“I was,” she said quietly. “Then I woke up, scared that he was gone.”
Greyson nodded sympathetically. “I hear you, and that might happen for a while,” he said, “but you need to rest.”
“So do you,” she shot back. And then she couldn’t sleep anymore. She yawned, and, sitting up, she swung her legs over the edge of the bed. “I guess that was my ten-minute power nap.”
“It was actually about forty minutes,” he said, chuckling.
She looked at him, surprised, then over at the clock on her night table. “Wow. I had no idea.”
“Exactly,” he said. “So it’s all good.”
She nodded at Danny and then said, “I want him to get more sleep, but I don’t want to leave him up here alone.”
“What if we leave Kona up here?” he said with a motion toward the dog, who had now sneaked a little farther into the room, and lay at the foot of the bed.
Jessica smiled, then walked over and bent down with her hand out. Kona sniffed, then nuzzled her hand. Enchanted, she scratched her gently. “She really is beautiful, isn’t she?”
“Yes,” he said, “she really is. Inside and out. And extremely well-behaved.”
“Dang it, I still didn’t think about food for her,” she said.
He hesitated and said, “I need to go out and get dog food, plus a collar and a lead for her, and I could pick up some groceries for us too.”
“Or,” she said, “we could wait until Danny wakes up, and we could all go.”
He studied her face for a long moment and then smiled. “We can do that too.”
She beamed up at him. “Thank you. I just—” And her voice fell away.
“It doesn’t matter,” he said, reaching out. Just then his phone rang. He looked at it and said, “I’ve got to take this. Do you mind if I put the teakettle on?”
“Of course not,” she said. “Make yourself at home.”
He lifted a hand and went downstairs.
She crawled back up on the bed, grabbing her laptop from the bedside table, and checking her emails. She didn’t want to leave her son and, at the same time, felt oddly comfortable having Kona at the end of the bed. The dog was completely calm, relaxed, and sleeping.
Having Greyson downstairs was the icing on the cake. She could hear him talking but didn’t have a clue what was going on. She just hoped it was progress on the hunt for the asshole who had kidnapped her son. Of all the things she could let go of, the one thing that was not acceptable was hurting her child. Particularly taking him the way he’d been snatched.
“Right. Okay. I got it, Stone. He’s in the wind. It was a long shot anyway.” Greyson ran a hand through his hair. “Yeah, I’m staying here with her right now,” he said. “No way I’ll let this guy come back after them.” And then he told him about Kona bonding with the little boy.
Stone chuckled. “And that can be a problem,” he said. “When you get a dog like that, they are very protective,” he said. “So, in a way, it’s a good thing. It’ll be hard for the kidnapper to come back and grab that little boy again, as long as the dog is around. But you also have to consider that the guy might come back with a weapon next time and take out the dog first, when it takes a stand to protect the child.”
“I know. I was thinking about that too,” Greyson said. “I don’t have any weapons here myself.”
“The laws in Hawaii are different than in a lot of places,” Stone said.
“You and I both know that, if I wanted a weapon, I’d get it,” he said, his voice calm and low.
“And you and I both know,” Stone said, his voice equally calm, “that we don’t need to get weapons, right? We have weapons at our fingertips all the time.”
“Isn’t that the truth? Anyway, thanks so much for the satellite work. If you happen to run into any information on this guy, let us know.”
“Will do. I’m pretty sure Levi’s coordinating with Badger as it is.”
“I sure hope somebody is coordinating with the Hawaiian police,” he said, “because, at this point in time, it’s feeling like we’re on our own.”
“And again, sometimes that’s the best place to be,” Stone said. “Less people to report to, less people to give permission, less people to argue with about decisions. You know how it is.”
Even after Greyson hung up, he thought about that and realized it was one of the best things about doing something like this on a private level. He didn’t have to report in to anybody. As long as he kept on this side of the law, he wasn’t crossing anybody’s lines either. Of course the police wanted any information he got, and he was willing to share, but he also knew that they wouldn’t reciprocate. That’s the way the military functioned too. Or, for that matter, any law enforcement agency. One-way communication up the line. He put away his phone and grabbed his laptop from his duffel bag.
There had to be some way to find this guy. At least they had an ID, and they had the brother. Speaking of which, he quickly found a number for the brother at work.
When the brother answered the phone, he said, “Dennis, it’s Greyson. We met when your brother stole your truck. Where does Frank live?”
“Jesus, the cops are all over the place,” he said. “I wish to God my brother would just leave me alone.”
“He kidnapped a child,” Greyson reminded him, “and attacked two police officers.”
“Dumb shit,” Dennis muttered. “He’s always been a loose screw.”
“But he also has skills,” Greyson said. “Where and how?”
“Military black ops but then he was drummed out for bad behavior,” he said. “He went in young and took to the life a little too eagerly. Now that he’s out, he can’t quite let it go.”
“Is he going
