"Hey, pal!" the kidnapper shouted, his voice tense with panic. "That’s my daughter! What do you think you’re doing?"
Bear didn't answer with words.
He closed the distance across the wet pavement in four thunderous strides. Before the predator could pull whatever was hidden in his pocket, Bear’s massive left hand clamped around the man's throat like a hydraulic vice, slamming him backward into the side of the white van with enough force to dent the metal paneling.
The kidnapper choked, his eyes bulging in pure terror as he looked into the scarred face of a man who showed no hesitation and no mercy.
"You took three wrong turns today," Bear growled into the man’s ear, pressing his heavy forearm across the predator's chest. "You picked this highway, you hurt an innocent child, and you thought you could walk past me."
With one brutal strike of his elbow, Bear neutralized the threat, dropping the kidnapper limp onto the wet concrete. Bear stood over him, pinning the man’s wrists behind his back with the heavy steel chain until the flashing red and blue strobes of county patrol cruisers lit up the rain.
Ten minutes later, state troopers swarmed the lot, verifying that the girl had been abducted from an elementary school parking lot three states away forty-eight hours earlier.
As paramedics wrapped the little girl in a warm emergency blanket inside the ambulance, she looked out through the open rear doors. Bear stood beneath the red neon canopy of the gas station, his leather jacket drenched in rain, watching over her until the convoy safely departed.