Seconds later, a teenager stumbled from the woods, his face ashen. Thin and gangly, his entire body trembling, he looked to be thirteen or fourteen. Probably a kid playing hooky from school who had run into a lot more trouble than he had expected.
“Hold it! Hands where I can see them,” Tony shouted.
The kid whirled in his direction, his eyes wide with fear. “Some guy has got my friend. He has a knife to his throat.”
Tony didn’t need to ask who. He knew. This was exactly what a coward like Martin would do. Find an innocent bystander and use him as a shield during his escape.
“Which way did they go?” Tony asked.
“That way!” The boy pointed through the trees.
“Stay here. Rusty, find!” The Lab plunged into the undergrowth. Tony followed, branches snagging his clothes. Rusty bounded ahead, ears flapping, tail high. He knew where he was going, and he shot straight as an arrow toward the scent pool.
He disappeared into a thicket.
Tony raced after him, radioing in his location and hoping backup would arrive quickly. Martin had already committed murder; there was no reason to believe he wouldn’t do it again. The teenager he’d kidnapped could be as easily disposed of as he had been abducted.
Rusty barked, and the sound reverberated throughout the woods.
“Call your dog off!” a man shouted, the voice high-pitched and filled with anger and fear.
Tony plunged into the thicket, pushed through the heavy bramble and thick vines and shoved his way into a small clearing.
Martin was just ahead, his arm around a young teen’s waist, a knife held against the boy’s throat. Rusty was snapping and growling nearby.
“Let the kid go, Martin,” Tony said calmly.
“Call off your dog,” Martin responded, the knife nicking flesh, a tiny bead of blood sliding down the kid’s throat.
He didn’t flinch, didn’t cry out. He just stared into Tony’s eyes, silently begging for help.
“Rusty, off,” Tony commanded.
The Lab continued to growl as he backed off and took his place next to Tony.
“That’s better,” Martin muttered, stepping backward, the knife blade still pressed against the boy’s neck. “Now, put your weapon down, and we’ll all be just fine.”
“You know I’m not going to do that, Martin.”
“Then, I guess this kid is going to die. Just like your buddy.” Martin’s eyes were cold, his tone emotionless.
“Put the knife down, let the boy go and we’ll get you the help you need.”
“I don’t need help. I need to get back what your friend took from me.” Martin nearly spat the words, his gaze suddenly sharp with rage.
“Please let me go,” the teen gasped, his eyes wide with fear, the thin trickle of blood staining the collar of his jacket.
“Once we’re out of the park and away from the police, you can go on with your day. If you cooperate.” Martin dragged the boy to the edge of the clearing, his focus on Tony. “None of this needed to happen. None of it. Jordan could have had any woman. He didn’t have to go after mine.”
“Katie was never yours, Martin. You know that.” Tony followed Martin across the clearing, Rusty close to his side.
“She was always mine. She will always be mine. She knows that. I know it. It is just the rest of the world that needs to understand.” Martin’s knife hand slipped away from the boy’s neck.
Tony lunged toward Martin, grabbed his wrist and dragged it away from the boy’s throat. The teen twisted free, shoving into Tony as he tried to run. He tripped, sprawling on the ground, his shoulders knocking Tony’s arm. Tony’s hand slipped, and the knife slid across his shoulder, slicing through fabric and flesh. There was no pain. Just the desperate need to regain control of the weapon.
Martin jerked back, the knife still in his hand. He swung, the blade arching through the air inches from Tony’s face.
“Back off!” Martin spat as he raised the knife again.
This time Tony was ready.
He gave Martin a two-armed shove backward, pulled out his firearm and aimed for Martin’s arm. He didn’t want to kill the man. He just needed to stop him. “Freeze!” he yelled, as the teen jumped to his feet and darted between them.
It was the second of opportunity Martin needed.
The knife blade dropped again, this time slicing across the boy’s cheek. He darted away, pushing through a patch of brambles and darting from the line of Tony’s gunfire.
Blood spurted from the wound in the teen’s cheek. He wobbled as Tony shoved past, ready to follow Martin.
“Stay here!” he shouted at the boy.
But, the kid didn’t seem interested in listening.
He followed Tony, rushing after him as he shoved through the patch of brambles and called in his location.
“I said, stay put!” Tony repeated, concerned for the boy, but more concerned that Martin would escape again. He had proven to be cunning and dangerous, and he needed to be apprehended before he hurt someone else.
“I’m not staying there waiting for him to come back for me,” the teen responded, his voice muffled and faint. One minute he was running behind Tony. The next, he was falling, his scrawny body knocking into Tony as he went down.
“You okay?” Tony asked, still moving. When the teen didn’t respond, he glanced back. The kid was lying prone, blood seeping from his cheek, eyes closed. He was clearly unconscious.
Tony itched to go after Martin, but he couldn’t leave an injured and unconscious teenager lying in the park alone.
Frustrated, he jogged back, crouching near the young man and feeling for a pulse. Every second he spent there was a second more of distance Martin put between them, but this wouldn’t be the end of the chase. As soon as backup arrived, Tony and Rusty would return to the hunt.
I’ll get you, Tony vowed. For Katie. For Jordan.
For himself.
Katie didn’t like hospitals. The scents and sounds brought back memories she’d rather forget. She had been ten when her parents died. An only child being raised by only children, she had had an idyllic childhood—a pretty house in the suburbs, nice clothes, good food and parents who’d loved her.
That had changed the night of her parents’ fifteenth wedding anniversary. She had been at home with a babysitter when a drunk driver had blown through a red light and hit her parents’ sedan. Her father had been killed instantly. Her mother had lived for nearly a week. Katie had visited her every day, standing alone in the ICU and listening to the whoosh and beep of the machines keeping her mother alive. She’d had no grandparents, uncles or aunts to support her as she grieved. Just strangers who had meant well but who had not been able to give her the only thing she had wanted—her parents.
Even now, all these years later, hospitals made her stomach churn.
She touched her abdomen, her fingers skimming across the fetal monitor that was strapped there. The baby was moving, her rapid heartbeat filling the silence of the room. The contractions had ended as abruptly as they’d begun, and for the past two hours, she had been lying in the hospital bed, watching the clock,