized how badly she needed him to hold her, just for a couple seconds.

She tightened her arms around his neck and buried her nose in the hollow of his shoulder, clinging to him as if he were a lifeline in a turbulent ocean. He pressed his cheek against her hair for a few precious seconds. Then he pushed her away.

“We’re running out of time,” he said, meeting her gaze. A small smile curved his lips. “Are you ready to get out of here?” he asked her.

“You can get us out?”

He placed a hand around the back of her neck and gently pulled her toward him, pressing his lips against her ear. “You bet I can. Now come on. Priority one is getting you and Max out of harm’s way. So, what do you need to do to be ready?”

Kate still couldn’t quite get control of her emotions. Travis’s hand on her neck felt warm and reassuring, but at the same time, it felt iron hard and controlling. She’d never seen this side of him before. He was cloaked in darkness, even down to the black face paint across his cheekbones and nose and forehead. She could barely see him in the dim light that seeped through the brush outside from the other trailers and the moon and stars. But what she saw was a man, a soldier, a warrior.

“I’m ready now,” she said.

Travis stared at Kate, his son’s mother and the woman he’d always loved. She was exhausted. He could see it in the slump of her shoulders, in the dark circles under her eyes, but she stood straight and tall, ready to do whatever he needed her to do to save her child.

Their child.

He’d hardly dared to look past her at the sleeping boy. He wasn’t sure how he was going to react when he came face-to-face with his son for the first time. He had missed so much already. First smile, first laugh, first word, first steps, first tooth. Precious time that he could never recapture. He didn’t know much about babies or little boys, but he knew that those four years he’d missed contained a lifetime