Obsession Falls by Christina Dodd Page B

police or the FBI. Instead, he had sat down and examined the event as reported by the children and staff. He had deduced who on the inside had cooperated with the criminals, and called Helen Allen into his office. Within an hour, she had confessed all she knew.
    A man who somehow knew her financial need had contacted her and offered her twenty-five thousand dollars to deliver Miles to him. The stranger was tall and handsome, and he said he was the child’s father; he had sworn all he wanted to do was see his kid. Helen Allen had told Miles about the man, told him his father wanted to meet him, and Miles had gone with her. Just like that.
    The child whom Kennedy had so carefully instructed on what to believe, whom to trust, had gotten in the car and traveled to the Oakland airport because he so badly wanted to know his father.
    Kennedy and Tabitha had assured Miles his father was dead.
    Apparently Miles had not believed them.
    And Miles was right: his father was very much alive, in east L.A., living on the streets, selling drugs, taking drugs …
    Even now, Kennedy didn’t know how much of Miles’s action was foolishness, how much was blind hope, and how much was defiance of Kennedy’s directives. But the results had been disastrous, and led both Miles and Kennedy to a rugged roadside in Idaho’s Sawtooth Mountains.
    When Kennedy arrived in the helicopter with his security team, Ramon Hernandez had been headed for the black Mercedes, keys in hand. When he saw Kennedy, Hernandez pulled a pistol and started shooting.
    Kennedy had dropped him with a gunshot to the leg. At the same time, one of his team shot and killed Hernandez before he could be questioned.
    Kennedy had not been pleased. Kennedy had looked into his employee’s background, but saw no sign he had profited from the move. Nevertheless, he had been removed from Kennedy’s security and put into a more innocuous position.
    The team had at once begun to examine the evidence, to try to construct the state of affairs.
    Miles’s school necktie was wrapped around the inside of the trunk latch—a clear signal he had been there.
    But the boy was nowhere to be seen.
    The trackers on the team pointed to the skidding footprints through the meadow.
    Miles was alone and moving fast, running for his life.
    So Kennedy went looking for his nephew. With one tracker ahead and one tracker behind, he followed the steep trail of broken branches up the side of the mountain, calling, bellowing, for Miles.
    Kennedy had not come this far to lose him now.
    After a half mile, Miles came careening out of the brush and flung himself into Kennedy’s arms. Kennedy’s relief exploded in affection—he fell to his knees and hugged Miles—then exasperation—he took Miles by the shoulders and shook him, and told him never to do anything so foolish again—then hugged him once more.
    And guilt gnawed at him.
    Kennedy’s father had died in a prison ward in the hospital. Kennedy’s mother was in prison. Although he made sure they had had, and his mother continued to have, the best of care, all Kennedy had in this world was Tabitha and this boy. They were his to care for, and he had failed them both.
    It would not happen again.
    They got back down the mountain to the helicopter, and found one of the trackers examining the other side of the road. She said, “There was another person here.”
    Miles’s face was streaked with tears and snot, dirt and blood and vomit, but when Kennedy looked at him, he straightened like a soldier and said, “Yes! He was a long-armed, mean gorilla asshole, and I hope you kill him, too.”
    Tabitha would have reprimanded him for his language and his violence.
    Kennedy put his hand on Miles’s shoulder. “That’s my boy.” To the security team, he said, “We need to send people after the gorilla, in the air and on the ground. And get a sketch artist onto the plane. Miles can describe the face on the way back to San Francisco.”
    The lead on the team nodded