Special Forces Father - By Mallory Kane Page 0,63

picking him up and he’d woken, seeing Travis’s scary, black-streaked face, and panicked.

“Mah—” he cried, stopping in the middle of the word. What had Travis done? She heard scraping and rustling of clothes through the high, small window, then saw Max’s head, then his body, come through the window. Travis was holding him with a hand under each arm. She reached up and caught her little boy by the waist as Travis lowered him down. In the distance, she heard footsteps echoing on the hollow trailer floor.

“That’s Bent, the kidnapper!” she whispered urgently to Travis. “Let go! I’ve got Max.”

Travis leaned farther out the window. Kate wrapped her arms around her little boy just as Travis let him go. She tightened her embrace and started moving with baby steps toward the north, ducking her head and shielding Max’s face with her hand.

“Mah-mee, that soldier gave me my car,” he said, his voice a mixture of excitement and fear.

“Run!” Travis whispered.

Kate bent and pushed through the branches, vines and brush as fast as she could. She stumbled when she stepped free of the clinging foliage. Ahead of her were the flashing red lights of the tower. She hiked Max up into her arms and set off at a lumbering jog, the fastest she could go in bare feet while carrying Max.

She wanted to glance back at the trailer so badly. Though she did feel as though the hounds of hell were nipping at her heels, she was desperate to know that Travis was okay. But the foliage was too dense. Even if she looked behind her, she wouldn’t be able to see anything.

“Mommy, stop!” Max cried, his little hands fisted around the material of her shirt. He was kicking and squirming. “Mommy!”

“Shh,” she whispered. “Shh, Maxie. Don’t cry. We’re pl-playing hide-and-seek, okay?” she gasped, out of breath. “Shh.”

“Hide-and-seek?” Max whispered, then squealed, “Yea!”

She prayed that Travis was okay and that he’d stopped the kidnapper from following her and Max. She pushed on, slowing down as Max became heavier and squirmed more. “Max, be still. I can’t hold on to you.”

“Hide now!” he squealed.

She shook him as best she could. “Hush!” she snapped.

Just as he sniffled and opened his mouth to start crying, she heard a sound that ripped through her like heat lightning.

It was a gunshot.

Travis! She stopped and turned. The deep gray sky had turned darker with purple. Soon that predawn darkness would lighten, and neutral gray shadows would change to deep purplish-pink. In the slight glow of dark purple, she saw Shirley, jogging toward them, brandishing something in her hand that caught the pale moonlight like—like steel. It was a gun. And beneath the gun was a large, bright flashlight.

Kate hiked Max higher in her arms and ran, ignoring the stones and gravel and twigs that tore at her bare feet. “Max,” she panted. “We’re the good guys and they—” she gestured with her head “—they’re the bad guys. Stay still so I ca-can outrun them.”

To her relief, Max stopped wiggling and turned backward to watch the woman. “She’s catching up, Mommy! Hurry!”

I’m hurrying, she thought, too out of breath to speak. Then she realized she was no longer on the ground. She was on asphalt. The road. She blinked and squinted in front of her. There was the gas station. But there was no one waiting to pick them up. She moaned quietly, then tightened her grip on her son. “Maxie, we’re almost there,” she wheezed. “Al-almost there.”

She ran around the left side of the station, praying that Travis was right about the bathroom. He was. Rushing inside, she slammed the door, plunging Max and her from the grayish purple world of early dawn into total blackout.

“Mommy!” Max shrieked when she put him down. Her arm muscles burned like fire as she felt around for a lock. There wasn’t a lock on the doorknob, so she ran her fingers up the edge of the door—and touched a metal tube. A chain lock? She felt on the door facing and found a chain. Fumbling, she finally had hold of the clasp on the end of the chain and pushed it into its corresponding hold on the door. Locked.

Her wheezing breaths turned into sobs. Behind her, Max was crying.

“Max,” she said, “come here.” She pulled him into her arms and held him tightly, hugging him.

“Mommy, it stinks,” Max said. “Phew!”

She took a breath and realized that he was right. The bathroom did stink. “That’s okay,” she muttered. “It stinks, but