by Dale Mayer
He grinned and said, “Okay, that’s great.” He wrote down the number. “Let’s see how we can track him. What about a vehicle?”
“Last I knew he drove a Mercedes,” she said, “a small sports convertible.” She frowned, thinking about it, and shrugged. “I don’t know what the model is or his license plate number.”
“That’s fine,” he said. “The DMV will give us something.”
She sat back just as Danny started to wiggle. Kona whimpered again. She held Danny close and whispered, “Mommy’s got you,” she said. “Mommy’s got you.” He shifted, whimpered a little bit, and she continued rocking him back to sleep. “I need to get his head checked out,” she told the cop.
“The ambulance should be here any minute now,” the cop said.
“I could have driven to the hospital myself,” she said. “It would have been much faster.”
“Maybe,” he said, “but we have to follow certain protocols.”
None of that made any sense to her. “It would be much easier and faster if I had just driven straight there.”
“Indulge me,” he said.
Kona growled at his tone.
“Okay, girl,” Jessica said, patting the dog. And she sank back and just held her son close. Of all the things that she was damn grateful for right now, besides this wonderful guard dog, Kona, was the fact that Greyson had found Danny. She didn’t know how, but she suspected that a whole lot of other people had stepped up to help Greyson than he could ever really clarify, but she was so damn grateful regardless. Her instincts had said she could trust him, and this just proved that not only was he a man to trust, but he was also a man who got things done. Now, if only he could find the asshole who had kidnapped her son in the first place.
Greyson did a quick sweep through the front offices of this chemical building, even as the woman at the reception desk protested. He shot her a hard look and said, “The cops are on their way. We’re looking for the kidnapper of a toddler. We’ve just rescued the child outside your loading bay.”
She immediately shut up, reaching for the phone.
“Good, call security,” he said. “We need to know who has been here.” He pulled up his phone and the photo he had of the stalker. “Do you recognize this man?”
Bewildered, she looked at it, shook her head, and said, “It’s a really terrible photo.”
“Maybe, but look at it,” he urged. “Do you recognize him?”
She took a second look, frowned, and said, “Maybe, but not really.”
“What does that mean?” he snapped.
“He kind of looks like one of the guys who works on the loading dock, but not really.”
“What about it is not really?”
“Dennis, who works in the loading dock, has blond hair,” she said. “This guy’s hair looks darker.”
“Where is Dennis right now?”
She shrugged. “He’s always down in the warehouse.”
“How do I get there?”
She pointed to the elevators. “Drop down to the lower level, the first floor, and head out,” she said.
But he was already gone. When the elevators wouldn’t open in time, he took the stairs. He made it down one floor and the stairs stopped at the first floor. He quickly hopped onto the elevator from there and headed down into the lower levels. When the elevator opened, he found a massive area with a small hallway and a couple offices down the side. He took a quick look in the offices. They were empty, so then he headed out to the warehouse. Whoever had driven Jessica’s car was still here. At least Greyson hoped so. Surely the cops had blocked the exit at the front gate, so he had to be somewhere in this compound.
As he stepped out, another man called out, “Hey, who are you?”
He turned to face a man very similar looking to the one who he’d been chasing. “You Dennis?”
“Sure am,” he said with a frown on his face.
“I think your brother is looking for you.”
Immediately a weary look came across his face. “What are you talking about?”
“Your brother,” Greyson said. “He arrived here in a stolen vehicle after kidnapping an toddler,” Greyson snapped in a hard voice. “We’ve recovered the child and the vehicle, but your brother is here, right now, trying to escape the authorities.”
Dennis looked stunned. His jaw dropped. “Are you serious?”
“He’s been stalking the child’s mother for days, possibly weeks to months. Hard to know when this started. Early this morning he assaulted two police officers and escaped their custody.”
“I haven’t seen Frank at all today.”
“That may be,” he said, “but, if that’s true, it’s only because he hasn’t managed to find you.”
“He knows I don’t want anything to do with him,” he said. “The last time he got me into so much shit that I couldn’t believe it.”
“Well, he’s likely to do it again,” he said, “because, if you look at your bay door number one,” he said, “you’ll see a little Pontiac. That’s the car he arrived in.”
Immediately Dennis walked over, opened up a big bay door, and took a look at the small car sitting there, and the cops all around. He immediately started swearing. “Jesus Christ! That damn kid,” he said.
“He didn’t look like too much of a kid to me,” Greyson snapped. He studied the man in front of him. He had a completely different build than the man he’d pinned to the ground last night.
“Yeah, well, I’m thirty, and he’s twenty-eight. He’ll always be a kid to me,” he snapped.
“He hasn’t left the compound, so where in here can he hide?”
“Everybody has to have an ID badge key card to get in,” he said, bewildered. “He knows that.”
“Yeah, and what did you arrive in?”
Dennis stared at him in shock and then swore again, racing outside, around the corner of the building. Greyson followed him, jumping down from the loading bay in front of the cops, two of them now running behind him. As Dennis got out to another parking lot, he swore even more, stomping his feet. “God dammit to hell. My truck is gone,” he said. He walked to the empty spot and said, “This is my space right here.”
“What kind of truck is it?”
He turned, pulled up his phone, and said, “This is my baby. It’s a blue Ford with lots of grillwork.”
“And how would he have started it?”
“The kid’s been stealing cars since grade school. He knows how to jump-start rigs,” Dennis said. “He could’ve taken any one of these.”
“But he took yours. Why?”
“Why the hell do you think? He’s my brother, so Frank probably thinks I wouldn’t report it stolen because I’d know he’s the one who took it.”
“Security cameras?” he barked, looking up at the side of the building.
“Not here, but in the front, yes.”
A cop immediately said, “We need to access it right now.”
“How else can you get out of here?” Greyson asked Dennis.
“Another gate’s on the far side,” Dennis said, pointing. “It lets you onto a different street.”
“God dammit.” Greyson turned to the cop and said, “I’ll leave you here while I track down Frank.” And, with that, he ran back to his truck. As soon as he got there, the cop who had been leaning against his grandpa’s truck straightened and stood. Greyson gave him an update. “Frank stole a truck and got out on the far side. He’s driving a blue F-150,” he said, as he passed over the license plate number. “It’s his brother’s truck. His brother, Dennis, works here. I’m going after Frank again.”
Without giving the cop a chance to argue, he hopped in and turned on the engine. Looking over at Jessica, he said, “Sorry, but you’re in for another ride.”
“Just don’t kill us,” she said.
“Actually you should probably sit here and wait,” he said. “The cop said that’s your ambulance.” She hesitated, and he shook his head. “No,” he said. “Go. Let
’s make sure that your boy is okay.”
Obediently she hopped out and stood nearby, while he peeled out of the parking lot, headed to the back gate, the same place that Frank had taken his current stolen vehicle. Kona stayed with him, more than anxious to stay in the hunt.
Greyson didn’t realize it was a gate until he was almost upon it. It was still partially open. He hopped out, pulled it open, got back in, and took off, while getting his phone out. “Badger, we need Stone again. The asshole took his brother’s truck and went out the back way.”
“Interesting,” Badger said in a calm voice. “I’m patching it through. Just hang on.”
Next thing he knew, Stone was on the line. “He’s driving a blue F-150 with lots of grillwork,” Greyson told Stone, reading the license plate to him. “He’s alone. It’s his brother’s truck, and he’ll be on the run now.”
“We’ll find him,” Stone said. “Is the little boy okay?”
“He’s got some bruising to his temple area,” he said. “It’s quite likely that idiot hit Danny to knock him out. Right now, he and his mom stayed behind with the cops, waiting for the ambulance to check out the boy.”
“Good,” Stone said. “Let’s go find that bastard. We’re running air surveillance. Give us a minute.”
Minute after minute ticked by as they did a lot of searching, and Greyson drove around a lot of blocks doing random searches.
“I’m sorry, man. No sign of that truck,” Stone said.
“I can’t believe it,” Greyson replied. “What about traffic cameras?”
“That industrial section is a little slim on those,” he said, “so we’re running through some of the companies that have private property cameras running right now. Nothing so far, but—oh, wait—about twenty minutes after you left the place,” he said, “one of the cameras picked him up about four miles away. Hang on while we figure out where he’s gone from there.”
Greyson took a left back onto the freeway and headed back the other direction.
“So he just came here, dumped the kid, and grabbed a new set of wheels?”
“That’s quite possible,” Stone said. “Think about it. If he’s caught with a stolen vehicle and a kidnapped child, it’s a whole different story than if he’s just driving his brother’s truck without permission.”
“And he would have known the kid would be okay there. Eventually somebody would have surely come and checked out a car parked in front of the loading bay.”
“It’s quite possible and at least makes this guy seem a little bit more human,” Stone said. “Don’t worry. I still hate him though.”
“You and me both,” Greyson said. “Please tell me that you found where this guy went.”
“Yeah. He went ahead to the McDonald’s, parked the vehicle, and went inside, but that was over forty minutes ago.”
Greyson pulled into the McDonald’s lot ten minutes later. He slowly cruised past the parking lot full of vehicles and pulled up beside the blue F-150 with all the chrome. “I’m pretty damn sure he’s ditched it here,” he said, as he hopped out and walked around the vehicle.
“I would think so,” Stone replied. “I would. It’s pretty damn easy to pick up any other vehicle.”
“Even if he didn’t get another one right here,” he said, “a mall’s across the road, and a great big used car lot is on the next block. No shortage of choices here. His brother said Frank was pretty damn quick at hot-wiring vehicles, so he could be anywhere by now. Looks like we lost him.”
Chapter 9
Jessica couldn’t sleep. She couldn’t rest, and no way she would move more than a foot away from her son. It was now midmorning. The sun was up high; she’d had one pot of coffee and sat at the kitchen table, wondering how she would get through the day. She wouldn’t nap until her son did, and he was looking a little bit groggy and uncertain too.
The paramedics on the ambulance had checked Danny over and said that she could take him to the hospital if she was still worried, but they were confident that Danny would be just fine. She decided that she’d make an appointment with her doctor later if she was concerned.
The police had given her a lift home. Her son was a little cranky and maybe not feeling great, but he also wasn’t tired enough to sleep. He sat on the floor next to the couch, playing with some blocks. She sat at the kitchen table, just feet away from him, watching his every move.
In the back of her mind she still couldn’t believe all that had happened. It was just too unbelievable, too scary to think about. Not only had that asshole made it into her house, but he’d stolen her son right out from under her. And if he could do that—
When the doorbell rang, she froze. Danny looked up at her, and his little face screwed up as if he would cry. She quickly picked him up in her arms and said, “It’s okay, sweetie.” When she heard a voice calling out from the door, she recognized it as Greyson’s.
She walked to the front door, unlocked it, but left the chain on and peered through. It was definitely him, and he was alone.
Smiling, he said, “I’m glad you kept the chain on.”
She quickly undid the chain and let him in. “I don’t think I’ll ever not keep the chain on again,” she said. “I’ll be lucky if I ever sleep again.”
He leaned over, kissed her gently on the temple, and said, “Understood.” He looked down at Danny in her arms and smiled. “How you doing, buddy?”
Danny just looked up and rubbed his eyes.
“Bad night, rough morning,” she said. “The ambulance paramedics gave him a clean bill of health but said, if I grew concerned, I could either go to the hospital or go to my doctor later today.”
“And are you concerned? How is he?”
She shook her head. “Not really. I’m just exhausted, and, from the looks of him, so is he.” She stepped back a little farther and yawned.
He looked at her and said, “Looks like we’re all in the same shape.”
“I thought I had a little bit of sleep, but then I don’t know,” she said, rubbing her face. She closed and locked the door behind him, then moved the chain back over.
“Have you seen or heard anything since I left?”
“I had to deal with the police, the ambulance, and, other than that, no,” she said. “They dropped me off, and I just holed up here.” She stopped, looked at him, and said, “Does that mean you guys didn’t catch him?”
He gave her a grim nod. “That’s exactly what it means,” he said. “Unfortunately we tracked his brother’s truck out of the back gate, but Frank dumped it, and we lost him in the malls and the car parks. I’ve just come back from there now. The police are scouring the area, and my people have satellite running, but, so far, we’ve found no sign of him.”
“Of course. When he ditched the truck, he could have grabbed anything and disappeared,” she said quietly. She walked into the living room, put Danny on the floor next to the couch, where he’d been happy earlier, and went into the kitchen to pour Greyson a cup of coffee. “Well, I’m really sorry you didn’t catch him,” she said.
“I am too,” he said, and such frustration was evident in his voice that she understood how he felt.
“At least with the cops being attacked too,” she said, “they’ll be looking for Frank with their entire police force.”
“I know,” he said, “and that helps, but it’s still not the right answer. We had him,” he said, his hand curling into a fist. “He never should have gotten away in the first place.”
“I know,” she said. “I was pretty dumbfounded at his brazenness.”
“I think it was desperation as much as anything,” he said. “But then he got away and comes back and took the child right out of his bed.” He sank down at the kitchen chair, where he could watch Danny. “I’m sorry he got hurt.”
“I am too,” she said, “and the whole thing obviously has Danny a little cranky, but, other than that, he appears to be fine. Hopefully the cops will find Frank,” she said, trying to make Greyson feel
better.
He gave a clipped nod. “The next problem,” he said, turning to face her, his gaze direct, “is that I don’t think he should be left alone.”
“Unfortunately that was made pretty obvious this morning,” she said, “when Frank managed to sneak in and walk out with Danny while I was right here.” She shook her head. “I’ll never get away from that nightmare.”
“It will pass with time,” he said, “especially as soon as we catch this guy.”
“Catch him again,” she corrected.
“Exactly,” he said. “This time he won’t be walking away.”
She wasn’t sure if Greyson meant he would break the kidnapper’s legs or if he would kill him. She was all for the killing part, just so she didn’t have to worry about this guy getting loose again and coming after them.
“Can you think of anybody else who might want to take Danny? We’re assuming it has something to do with your ex-husband, but we don’t have any proof, and it could be just a diversion to keep us looking in that one direction.”
She frowned at him. “I don’t know anybody else who would care,” she said.
“I know it’s a bit far out,” he said, “but do you know any young couples who can’t have children?”
She stared at him, her jaw slowly dropping. “Are you saying somebody might have stolen my baby so they could have one of their own?”
“It’s happening all over the world,” he said. “We can’t assume anything at the moment. We are searching for your ex, and, so far, nobody’s having any luck in finding him.”
“Even if you find him though,” she said, “he’s pretty slippery, and he’ll be gone again soon.”
“Because he travels so much?”
“That, and he’s just not the kind who likes to be questioned,” she said. “He doesn’t believe in authority, doesn’t really believe in a hierarchy within a company, and he doesn’t really believe that he’s beholden to anybody for anything.”