Page 66 of Broken SEAL'S Secret Baby
Grace emerges from the back of the police station first and rushes over to us. “I’m so, so sorry,” she says, her round, pink face splotchy from crying. “We used separate stalls in the ladies’ room, and when I came out, there were two young women. One of them had Cece, and the other one shot me with pepper spray, then hit me on the head.”
Kate soothes her friend as best she can. I couldn’t believe my ears. Courtesy, simple courtesy, had actually endangered my little girl.
James is the next to show up, pushed in a wheelchair, with a bandage wrapped around his head, looking dazed. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I was there waiting, then next thing I know I’m in an ambulance. What happened? Is everyone all right?”
While Kate explains to him, I listen to the scratchy voices and the crackle pop of the police scanner.
After a much longer wait, Larry comes in with a tall, athletic black man wearing a fire and rescue overall.
“Boss,” he says, “This here is Gregory Jones. He heads up the Four-State Valiant Fire and Rescue. He’s flown down here from Olathe to see if he can help.”
“Pleased to meet you,” Mr. Jones says, in a deep velvet voice that could have jellied knees as a midnight radio announcer or audio book reader.
I can’t help but feel a flash of jealousy. This is Kate’s high school crush? The man is lean, athletic, and obviously fit. His bearing says he had military training, and his confidence says ‘Leader.’ Worse yet, he is probably half my age. My lizard brain does a quick step-back when I see the glint of a wedding ring on his left hand. Not competition. Probably not competition.
“I’m here to help,” he says. “I brought a team of my rescuers down. This is a bad area for a child to be lost. Lots of hills, hollers, caves, and illegal merchandise for sale.”
“Moonshiners?” I quip, trying to show a little gallows humor to cover up my gnawing anxiety.
Gregory Jones turns a soft, pitying gaze on me. “Moonshine is just a word for spirits brewed up in an illegal still, and plenty of the farms up in these hills have a hidden patch of hemp. No, I’m talking about the meth labs and the designer drugs the college kids are learning to cook up.”
“College kids?” Grace packs a world of resentment into the words, possibly because if the dorms had not closed, she would still be a ‘college kid.’
“I got my degree in jurisprudence,” Mr. Jones says. “I’m for education. But some of these kids take their extra-curricular activities more seriously than their academics. It only takes one bad apple to spoil a barrel.”
Grace nods. “I know the type. Party, party, party, then demand tutors because they just don’t understand what the professor is trying to teach – especially since they skipped as many classes as they could get away with.”
“Exactly,” Gregory says.
We all sit silently for what seems like a hundred years, while the lobby clock ticks maddeningly, and the police scanner crackles with useless news.
Then, the door opens, and a tiny pink cannonball speeds through it and lands against me. “Daddy!” she exclaims. She is followed by three men wearing fire and rescue armbands.
“Cece?” Kate gasps.
“Is this the girl?” Gregory Jones asks.
“Yes,” I cry, tears running down my face. “This is Cece!”
“Who saved you?” Kate inquires.
“Nobody!” Cece says, excitedly. “I saved myself. I Ransom of Red Chief’d them, Miss Kate. I Red Chief’d them good! Although,” she adds with an air of giving credit where credit was due, “these guys helped a little.”
“Where did you find her?” I ask, opening my arms to my baby girl.
“Climbing a twenty-foot rockface like she was born to it. We’ve got the teens in custody. I think they might have viewed it as a rescue. She reached a ledge they couldn’t get to because they were too heavy to use her handholds, and they were arguing about what to do. She had gotten herself up onto a ledge where they couldn’t get to her. We had to rappel down to get her. And to get those young hoodlums, too.”
“I climbed just like Daddy and I practiced on the climbing wall,” Cece says excitedly. “I did just like Miss Kate said. I was as much trouble as I could be without getting hurt, and I got away as quick as I could. I was a little glad to get rescued, though. I think I was stuck.”
Chapter twenty-six
Kate
Cece clings to her father, pleased as punch that she’d put one (or several) over on the college students who had kidnapped her. First, she’d whined and pouted for drinks, then she threatened to pee on the girl holding her until the young woman had let go of her and set her down. The youngsters had argued about it, but finally decided to put ashore so they could all attend calls of nature.
While they were taking turns watching her, Cece had fooled around with the oars to their boat and lost one to the river current (oops). When they’d put ashore, she’d used the knife she filched from the boy’s tool belt to stab a hole in the lifeboat before taking off up across a steep cliff face.
“I climbed it just like the climbing wall on my pirate house, Miss Kate,” she explains. “I know that scared you, but I practiced with Daddy in his big gym in our old house. And it was much bigger and taller!”
