Undercover Dad

by Charlotte Douglas

  And he couldn’t mislead her.

  Even if they rescued Jessica, a more than equal chance existed that one or both of them might be hurt, even killed. The only way to protect himself and Rachel was to keep his feelings buttoned down. If he gave in to his fears of losing Rachel and the daughter he’d barely known, they were all lost.

  “Did you reach them?” Rachel asked.

  He turned the key in the ignition and pulled onto the highway. “Jack is putting things into motion. Everything will be in place by the time we get there. Surveillance, phone taps...”

  “Assault teams?”

  “Those, too.” He’d left them out on purpose, not wanting her to envision a scenario where such deadly force would be needed, but she’d been with the Bureau too long not to recall procedure.

  “Good.” She leaned back against the seat. “We may need a little help from our friends.”

  “I also asked Jack to have the New York office check out Harold Maitland’s movements and contacts over the past two weeks.”

  No matter how much she tried to suppress her fear, thinking straight was difficult. This wasn’t just another case. Her baby’s life was at stake.

  “With Fulton dead,” she said, “Maitland’s our only lead. Let’s hope the New York office turns up something.”

  They drove in silence until they reached the Savannah office, where Agent Stan Lewolsky provided them with bullet-proof vests and headgear. Stan walked outside with them and waited while Stephen stowed the equipment in the back of the car.

  “Thanks for your help,” he told Stan.

  “No problem,” the agent said, extending his hand. “Good luck. And take care of our Rachel. She’s pretty special to us in this office.”

  Stephen gripped Stan’s hand. “She’s special to me, too.”

  Stephen slid into the driver’s seat, and Stan circled the car to Rachel’s window. He squeezed Rachel’s hand, resting on the window frame. “If anyone can get your baby back, the Bureau can.”

  “I know,” Rachel said, “and I appreciate your help.”

  “Look out for yourself.” Stan released her hand.

  “Did Stephen ask you about Jason?” Rachel asked.

  The agent nodded. “Marie’s been waiting for him to check in, but we haven’t heard from him.”

  “I hope he’s all right.”

  Stan’s grin split his freckled, sunburned face. “Jason’s in the same league with you two. He can take care of himself.”

  “You think Stan’s right?” Rachel asked Stephen as they drove away.

  “About what?”

  “About Jason taking care of himself.”

  He frowned. “Staying safe is one thing if you know someone’s after you. It’s another if you have no idea you’re being hunted.”

  He heard her breath catch in her throat. “So Jason could already be...just like Ralph Fulton.”

  He silently cursed himself for frightening her. “The Appalachian Trail is remote, rugged and hundreds of miles long. Tracking Jason in that extended wilderness would be almost impossible.”

  “You’re right.” Her expression brightened. “Besides, Jason always chafed against rules and regulations. As I recall, he was never punctual about checking in during his other hiking vacations.”

  They lapsed into silence again, lost in their own thoughts, and remained quiet as the Blazer ate up the miles between them and the rest area on the Georgia-South Carolina border. The clock on the dashboard ticked away the hours to their midnight rendezvous, and the temperature gauge above the windshield recorded the dropping degrees.

  By the time they stopped at a rest area closest to their destination, the temperature had fallen into the teens. Rachel shivered when she removed her jacket to don the bullet-proof Kevlar vest.

  “I hope he’s keeping Jessica warm,” she said.

  The anxiety in her voice pierced through him, sharper than the cold. He shrugged into his vest, put on his jacket, and handed her a hard hat on which the distinctive neon letters FBI had been covered with black tape.

  “Keep this on,” he ordered, “no matter what.”

  She appeared small and fragile in the protective gear, and memories inundated him of Rachel on other missions, clad in bullet-proof vest and headgear, weapon drawn, the lines of her beautiful face set with purpose. She’d carried her weight and more in every operation, no matter how dangerous. She might look delicate, but she was tough and competent. He could count on Doc to back him up and see this through.

  For the first time since she’d related the call from her father, Stephen felt confident that the two of them—no, make that the three of them—would come through this in one piece.

  He adjusted the strap on her headgear. “Ready?”

  She jutted her chin forward with a determination that touched his heart and nodded. “Ready.”

  Less than fifteen minutes later they arrived at the rest area the kidnapper had designated. Stephen slowed the Blazer as it left the highway and drove cautiously into the lit parking area.

  Even close to midnight, the interstate rest stop was far from deserted. Several eighteen-wheelers and a few recreational vehicles were parked in the open lot. Hidden in one of them, the assault team waited, suited up and armed, ready to respond in seconds.

  At the refreshment stand, a couple operated the coffee machine, and Stephen wondered if they were agents, already in place. A man, smoking a cigarette, lolled in the shadows near the rest rooms. Another read the headlines from a newspaper rack. In the shadow of the trees at the far end of the parking area, another man sat in a car.

  Any one of the strangers could be another agent. Or the kidnapper, waiting to place a call on his cell phone. Stephen pulled into the parking space nearest the pay phone and stopped. The clock indicated five minutes until midnight.

  “This is it,” he said. “Keep your head down in case there’s a sniper out there.”

  She nodded, her face grim. “Let’s hope the agents here have already done a thermal scan of the woods and eliminated that problem.”

  She looked so worried, in spite of his vow to remain objective, he leaned over and kissed her quickly on the lips. “Everything’s going to be okay.”

  Before she had a chance to respond, he was out of the car and strolling toward the phone. It began to ring before he reached it.

  Stephen sprinted the last few feet and grabbed the receiver.

  “Chandler?” a familiar male voice asked.

  “Who are you?”

  “You know damned well who I am. I drilled a hole in you a few days back.”

  Stephen had heard the voice before but couldn’t place it. Maybe he recalled it only from his previous encounter with the gunman. “I’ve had a touch of amnesia since then. Can’t remember much of anything.”

  “That’s good—if it’s true. If you can’t remember who I am, then you haven’t blabbed about me to anyone else.”

  “What’s to blab?” Stephen knew the longer he kept the man talking, the better chance the listening agents had of tracing the call.

  “Is Rachel with you?” the kidnapper asked.

  “She’s in the car. Do you want her to come to the phone?”

  The man on the other end of the line laughed. “That would be a good delaying tactic, wouldn’t it? Give your buddies listening in a longer time to track me. Well, it won’t work. I’ve routed this call six ways to Sunday. I could talk for an hour before the tracer could unravel all the relays.”

  “Where’s Jessica?” Stephen demanded. “Is she all right?”

  “She’s fine.” The kidnapper paused with a significance that sent a chill down Stephen’s back. “For now.”

  “What do you mean, ‘for now’? What do we have to do to get the baby back?”

  “First, call off the Bureau.”

  “What are you talking about?” Stephen bluffed.

  “That rest area is crawling with agents. I saw them myself earlier. I warned you, Chandler. I should kill the kid
—”

  “No! Just tell me what you want us to do.”

  “What guarantee do I have that you’ll lose the Feds?”

  “The same guarantee I have that you won’t harm Jessica if we do as you say.”

  The kidnapper laughed again, a rasping sound that irritated Stephen’s ears. “You’re sharp, Chandler. Always had a peculiar way of homing in on the truth.”

  “What do you want?”

  “Lose the Feds. Then drive straight to that cabin on the mountaintop outside Glenville.”

  “The place you trashed?”

  “That’s the one. Both of you’d better be there—alone—in two hours or the kid’s dead. Understand?”

  “I understand, but—” Stephen saved his breath. He was talking to an empty line.

  He walked back to the Blazer and raised his hand to signal the watching agents.

  RACHEL PEERED through the windshield at the mountain road, illuminated only by the high beam of the headlights. Stephen was pushing the Blazer as fast as he could and still maintain control on the dangerous curves, but the vehicle seemed to crawl.

  A little more than an hour ago, over the objections of the special agent in charge, she and Stephen had asked the FBI to withdraw.

  Stephen had already explained to her the caller’s demands. “It’s a trap,” he added. “There’s no other way to look at it.”

  “It’s our only chance of getting Jessica back safe. We’ll have to do it the kidnapper’s way.”

  “You’re sure? He could have friends at the cabin. We could be outnumbered.”

  “We’re trained agents,” she said, terrified in spite of her brave words. “We’ll have the advantage.”

  Now, as they passed through the tiny resort town of Cashiers just miles from Glenville, she steeled herself for the encounter. She glanced at Stephen beside her, his handsome face set in grim lines. If she had to risk her life, she could think of no one else better as backup. They’d faced danger together many times before, and knowing his skill and coolheadedness comforted her.

  Stephen surprised her by turning off the main highway that led to the road to his uncle’s cabin.

  “Where are you going?”

  “The kidnapper will see us coming if we take the main road,” he said. “We’ll use the old logging road that starts at Clayton Jones’s farm.”

  She nodded in agreement. If they could sneak up on the cabin, they could assess the situation and maybe even surprise the kidnapper.

  Stephen parked the vehicle at the curve where Rachel had waited for him when they’d fled the cabin a few days ago. A few days that had seemed like a lifetime. He checked his watch. “We have time to climb the rest of the way on foot and still make our deadline. Otherwise he’ll hear the car coming. Ready?”

  Rachel nodded and exited the car.

  Together they ascended the road, following the trail Rachel’s Explorer had broken through the overgrown brush a few days earlier. She stumbled once, and Stephen reached down to pull her to her feet.

  He was all business, concentrating on their task at hand, and she couldn’t help but wonder when this was all over—if they both survived—what his feelings for her would be. The news of Jessica’s kidnapping had come hard on the heels of Rachel’s confession. Stephen hadn’t had time to assimilate what she’d told him, much less decide how he felt about it.

  About her.

  She had bungled everything. For Stephen, for Jessica and for herself. The thought of how things might have been stabbed her with a sharp sense of loss.

  The best she could hope for now was to rescue her daughter. She might have to face life without Stephen, but she couldn’t endure anything happening to her child.

  Winded from their climb, they reached the edge of the clearing. No lights shone in the back rooms of the cabin.

  Please, God, she prayed, let Jessica be asleep inside one of those bedrooms, safe and unharmed.

  Stephen touched her arm and motioned for her to follow. At a crouch, he moved silently through the shrubs and bushes on the edge of the clearing until he’d circled to the front of the cabin. He dropped to a prone position, and Rachel flattened herself in the dead leaves beside him.

  A red pickup was parked out front. Light streamed from the living room windows onto the front porch, but no one moved in the main room.

  Suddenly, something moved in the shadows of the porch. A man stepped forward and peered down the mountain toward the main road. With a sigh of exasperation, he settled onto the top step and placed a revolver across his knees.

  Light from the room fell across his profile, and Rachel bit her lip to suppress an exclamation of surprise.

  The kidnapper was Jason Bender.

  STEPHEN HEARD RACHEL’S quick intake of breath, and when the man on the porch leaned into the light, he recognized his face. Memories associated with that face flooded him, but the name eluded him.

  Rachel wriggled closer and placed her lips against his ear. “It’s Jason Bender,” she whispered so softly the words were almost imperceptible.

  Bender.

  When he put the name with the face, every memory returned. Jason Bender had been his friend. Together they’d spent hundreds of competitive hours on the racquetball courts, driven to Atlanta where they had season tickets for the Braves home games, bent elbows over imported beer swapping stories of previous assignments.

  Once, when Jason had drunk more than usual, he’d launched into the story of his childhood, growing up as the only child of a divorced mother, driven to embitterment and perpetual anger over her desertion by her husband. She had cleaned other people’s houses to raise him, but also had managed to implant in him the unshakable conviction that he was better than others and destined for greatness.

  Jason had strived to achieve the success his mother had prophesied, but he’d run into obstacles, living beyond his means with a mountain of credit card debt and taking shortcuts and chances on his job that caused the Bureau to pass over him time and again with promotions and accolades.

  Jason had gradually turned bitter and withdrawn, so changed from the friend Stephen had originally known that it seemed a stranger, not Jason, had shot him in Atlanta.

  And threatened to murder Rachel.

  With the complete return of Stephen’s memories came a deeper appreciation of how much he loved the woman at his side. When she’d walked out without saying goodbye the morning after his going-away party, he’d been desperate to talk to her, to tell her how much she meant to him. To ask her to marry him.

  When she’d avoided him and refused to answer her phone, he’d assumed he’d overstepped his bounds in making love to her and ruined any chance he’d had. He had hoped to marry Rachel and take her to Atlanta with him. When he went alone, he felt as if all the purpose had drained out of his life. He’d done his job, but without Rachel to give meaning to his life, he’d only gone through the motions.

  On the rebound, he’d met Anne Michelle Logan in Atlanta. But Anne Michelle, while reminding him of Rachel, wasn’t the Doc he loved. By the time he’d realized that and broken off with Anne Michelle, he’d heard rumors Rachel had met someone and had had a child. He felt as devastated as if he’d lost her all over again.

  If only he’d known she’d had his child, that knowledge would have saved them both so much loneliness and heartache. Now nothing mattered except Rachel, Jessica and their happiness. And when he settled the score with Jason Bender...

  Jason’s actions had effectively killed any friendship Stephen had ever felt for him. He intended to see that the rogue agent paid for his crimes, paid most of all for terrorizing Rachel and her little girl.

  His little girl.

  After signaling to Rachel to cover him, he maneuvered quietly through the woods to the side of the building and sprinted across the darkly shadowed lawn to the far edge of the porch. Silently he climbed over the rail and approached Jason from behind.

  With his anger tamped under rigid control, he placed the barrel of his auto
matic against the back of Jason’s neck. “Drop the gun, Bender.”

  At the edge of the clearing, Rachel rose to her feet and advanced to the cabin, her gun also aimed at Jason.

  Stephen grabbed Jason’s Magnum. “Watch him,” he said to Rachel, “while I check the cabin.”

  A brief sweep of the rooms revealed the place was empty. He returned to the porch. “There’s no one here.”

  “No one?” Rachel’s face was pinched and white in the dim light. “Where’s Jessica?”

  Stephen longed to comfort her, but he didn’t dare take his concentration from Jason. As Stephen now vividly recalled, the man knew every trick in the book.

  “You’ll never find her,” Jason said with satisfaction.

  Rachel went rigid with fear. “She isn’t...”

  “Dead?” Jason’s evil laugh made Stephen shiver. “Not yet. I left her hidden at the base of some rocks on the mountain. She’s bundled up pretty good, but I’d guess in about an hour hypothermia will begin to set in and...” His words trailed off significantly.

  Stephen had to exercise every ounce of self-control to keep from hitting Jason. What kind of monster abandoned a baby in the wilderness, in belowfreezing weather?

  “Tell us where she is,” Rachel pleaded. “Let me find her and I’ll do anything you want.”

  “You’ll let me go?” Sarcasm edged the agent’s voice.

  “You know we can’t do that,” Stephen said. “But the court will go a lot easier on you without a charge of infant homicide added to your crimes.”

  Rachel raced toward the porch, gun drawn.

  Close by, the excited bark of a dog broke the stillness. Distracted, she turned toward the sound.

  In a blur of unexpected movement, Jason yanked a gun from an ankle holster, lunged at Rachel and fired point-blank.

  “No-o-o!” Stephen’s scream echoed off the surrounding hill.

  The bullet struck Rachel squarely in the chest, knocking her to the ground.

  Chapter Fourteen

  “Drop the gun, Bender,” Stephen yelled, torn between rushing to Rachel and apprehending her assailant.

  Jason pivoted, turning the weapon on Stephen. “You’re not taking me alive. Either I kill you or you shoot me.”