Special Forces Father (11 page)

“Yeah. So I ran that plate you gave me. The car’s registered to a Travis Delancey. I dug a little deeper and found out he’s active military.”

“No kidding? So he’s stationed in D.C.? Is that why his car has a Maryland license plate?”

“Got no idea. You know all
I know now.”

“Okay. That helps,” Bent said. “Thanks, pal, I owe you one.”

“Yeah, you do.”

Bent sipped his coffee and typed the name Travis Delancey into a search engine. He found out he was the third son of Robert Delancey, older son of the late Senator Robert Connor “Con” Delancey. There were lots of news stories, comments and blogs about his grandfather, Con Delancey, who apparently
was murdered by his personal assistant twentysomething years before.

Bent was surprised at how much information was online about the family, especially the grandfather. Con Delancey had shaken hands with a lot of famous and infamous people—politicians, foreign dignitaries, celebrities. His grandchildren were all over the internet, too. Bent paged through hundreds of family photos, school
pictures, candid paparazzi-like shots until he was practically cross-eyed. It didn’t take long for him to see that they were a state-sized version of the Kennedy family. Both lines were revered as American
royalty
and yet their histories were fraught with scandal. As with the Kennedys, the Delanceys were a handsome bunch, with a definite familial resemblance. Bent saw how Stamps could have recognized
a member of the family even if he’d never met that particular Delancey before.

But as much information as was out there, the girl, Cara Lynn, was the only obvious connection between the Delanceys and Dr. Kate Chalmet. When he entered
Chalmet and Delancey
into the search engine, he found the same information he’d discovered before. The doctor and Cara Lynn Delancey had entered LSU the same
year.

College.
That was a thought. Maybe there was more than one Delancey family member who went to LSU. He entered
Travis Delancey graduated LSU.
The search engine asked him if he’d meant
Delancy.
He amended his search to
Travis Delancey college LSU.
That brought up a list of Delancey grandchildren and where they’d gone to college. Travis Delancey, about halfway down the list, had LSU beside
his name.
Bingo.

Bent then searched images for
Chalmet and Delancey and LSU.
There were several of Cara Lynn and Kate, together at various school functions. But nothing else.

He looked closely at the photos of Cara Lynn Delancey. It wasn’t that much of a stretch from Dr. Chalmet being friends with Cara Lynn Delancey to the theory that Dr. Chalmet’s little boy was Travis Delancey’s son,
especially considering he’d shown up in New Orleans within hours of the kid’s kidnapping.

Excitement churned in Bent’s gut, along with the espresso drink. He saved the link to the photo in his bookmarks and shut down the laptop. Then he walked over to the office supply store and got an enlargement of the photo of the doctor with Cara Lynn Delancey.

Back in his car, he studied the picture.
He could easily make a case that the whiny brat was related to the Delancey girl. There was a striking resemblance. Yep, the kid could definitely be a Delancey. Bent felt his scalp burn with excitement. This little tidbit could turn out to be a gold mine.

* * *

A
FTER
K
ATE
LEFT
for her office, Travis headed to Baton Rouge to confront Congressman Gavin Whitley at his office. When he walked
into the suite, he saw that the door to the plush inner office was open.

He didn’t stop at the secretary’s desk. Instead he walked right around it.

The fiftysomething woman said, “May I help—?”

But by then he’d left her in his dust and was in the congressman’s office. Whitley sat behind his desk, staring out the window.

Travis quickly took in the items on the top of the dark
wood desk. They included several legal-sized manila file folders haphazardly scattered across the surface, a Styrofoam take-out container and a cell phone. “Congressman Whitley,” he said.

Whitley’s head snapped around. “What?” He blinked as his eyes focused. “Who are you?”

“I think you know,” Travis said, “but I’ll introduce myself. I’m Travis Delancey. I spoke to your colleague, Myron
Stamps, yesterday.”

The man’s Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed. He leaned forward and started to lift the receiver on his desk phone, but then his gaze snapped to the office door behind Travis.

Travis figured it was the secretary at the door, but he knew better than to turn around and look.

“Congressman, I’m sorry. I couldn’t—”

“It’s all right, Mary. Call security please,
to escort this—gentleman—out of the building.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Tell the guards no hurry, Mary. I’ll just need a few minutes,” Travis said.

Mary looked at each of them in turn, then compressed her already thin lips as she left the office and closed the heavy wooden door behind her.

Travis calculated that he had two minutes at most, if he wanted to get away without being detained
and asked a lot of questions. “I have one simple request,” he said to the congressman. “Return Dr. Chalmet’s child to her immediately and she won’t press criminal charges. I haven’t decided what I will or won’t do yet.”

Whitley’s brows drew down and he shook his head. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“I don’t have the time or the patience to play this game,
Congressman.
I
don’t have a security force to call, but I do know several police detectives. I can call them. They’ll be glad to come over here and put you in handcuffs for kidnapping a child—a federal offense, by the way. Or maybe you’re ready to start talking, right now.”

Whitley’s lips began to tremble, but he stuck to his guns. “I will repeat. I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Travis reached
out and picked up the cell phone. “Really? I must be mistaken, then,” he drawled as he looked at the recent call log on the phone. There were several calls that appeared routine—other congressmen and senators, his wife, his country club. But there was one that was labeled
Unknown.
Travis’s pulse skittered. “So this recent seven-minute phone call right here?” He held up the phone’s screen so Whitley
could see. “The one that says B.W. Who’s that?”

“I’m afraid I don’t remember that call,” Whitley said. “Perhaps it was a wrong number.”

“Wrong number? You programmed it into your phone, and this call is seven minutes long.”

“Aah, yes. I believe that’s—a real estate agent. That’s right. I’m thinking of buying a cabin on the lake.”

Travis laughed. “I don’t think so.” He pulled
out his phone and called Dawson. “Hang on just a minute,” he said to Whitley.

When Dawson answered, Travis said, “Hey. I’m with Whitley. Just took a look at his phone and found out he’s been talking to our friend. Want the number?”

“Absolutely.”

Travis read the phone number off to Dawson. “It’s labeled B.W.”

Whitley started to rise. “You can’t do that—”

Travis glared at
him. He sat.

Dawson said, “Great. This’ll simplify a lot of things.”

“Thanks.” Travis hung up, then deleted the listing from Whitley’s phone. He turned the congressman’s phone over, took out the battery and dropped it on the floor. “Oh, no!” Travis exclaimed and took a step, stomping on the battery and smashing it. “Look what I’ve done. I’m so sorry. You’ll have to get a new one.” He
set the phone back on the desk and dug a couple bills out of his pocket. “Here’s some money for your new battery. Again, I’m truly sorry.” He glanced at his watch and saw that it had been just over two minutes since he’d walked past the secretary.

Travis headed for the door. “When I find the kidnapper, he’s going to be begging the police to let him tell all about who hired him and why. Oh,
by the way, I hope you had that number memorized. Because it’s not in your phone anymore.”

To his satisfaction, Whitley’s mouth dropped open as he realized Travis had deleted the phone number. He slipped through the office door and closed it behind him.

Travis scooted past Mary’s desk, giving her a half salute. “Thanks, Mary. Tell the security guys I hate it that I missed them.”

Mary was apparently struck speechless, because she didn’t say a word as Travis left the office and headed toward the rear of the building. He was counting on the guards to come in the front. He slipped down the rear fire stairs and circled the building just in time to see two uniformed men heading up the steps at the front of the building. He waited until they’d entered, then jogged to his car and
took off, wondering if Whitley was planning to tell them that a Delancey had come into his office, destroyed his phone battery and walked out.

Once he was back in traffic and headed toward Kate’s, he called Dawson again. “Is it too early to ask if you got anything from that number?”

“Five-and-a-half minutes? Nah. Not too early,” Dawson said wryly. “Dusty’s already done some computer
magic and traced the number to a very busy store on Canal Street. Nobody at the shop recalls who bought it, but the store has been helping the NOPD trace the cell phones of a drug ring, so they’ve been trying to get license plates when they can.”

“They have the kidnapper’s plate?”

“Yep. We caught a break there. The plate was partially obscured by mud but it’s a Cook County, Illinois,
plate and the first two numbers match the numbers you saw. When we checked with the Cook County DMV, they confirmed the make and model.”

“So it’s the same vehicle I saw. It belongs to the kidnapper.”

“Yep. We’ve been trying to pick up the phone’s GPS signal but we haven’t had any luck. He must turn it off when he’s not using it. But we will. When we call him, Dusty will pinpoint him
to the nearest tower, or triangulate off three if we’re lucky.”

“Great,” Travis said.

“Do you have time to drive over here to Biloxi this evening? We could talk about when to get Lucas or Ryker involved.”

“Not tonight. I’m going to be late getting back to Kate’s house and I don’t like her to be there alone in the dark. And I’m not so sure about getting them involved.”

“Okay,
but if you try to do something dangerous by yourself, I’ll sic every Delancey on the police force on you if you try.”

“Yeah,” Travis said with a wry chuckle. “I hear you.”

Chapter Eight

Kate had spent the morning reading the rest of the police reports and witness statements in the shoot-out at Paul Guillame’s house. In the afternoon, she’d interviewed both Stamps and Guillame. The interviews had been an exercise in futility. It was as though the two of them had made some kind of pact to say as little as possible about the shooting.

Stamps spent
most of his interview swearing he didn’t remember anything after the shooting started. He acknowledged that the police had found gunshot residue on his hands and clothes and that a bullet from his gun had been removed from Paul Guillame’s left upper thigh. But according to Stamps, he didn’t even remember having the gun, although he did keep it in his glove compartment, since he never knew when
he might be driving through rough neighborhoods.
I like to visit the neighborhoods of all my constituents,
he had told her.
I feel it’s important for the people I represent to see me.

She’d thanked him for coming in, and when he was gone, she’d just stared at the bound notebook where she normally jotted her impressions when doing these types of interviews. She had no idea what to write down.
It would be a bald-faced lie to say that Stamps appeared insane. Whether he had temporarily
blacked out
as he’d said he did once the shooting started, she couldn’t say for sure, but she knew she’d have a hard time maintaining her credibility with the District Attorney’s office if she found that he had definitely been temporarily insane when he’d shot Paul Guillame.

Then, Paul Guillame’s interview
hadn’t gone any better. Guillame declared that Stamps had appeared glassy-eyed and confused when he’d taken the shot. “I could swear he wasn’t even looking at me,” Guillame had told her. He denied any recollection of Stamps yelling a discriminatory epithet at him at any time.

“You’d swear under oath that he wasn’t looking at you?” she’d asked.

“Well, maybe not under oath,” he’d prevaricated,
“but he sure looked dazed and confused.”

Now, as Kate drove into her driveway, she was disappointed to see that Travis’s car was not there. She went inside and locked the door behind her, then set down the two grocery sacks she’d brought in with her. She’d decided to make Travis’s favorite, spaghetti, and a salad. He needed to put some meat back on his bones.

As she put the sauce on
to cook and added basil, bay leaves, oregano, lots of garlic and olive oil, her eyes filled with tears. She and Travis had dreamed up this recipe in her dorm room in college, and cooked it in the microwave. She’d made it for Max and herself many times. Now as the sauce heated, the tangy smell nearly broke her heart.

* * *

P
ICKING
UP
THE
SPOON
, she stirred the sauce again and turned it
down to low. Surely Travis wouldn’t be much longer getting home. She had already stored the Parmesan cheese and a half gallon of milk in the refrigerator, then pulled the remaining item—a package of Oreo cookies—out of the grocery bag. She was determined to make Travis eat as much as he could hold.

Her cell phone rang. She grabbed it out of her purse and answered it without looking, thinking
it was Travis, letting her know when he’d be there.

“Dr. Chalmet.” It was that voice. Kate’s pulse hammered.

“Yes,” she said breathlessly as her mind raced. Why wasn’t Travis here? How much longer would he be? He’d promised to be back before dark but this time of the year, it didn’t get completely dark until after eight o’clock.

She held the phone pressed tightly against her ear,
listening for Max’s voice in the background, but she didn’t hear him. “I want to talk to my son,” she said.

“Oh, Doc, are you going to start with that again?” the kidnapper said. “I thought I told you,
I
will decide when you can talk to your little boy. Not you. If you’d just
shut up
and listen, you might get more of what you want than if you persist in
hounding me
about talking to the kid.
Do you understand?”

“Yes,” she said through gritted teeth.

“Good. Now listen to me.”

She waited.

“Are you listening?” he snapped.

“Yes,” she said, suppressing the urge to say
yes, sir
sarcastically.

“Good. I’m a real good researcher, Doc. Real good. Do you want to know what I found out today?”

Kate’s teeth were still gritted, so tightly her temple was beginning
to pound. “Yes, please,” she said.

The kidnapper laughed. It wasn’t a pleasant sound. “Okay then, since you’re being so polite.” He paused and took a deep breath. “I know who the kid’s daddy is.”

“What?” she said, startled. “What do you mean?” It was a stupid response, but right now her thoughts were spinning around in her head so fast it was making her dizzy. She couldn’t keep up with
most of them, they were spinning so fast. But every once in a while an actual phrase or question materialized.

How had he found out? Nobody knew, right? Who did he think was Max’s dad? Why did it matter? What would she say if he were right?

“Travis,” she mouthed silently.
Where are you?

“What do you think I mean, Doc? I mean I
know
who the kid’s
father
is. Don’t you want me to tell
you?”

Kate’s stomach churned with apprehension. He was leading up to something—but what?

Travis, help. I need you.

“Okay,” the kidnapper said. “I’ll take your silence as a yes. Your son is—a Delancey.” He announced it with the intonation of a game show host saying
And the answer is—

Kate dropped onto one of the counter stools as though a thousand-pound weight had been dropped
on her chest. She couldn’t breathe. Every effort to pull air into her lungs made her chest ache and tighten even more. “I don’t understand.” It was all she could think of to say. And saying it used up every last tiny breath of air in her lungs. She held the phone away from her mouth and took a deep, openmouthed inhale.

“Doc? You okay?” the man asked, with what sounded like a grin in his voice.
“Did I surprise you?”

For a moment Kate couldn’t speak. She didn’t think she had enough air. She just sat there, her palm splayed across her chest, and tried to take long, slow breaths. As a psychiatrist, she knew what was happening to her. She was on the verge of hyperventilating. If she didn’t get it under control, she’d be gasping and heaving for air. She didn’t want to have to breathe
into a paper bag or into her cupped hands. She wanted to be able to talk to this awful man—find out why he was telling her this and what he was going to do.

“N-no,” she stammered—not a complete lie. She’d been afraid he’d really known. It was useless to question how he’d found out. Useless to worry about what he planned to do with the information.

“That’s what I thought. Well, I must
congratulate you on having managed to have a Delancey kid. I didn’t know much about the Delanceys before, but now I do. Very impressive. I wonder how much the kid’s grandparents would be willing to cough up to save their first grandbaby. Yep, I know that, too. Little Max is the first great-grandchild of Con Delancey, right?” He laughed. “Or maybe I should say the first one anybody
knows
about.”

Kate didn’t hear anything after
cough up to save their first grandbaby.
Her hand moved from her chest to cover her open mouth, just in time to stop the scream that was crawling its way up her throat.
Oh, no, please. No, no, no.

“Apparently you’re speechless, eh, Doc? That’s okay. You need time to process what I’ve told you. Time to calm down. No sense in making you talk to the kid right
now. It would just upset both of you.”

“No-o-o,” she sobbed. “Please, let me ta-talk to him.”

“Nah,” the kidnapper said. “I can’t stand to listen to the little brat cry.”

“Please,” she whispered.

“But I tell you what. You let your baby-daddy know what I know, and we’ll all have a great little conversation soon, ’kay?”

“Wait!” she cried. “Wait, please.”

She heard a
sigh. “What? I’m not letting you talk to your kid.”

“Please, don’t call the Delanceys. Give me some time. I can get money. I can pay you. Just please don’t call them.”

“And what’s going to convince me that you have the kind of money the Delanceys have?” he asked.

“I don’t. But—” How could she convince him? Maybe the same thing that made her not want the Delanceys involved would
make sense to him. “You don’t want to get mixed up with the Delanceys,” she said firmly. “Why do you think I’ve tried to keep my son’s father a secret all this time, when I could go to them and probably not have to work another day in my life?”

“I don’t know. You love your job?” The kidnapper was obviously getting impatient with her.

“Because their influence spreads all over this state.
You don’t want them onto you, I can promise you that. There are at least four policemen in the immediate family, plus a prosecutor, plus a very dangerous private investigator. Not to mention an army Special Forces operative. How many of those do you want on your trail?”

There was a pause. “How do I know they’re not already?”

“You don’t. You’re just going to have to trust me, like I’m
offering to trust you.”

“All right. What’s your proposal, and more important, how much money can you get me?”

Kate tried to think fast. She knew how much money she had, down to the penny, and it wasn’t going to be enough to tempt this man. A small inheritance from her parents plus the money she’d been saving for Max’s college fund would add up to $73,000. Not even a drop in the bucket,
when measured next to the funds of the Delanceys.

“A quarter of a million,” she said as confidently as she could.

“Really,” he said, disbelievingly. “On your own, without the Delanceys, you’ve got two-hundred-and-fifty big ones?”

“I’ll need a day—maybe more, depending on the bank—but yes.” She heard a slight flutter in her voice. Dear God, she hoped the kidnapper hadn’t heard it.

“I don’t like it. How do I know you’re not just stalling me to give your boyfriend time to get his detective brother on my trail?”

“You don’t. Like I told you, you’re going to have to trust me.”

“Yeah? Why? How’re you going to convince me to trust you?”

Kate took a halting, shaky breath. “Because you have the one thing in the world that I would give my life for,” she said. “You
have my son.”

The phone clicked and went dead.

“No!” she cried, jerking the phone from her ear and looking at the display. “No, please!” But the call had been disconnected. After a couple tries, she pulled up the phone log and saw the same notation she’d seen every time she talked to the kidnapper.
Private Number.
She pressed Star-Six-Nine—nothing. She pressed Call—nothing. She clicked
Edit, Store, every button she could find to press, except Delete, but nothing worked.

She slammed the phone down on the counter, then sat with her head in her hands.

What was she going to do now that the kidnapper knew that Max was a Delancey? If she thought her child was in danger before, it was nothing compared to now. Her heart felt as though the kidnapper had reached into her chest
and ripped it out of her when he’d hung up.

She had no idea what he was going to do. Had he rejected her offer? Was he convinced he couldn’t trust her? But if he thought the Delanceys were already onto him, wouldn’t her plan still be better than him trying to get money out of them?

She turned her gaze up to the ceiling, wishing she could force an answer from heaven.

At that instant,
she heard a key in the front door. It opened and Travis walked in.

“Wow!” he said, grinning. “It smells great in here. Spaghetti, right?”

* * *

W
HEN
HE
LOOKED
into Kate’s eyes, he stopped short. “Is everything okay?”

She pointed at the phone. “You wa-want to know who that was?” she said bitterly, not even trying to stop the tears that welled in her eyes and slid down her cheeks.

“Who?” Travis approached her gingerly.

“The kidnapper.”

Travis nodded. “I didn’t mean for you to have to talk to him by yourself. I’m sorry I didn’t make it home earlier. What did he say? Did you get to talk to Max?” He held out his arms.

She shook her head quickly, back and forth and back and forth. “No,” she said. “No. You stay away from me.”

“What happened? I don’t understand.”

“Really?” she said, still shaking her head. “You’re going to stand there and tell me you have no idea what you’ve done? My baby is in danger and it’s because of
you.
” She clenched her fists and worked very hard at channeling all her fear and despair and aching emptiness into anger at Travis. But it still hurt just as bad.

“Kate, tell me what he said.”

“You had to go and get involved,
didn’t y-you?” she cried. “Had to get right in the m-middle of it and g-get your
cousin
involved.”

Travis regarded her with frank bewilderment and spread his hands. “I’m not sure what’s happening here. Why don’t we sit down on the couch and you can tell—”

“Don’t!” she cried. “Don’t patronize me. It’s you and your damn rich family. It’s always been my biggest fear. Why do you think I
never went to your parents about Max? I never even told Cara Lynn, and she’s my best friend. And now—everything I feared has come true.” She blotted her face with the sleeve of her blouse. “He
knows!
”

Travis just stared at her.

“He—knows!”
she screamed, pointing to the phone.

Then as calmly as she could, she said, “The kidnapper knows that Max is your child. He’s going to call your
parents and see how much they’d pay to make sure their
first
great-grandchild is safe.”

Travis’s face twisted into a mask of horror as her words sank in. “Oh my God,” he muttered. “How did he find out?”

“You tell me,” she grated. “Maybe he saw you with Dawson.”