Chapter 3

Chapter

Three

February 14th

7:41 P.M.

Normally, Panther didn"t allow his son to have anything to do with the darkness that shrouded his life.

Work was work, but home was home.

Home was a safe place he had to create for his son. Andy was everything to him, and while he wasn"t pleased to have his little boy out there with a client, he couldn"t seem to summon the words to tell Andy to go back inside.

It was the way his son hadn"t hesitated to approach a woman he didn"t even know. The empathy in his little boy's words and actions. In this moment, Andy seemed so grown-up, so much older than his eight years, and Panther couldn't be prouder of him.

That wasn't the only reason he couldn't bring himself to separate Elle and Andy.

The way Elle looked at his son, even in the midst of the horrific ordeal she was living, with such respect and admiration, did something to his heart.

Had his ex ever looked at their son with even half as much emotion as Elle was currently showing the boy?

It hurt to say Marcia hadn"t.

Not once.

Despite all her talk about how amazing it would be to get married and raise their unplanned baby together, she hadn"t taken to motherhood at all. They'd been young, and Panther had been working hard to make it through his training and hopefully get a place on Delta Force at the end. He'd wanted to support his family even if he'd been unsure if he was ready for the responsibility. Marcia hadn"t wanted to give up her lifestyle of hanging out with friends and going to clubs and bars to look after an infant.

But the way Elle smiled at his son … that was everything. Not that he'd had any doubts about what kind of mother the woman was, but if he had, this moment would have wiped them all away.

Elle Cavey was exactly the kind of mother he wished his son had had.

When she shifted her gaze to meet his, those tear-drenched brown eyes were filled with such trust that they speared an arrow straight through his heart.

It wasn"t that he wasn"t used to people trusting him. His son trusted him to provide everything he needed, his team trusted him to have their backs, and victims trusted him to save them, but something about this trust Elle was handing him felt different.

Unsettled and wanting to move on, focus on the reason the woman was there, so he could get her daughter back where she belonged, Panther cleared his throat.

"Okay, let's go inside and you can tell me everything," he said, reaching for Andy"s hand. His other hand, somehow, with no conscious thought on his part, found its way to the small of Elle"s back as if it was the most natural thing in the world, and he guided her up the porch steps. He felt her reaction to his touch, the way her body straightened, the slight inhalation of breath at the arc of attraction that seemed to spark between them.

Panther felt it, too, and he didn"t like it.

He wasn't looking for a woman to date. He'd tried marriage, and it hadn"t worked out well for him. Not that he regretted his relationship with Marcia and their short-lived marriage because it had given him his son.

Andy was at the center of everything Panther did. It wasn't easy to leave his little boy at home to go off on missions, but he wanted to do whatever he could to make the world a slightly safer place for his child to grow up in. A child of a broken home himself, the last thing Panther wanted to do was bring into his son's life another woman who sooner or later would wind up leaving him.

Being constantly shuttled between his parents, feeling like he didn"t belong anywhere, then watching as both his mom and dad remarried and had new families, leaving him out in the cold, had made Panther wary of marriage. Then having his wife leave him a single dad of a one-year-old had sealed the deal.

He wasn't looking for anything with a woman.

Ever.

His priority was his son, job, and Bravo Team family.

Nothing else.

Given that her seven-year-old daughter was missing, Panther highly doubted that Elle was looking for anything, serious or otherwise, with a man.

She was there for help finding her child. That he was picturing her naked and in his bed—and worse, sitting around his kitchen table laughing and joking with his son—was completely and utterly inappropriate.

Disgusted with himself, Panther was about to order Andy off to bed so he could get to work looking for Ruthie Cavey, but apparently, his son had other ideas.

"You need tea," Andy announced to Elle as they entered the cabin, immediately reaching for her hand and tugging her through and into the kitchen. Of all the cabins belonging to his teammates on the compound his was the biggest. The front door opened onto a large living room, with a staircase in the corner leading up to three bedrooms and two bathrooms. To the right of the living room was Andy's playroom, to the back of the living room was a huge kitchen diner, and leading off that was Panther's office.

"Umm, tea?" Elle asked, confused, allowing Andy to guide her over to the table.

"Mrs. Pfeffer says tea makes everything better," Andy explained. It seemed like his son had taken an immediate liking to Elle. Homeschooled and having spent almost his entire life on the remote compound, it usually took the little boy a while to warm up to new people, but not Elle. Andy had jumped in on sight.

"Uh, who's Mrs. Pfeffer?" Elle asked, turning her gaze to him.

"She's a retired school teacher who tutors Andy and looks after him if I"m away," Panther explained. His son wasn't the only one who usually kept his distance, Panther never usually talked about his private life, let alone his son, with a client.

Yet for some reason Elle felt different.

Crazy.

Totally crazy.

The woman was there for one reason and one reason alone.

Yet his mouth seemed to disagree and kept right on talking as he went to fill Mrs. Pfeffer's kettle and grabbed some teabags from the pantry. "She's English, and you know how they are about their tea. She lives in town, I"ve offered to build her a cabin of her own out here, but she says she'd miss the hustle and bustle." No idea why he was telling her all of this, Elle didn"t care, and it wasn't relevant, but for some reason he was rambling like he was nervous on a first date or something.

"It's nice you have her. I take it you're a single dad?"

"My mom didn"t want me," Andy announced like it was no big deal at all as he chose his favorite mug and set it on the counter next to the stove where the kettle was boiling.

"Oh, I"m so sorry, sweetheart. Ruthie's daddy didn"t want her either. But it looks like you have the best daddy in the world," Elle said.

Andy beamed up at him. "My daddy is a superhero like Spiderman and The Hulk."

"Your daddy is a superhero," Elle murmured her agreement, and the hope in her eyes as she looked at him almost stole his breath. Her daughter had been missing for a month, there was every chance that the child was gone for good and he wouldn't be able to find her. Panther knew Elle had come as a last resort and if he failed her …

If he failed her then she would never get her daughter back.

If that happened, he wasn't sure how he'd be able to deal with the guilt of letting her down.

When the kettle boiled, he made the tea, and allowed Andy to carry the mug over to the table to Elle, before deciding he'd wasted enough time and now he had to get down to business.

"Off to bed, buddy," he told Andy. "Go up and get your pajamas on, brush your teeth, and I'll be up to tuck you in in a few minutes."

Looking from Elle to him and then back to Elle again, when Andy finally turned serious hazel eyes on him, Panther wasn't surprised by what his son said. "You don't have to tuck me in, Daddy, I can do it myself. You need to help Elle find Ruthie."

In that moment, all his fears of not being a good enough father, all the guilt about being gone so often, his worries that he wasn't giving his boy what he needed evaporated like a puff of smoke. Andy was only eight, and he was already someone Panther could be proud of. Intelligent, sensitive, compassionate, and with a heart so big there wasn't anyone he couldn't care about. Andy was everything Panther had hoped his son would grow up to be.

"Goodnight, Dad." Andy wrapped his skinny arms around Panther's waist, and he leaned down to kiss the top of his son's head. "Night, Elle." There was no hesitation on Andy's part, he just walked over, hugged Elle hard, and then ran out of the kitchen and up the stairs.

"You have an amazing little boy," Elle whispered, tears glimmering in her eyes.

"The best," he agreed.

"H-he sent me this," she said, fishing something from her purse and holding it out to him with a shaking hand. "I"m so terrified about what he"s going to do to my baby."

While he wouldn"t say the words aloud, and only knowing the bare bones about the case, Panther also feared for the little girl"s safety, and the sanity of the desperate mother sitting before him.

February 14th

7:54 P.M.

Elle"s hand shook badly as she held out the photos that had been hand delivered to her home. She had no idea how he managed to get in and out with her expensive security system, but somehow he did. He'd done it when he abducted her daughter and many times both before and after he'd taken Ruthie.

At first it was letters.

Love letters.

Creepy love letters.

Little notes telling her how much he loved her and how much he wanted the two of them to be together. Of course, she had reported them immediately, but the guy never left any forensics behind, and after a short investigation the cops seemed to just brush it off as harmless fan mail. Implying that if she wanted to put herself in the public eye as a well-known romance author, she should accept that it was going to come with fans.

But it wasn't harmless.

This guy left the notes inside her house. He never entered while she was home, so he was watching her and knew when her house would be empty. No matter how many times she changed the code to her security system, he always seemed to crack it, so he had the skills to bypass the system. Just because he never threatened her with violence didn"t make the notes okay. There was a clear undertone of possession in them, like he already viewed her as his, there was absolutely nothing harmless fan mail about them.

Maybe if someone had paid attention to her, he wouldn't have taken her daughter.

After Ruthie was kidnapped, the love letters started including photos. They were always of the same thing. Her daughter sitting in a room, fancy and ornate enough to belong to a princess, dressed in a ball gown, crying.

Sobbing.

Her baby was crying, and she wasn"t there to make everything better.

That was every mother's worst nightmare, only there was no waking from this because it wasn't a dream, it was real life.

Taking the photos from her, the grim look on Panther's face was enough to confirm her suspicions that he saw this the same way she did. Her baby was never coming home. Elle hadn"t wanted to admit it, not even in her darkest moments, but right then, seeing the expression on Panther's face forced her to confront reality.

The world felt like it was disappearing around her, leaving her trapped in a dark, empty place where there was nothing but pain, fear, sadness, regret, guilt, and grief.

Soul-destroying grief.

"Hey."

Large hands clasped her shoulders, giving her a firm shake, and Elle blinked away the darkness and looked up to find Panther before her, knees bent so they were at eye level. This man exuded strength and confidence, and she wanted to absorb both because she was tapped out.

He had been her last hope, but he didn"t think finding Ruthie was possible. She'd seen the truth in his eyes, and it had broken her, drained her of the remaining strength she had somehow been managing to cling to.

"Listen to me, Elle." Those large hands shifted until they cradled her face, his thumbs stroking along her cheekbones, catching tears she hadn"t even realized were falling. "I promise I will do everything I can to find your daughter and bring her home to you, but I need you to do something for me."

"Anything," Elle hurriedly agreed.Whatever it took, walk through hell, deal with the devil, it didn"t matter so long as Ruthie was home and safe.

"I need you to hold it together." Panther glanced over his shoulder to the door where his son had disappeared just moments ago. "I can"t imagine what you"re going through, if I"m honest I don"t even want to. But I will work this as hard as I would if it was Andy who had been taken."

That promise meant everything to her. "Thank you."

Panther gave a single nod. "You good?"

No. But for now, she could find a little more strength to keep moving forward. When she nodded, he released her and she immediately felt the loss. Begging him to hold her was completely inappropriate no matter how much her body seemed to crave his touch. So she clamped her mouth closed, and instead, focused on the pictures he was now flipping through.

The fact that her daughter always looked clean was the worst thing about them. It was obvious she was being bathed regularly, but by herself or did the man do it? Did he touch her little girl"s naked body? Had he hurt her?

Not having answers was driving her to the point of insanity.

"H-he took her because of m-me. Because he's obsessed with me, but I don't know who he is. I don't know who he is," she repeated on a sob. How much easier this would be if she could just give the cops a name, and they could go to his house, arrest him, and bring her daughter home.

But she didn"t know his name.

She had no idea who he was or why he had decided to fixate on her.

Over the last month, the cops hadn"t had a single viable lead to her stalker and her daughter's abductor's identity.

Was it stupid to think that Panther could achieve what the police and the FBI had been unable to? Was she just deluding herself into thinking the outcome would be any different?

"No," Panther said with such authority that Elle startled. "Whoever he is, he took your daughter because he chose to. Because he wanted to carry out his own sick, twisted plans. It is not your fault. You are not responsible for the actions of other people."

All she could do following his outburst was stand there and stare at him in shock. Not even the cops had been so adamant in telling her that it wasn't her fault. Their responses had been lukewarm at best, and she couldn't help but feel that they were judging her, blaming her, even as they pretended not to be.

Or that was her own guilty conscience talking.

If she'd just done more, pushed harder, hired private security, something, anything, then maybe this wouldn't have happened.

A thumb and forefinger pinched her chin just hard enough to sting, and her face was tilted up so she could meet Panther's glowing golden eyes. "Not. Your. Fault," he repeated.

Before she could say anything, her cell phone began to ring, an unknown number showing on the screen.

"Answer it," Panther said.

Elle nodded. It was probably another newspaper or blogger wanting to interview her. She turned them all down, it sickened her to think that they thought she would use her daughter"s kidnapping for publicity she didn"t even need. Book sales were going better than she ever could have hoped for, and she had a few offers to turn them into movies. Her career was doing great, she didn"t need to use her personal tragedy to prop it up, and even if sales weren"t doing well she would never use her daughter's ordeal like that.

Ever.

And it made her feel shallow and pathetic to have anyone think that she would.

"Hello?" she said as she accepted the call.

"Mommy!" Ruthie"s hysterical voice would have made her fall to her knees, but Panther was there, wrapping an arm around her waist and holding her up.

"Baby! Ruthie, my sweet little unicorn girl, I've missed you so much. I love you so much, baby. I love you more than anything in the whole entire world. You are my world. Where are you, baby? Tell Mommy where you are so I can come and get you. Are you okay, little unicorn girl? Are you hurt?"

"I don"t know where I am, Mommy. I don"t know," Ruthie sobbed. "The man, he said you have to come to him, that we all have to be together. Like a family. He says we're a family, Mommy. He says if you don"t come he"s going to hurt me. Mommy, come here, please! I"m scared, Mommy. Come, I want you to come. I want to go home. I miss you, Mommy. I want you. I want to go home. Please, Mommy, come to the man's house. Please, Mom?—"

The call ended abruptly, and Elle screamed.

For a few precious seconds, she'd had contact with her baby girl and now it was gone, and it felt like Ruthie was being ripped away from her all over again.

"No!" she screeched, vaguely aware of the fact that she shouldn't be yelling, that she didn"t want to scare or upset little Andy. But she wasn't in control of herself or her actions right now. She was consumed with terror for her daughter. "Ruthie? Baby? Come back! Don't leave me again, baby, don't leave me. Mommy needs you, Ruthie. Come back to me!" Her own sobs became hysterical as she collapsed against Panther, convinced that was the last time she would ever hear her sweet little girl"s voice.