Page 40 of Baby Daddy Protector

“Yes, sir,” the guards said.

I gave my friend a quick glance before moving to the large table in the center of the room where various maps and pages of notes were scattered. “I need a rundown, people.”

Felix stepped forward. “Sir, while we were traveling back here from the pub, I took the liberty of coordinating with the other guards and compiling the information into a single report. I thought it might be more expedient than interviewing everyone one-by-one now.”

I blinked at the guy for a minute, feeling a bit stunned. “Thanks, Felix.”

I nodded at him before scowling down at the screen. “Right. According to this report, she was abducted at fourteen hundred hours from outside the florist shop. Her captors put her in the back of a black SUV and sped off in an easterly direction. There appeared to be two muscle guys and the driver. All wore ski masks with no distinguishing marks or distinctive clothing.” I set the tablet aside and focused on the maps of the area spread out before me on the table. “Sounds like a basic bag and snatch.”

The routine jargon we used for kidnappings clogged my throat because this situation was anything but ordinary for me. This was my beloved wife, my precious child. But I had to keep some sort of control over my emotions, keep my heart out of it so I could think rationally and clearly. Otherwise, we could lose valuable time.

Deacon placed a strong hand on my shoulder. “We’ll get ’em back, man.”

“I know.” I just hoped that bastard Silvester didn’t do anything to her before we arrived. The thought of anyone harming Es had my blood boiling and my fingers itching to grab my weapon. I shook off my anger and fear as best I could and concentrated on finding a solution. “Okay. Given the time frame we’re dealing with and their direction of travel, I’d say these would be the best exit routes out of the city.”

“You think they left town?” Deacon asked, frowning.

“Makes the most sense. I’m betting her cousin was behind this. He’d want to get Es as far away from the palace as possible. Guys, can you bring me a list of the most recent threats we’ve received?”

I went over the information, sure I’d seen something come in recently…

“Here! Look at this.” I handed a paper to Deacon. It was an email that had come in shortly after the announcement about the coronation ceremony details. “Look at the last verse of that little poem. With the princess locked in her shabby castle by the sea, the rightful king will become what he truly ought to be. If that doesn’t have Silvester written all over it, I don’t know what does.”

“Sir,” another guard said, approaching. “I’ve been working on the dossier for Silvester and think there might be a viable location where he could have taken the princess.” The guard pulled up several pictures of a modest-looking cottage near the center of an isolated peninsula. “It was a summer home that used to belong to Silvester’s grandmother. Both he and Princess Esme are familiar with it, having both spent time there as children. We’ve been tracking Silvester’s movements lately, and he’s recently paid several visits to the property.”

“Where is he now?” I asked, trying to locate the home on the map in front of me.

“His itinerary shows him at an opening ceremony for a new office building downtown, but we’ve checked with the staff at that location, and they say he never showed up,” one of the other guards said from his post in front of a computer. “Let me see if I can pull up the footage of his limo.”

“How close is this office building to the florist shop where Esme was?” I asked.

“Several blocks,” the guard said.

“Close enough for this dude to make a detour,” Deacon said.

“Agreed.” I took a deep breath as a picture of the kidnapping began to form in my head. Silvester had to have been planning this for a while, watching and waiting for the perfect moment to catch Es without me. Dammit. I had had my misgivings about meeting Deacon today for lunch and now I knew they’d been well founded. Seemed Silvester had a mole within the security team. If only I’d stayed my course, kept watch over Es, she might be safe and sound and here with me right now. And the baby. Oh, God, my son. If anything happened to my child, I wasn’t sure I’d survive it.

“Hey, man.” Deacon slapped me on the back. “This wasn’t your fault. You couldn’t have known—”

“No. Ishouldhave known. That’s the problem.” I tossed the tablet down on the table. “It was all right there, in front of my face, but I didn’t put two and two together. The poem, all his snide remarks, the waiting and the watching.” I cursed under my breath and turned away, ashamed and embarrassed and more scared than I could ever remember being in my life. It was like the night my parents died all over again. They were gone and I was stuck waiting to hear something, anything, about them. I felt helpless, hopeless.

I slammed my fist against the wall, ignoring the stares of the guards around me. Pain shot from my hand up my arm, jarring me out of my self-pity. This was getting me exactly nowhere. Stewing in recriminations would not help me find Es and our son. I might have been a scared kid all those years ago, but now I was a full-grown, fully capable man and I’d be damned if I’d sit around and wait for Silvester to play his next cards.

A new idea occurred. “Can someone pull up a map of the locations of the previous terrorist attacks here in the city?” I asked. Soon the information popped up on one of the large, flat-screen wall monitors. I stood before it, arms crossed. “Silvester’s been scheming behind Es’s back for months. Ever since we went to DC. He stayed back here in Prylea and started dismantling all the things King Renault had put into place, thinking he’d be the next ruler. That included temporarily shutting down military training exercises here in Prylea. God, why didn’t I connect the dots before?”

“Well, you have been a bit busy over the last few months,” Deacon said.

“Funny. Not.” I gave my friend a flat stare. “Any word on that surveillance footage of the limo yet?”

“No, sir,” the guard said. “But I did find something else.”

Deacon and I walked over to where the guy was sitting behind his computer and stared over his shoulders at the screen. “There were no distinguishing marks on the SUV the kidnappers used to abduct the princess, sir. But look here.” He froze a frame of footage and zoomed in on the license plate. “The license plates were a dead end. Stolen. But I accessed the police surveillance footage of the city and surrounding areas to track any signs of this same plate heading in an eastern direction.”

“And?” I asked, squinting at the fuzzy black and white image on-screen.

“And we got a match, finally. Looks like our SUV was spotted heading toward the coast.”

Adrenaline pounded through my system as I rushed back to my maps on the table. “Okay. That coincides with my theory about that cottage at the beach. Can we get a drone out there to be sure?”

---