“We will get her out. When you run an international security company, you do a fair amount of hostage recovery. We prefer to do straight ransom delivery on a K and R case, but sometimes the kidnappers decide not to turn over the hostage.”
It was Mac’s turn to consider. “Getting all soft and touchy-feely on me?”
Nash snorted, but his tone remained serious. “I’m not your commanding officer on this one, Brody. Your woman, your op.”
“She’s not my woman.” But the response was automatic, and both men knew it. Callie had reached something inside him he hadn’t even known existed, and he wouldn’t let her down, no matter what.
“Hold up,” said Nash. “Something’s coming through.”
Mac waited while Nash unhooked his cell phone, which he’d set to vibrate, from his belt holster and read through some text messages.
“There’s a big-ass yacht anchored offshore near Anguilla. You know where that is?”
“Ferry ride away.”
“Okay. Yacht is owned by one of Falcone’s known associates, and Lexie thinks Falcone is either aboard or came to St. Martin after being aboard. It would have been easy enough to get there from his island retreat in the Grenadines.”
Mac began crawling forward again. “Which means there’s something here that’s important to him. The weapons shipment?”
“Looks like.”
“Fuck. This is gonna get real ugly real quick.”
Mac could feel Nash’s familiar, grim smile beneath his reply. “Only if we let it.”
***
Get out of here! The thought cut through the fog in Callie’s mind. How long had she been lying on the cot, staring up at the brad beams of the ceiling since Lizard Eyes and Blondie had departed? Time tangled, stretching out and snapping back. Her body ached, and a throbbing pulse emanated from the swelling in her cheeks and tongue where she’d bitten them, breaking the skin.
She examined the contraption attaching her to the cot but found no weakness. The supplies—a simple combination lock and length of coated stainless cable—could be bought at any hardware store or bike shop, but their ubiquity in no way cheated them of effectiveness. The shackle itself she couldn’t figure out. Had he had it made specifically, or was it merely adapted from something else? It fit loosely around her ankle, snapped shut and locked with the same lock that attached it to the cable. She pulled off her shoe and tried to squeeze her foot out of it. No luck. No matter how hard she pointed her toes, she couldn’t force the cuff down over her heel.
Fear rose as acid in the back of her throat. They would kill her. Either John, for some insane reason she couldn’t fathom, or Falcone’s men, who believed her intimately connected to Nash Harper’s organization.
Could she play them against one another? For whatever sick reason—and Callie forced her mind away from any consideration of what that might be—John had instructed the goons not to hurt her. If she pretended a more severe injury, would he wait for her to heal? How bad would it have to be? And how bad could it get before he would decide she was no longer useful and kill her on the spot?
She studied the cot. Most of the edges were rounded, but the feet were sharp and square. She could get her shoulder under the frame, pick it up, then let it down so the corner of the foot sliced her leg. Would it be enough? And what if the cut went too deep and John did not return in time?
She heard movement overhead, and the door reopened. John skipped down the stairs, his gleeful appearance more frightening than the goons’ dour coldness. In his hand, he held the remote control for the collar.
“All ready,” he said to her. “Now, let’s go upstairs. I am going to tell you what the combination for that lock is, and you are going to come along quietly.” He held up the remote. “This has some very nifty capabilities, and you won’t like them. So just do as you’re told.”
As soon as she’d freed her leg, Callie stood. “Falcone’s men have gone after whatever you’re holding for them.” Her speech came out a bit garbled from all the swelling in her mouth, but she could see understanding in John’s eyes. “They intend to get it without you, then come back here and kill you.”
John frowned. “They can’t get it without me. They have no way into the storage compartment.”
“That’s not what they said. Why do you think they’re not down here questioning me? They decided I wasn’t so important after all.”
“You’re lying.”
“Why would I lie?” She kept her tone nonconfrontational. “As you said, our father, Mark Lewis, left me here to help you. And they . . . hurt me.” She touched her face.
“You don’t believe in Father’s work.”
Okay, so he was crazy, not stupid. “I believe we have a better chance fighting Falcone’s men together than we do apart. I heard them talking; they’ll kill both of us the minute they have whatever you’re storing for them. That’s not belief; it’s fact.”
His gray eyes narrowed on her, evaluating, and she allowed herself a moment to hope she’d gotten through. But then he shook his head.
“Once you help me, I’ll be able to handle them.” He backed away from the foot of the stairs and gestured for her to ascend. He remained several steps behind her on the way up, and were it not for the collar, she’d have made a break for it.
On the main floor he directed her to the office. Of their own volition, Callie’s eyes went to the couch where she and John had sat flipping through photo albums. How could she have been so completely deceived? How could she have missed the insanity in him when he was so close?
Lewis, it seemed, was remembering the same evening.
“Your friend Brody was here that night, you know. I checked the monitor on my cell phone when it went off during dinner, and again while I was pouring our wine. He was hiding in the closet, waiting to come to your rescue. I could have called the gendarmes on him the minute he tripped my secondary alarm system, but I didn’t feel like interrupting our fascinating conversation. Besides, he might have piqued their curiosity. I assume he was looking for Nicole?”
What was the best answer? What would keep him talking the longest? “Actually, he said he was going to the Paradis that night to check for evidence my parents had been guests. He didn’t mention breaking in here. If he had, why would I have agreed to come over?” She swallowed. “But now that you mention it, was Nikki here that night?”
“Naturally. I didn’t move her until after I brought you back to Port de Plaisance and checked the security cameras to be sure Brody had taken off. I’d arranged for you to be safely out of my hair for the rest of the evening, so I showed my face down at the hotel, had a drink with the night manager, then took Nicole home.”
“Without one of her hands.”
He shrugged. “It was worth a try. And the ring, at least, proved useful. But the freezing—or some other factor—worked against me. I won’t make the same mistake with you.” He sidled over to the bookcase and removed several books, revealing a lever. He cranked the lever down, and a section of the bookshelf shifted back, then slid sideways.
“Inside.”
As slowly as she figured he’d let her, Callie inched toward the gap in the bookcase, simultaneously fascinated and terrified. Might there be some sort of weapon in the hidden room she could use against John? It would have to be long, like a broomstick or mop, something she could use to attack him quickly, disabling him or at least making him lose his grip on the remote before he could hit her with another charge.
What she saw shocked her to a standstill. The small space had obviously once been a security room and still had monitors on the back wall where video feeds of various parts of the property ran silently, casting a flickering light through the space. But the rest had been converted to an operating room, complete with tiled walls, a drainage grate in the floor, and a table with gutters on both sides. And stirrups. Stirrups. What the hell? Sh
e’d seen enough CSI shows to know that some of the other devices laid out on tables along the sidewall shouldn’t be used on living patients.
She turned to run, but John stood behind her, pointing the remote.
“Inside,” he said, a little smile playing about his lips.
No way in hell was she entering that room.
“Go ahead and zap me. Your buddies already did it a couple times, though, so you’d better be careful. Whatever freezing did, I can’t imagine an overdose of electricity could be that much better for your long-term plans.” Her muscles tensed, anticipating the pain, but it didn’t come. Instead, a damp, sweet-smelling mist surrounded her head. She choked, sucking the drug into her lungs before she could stop herself, and the world disappeared in a rushing cloud of black-winged butterflies.
***
The bitch hit the floor hard, but he wasn’t worried. A soft Persian rug he’d bought on a trip to Morocco covered the hardwood, so her body wouldn’t be overly damaged. Falcone’s boys should have stuck around to help him shift her to the lab, though, instead of running down to the Paradis to try to retrieve their precious cargo themselves. They’d pay for that once he had her safely stored.
He bent over and pulled her into a sitting position so he could wedge his shoulder under her arm and hoist her into a fireman’s carry. Cow. He felt a moment’s fear as he strained beneath her weight. What if her slovenly lack of care for her appearance infected him? Could a woman who exhibited such lack of restraint in her eating habits really be the one? He hadn’t had time to research her thoroughly. What if she had an addiction or some form of illness?
And she’d doubtless been fucking his former brother-in-law. God knows what she could have picked up there. The man was total scum. Could he have passed her something so quickly? Something that might lurk in her blood?
Then you’ll be well and truly screwed, won’t you, buddy boy? You’d better hope she’s not tainted like the one your precious daddy kept for himself. Weak genes. Pretty enough, but flawed. Just like him.
“Shut up!” John stumbled, pitched forward, almost lost his footing. “Shut fucking up! You’re dead. Dead!”
But laughter echoed in his head even as he made his way into the secret lab.
***
The ground beneath Mac’s hands went from dirt to grass in an instant, and he called a halt to their progress. Nash inched up next to him, and both men pulled off their helmets. They’d reached the edge of Lewis’s property. A wrought-iron fence lay between them and the expanse of manicured lawn. The fence, at six feet high, presented no problem. The lawn might. Or, more accurately, the two guys with machine guns patrolling it might.
He could shoot them, of course. And if he were certain they’d been assigned here as part of Falcone’s organization, he might. But if they were just hired muscle, working for some European or American security company like Nash’s, they didn’t deserve to die for doing their job. Too bad he and Nash hadn’t brought tranqs, but Mac rarely found himself in need of such exotic weaponry.
“I’ll circle around, create a diversion, then meet you inside.”
Mac shook his head. “They’re heavily armed, and we don’t know how many there are. You can’t take them on, and these two may not budge if there are more up front already.”
“Have I mentioned how much I hate ops without adequate intel?”
Despite the knots in his gut, Mac couldn’t help but grin. “A time or two.”
Nash grunted. “All right, then, what do you suggest?”
Mac watched as the two guards met in the center of the yard, spoke briefly, and continued on their individual paths. One paused at the northwest corner of the house, his head swiveling to watch the back and side of the property, while the other continued patrolling, passing out of view around the northeast corner. A few minutes later, the walker returned and the one who had paused disappeared and walked up the west side, where he seemed to stop and speak to someone beyond Mac’s line of sight. Then he returned.
“So three at least. Probably four. Concentration on the front.” Nash’s words echoed Mac’s thoughts. “Wonder how many he has in the house.”
“Probably none. Maybe some of Falcone’s inside guys, but no low-level hired help. Not if he’s holding Callie prisoner.” Please, God, let her just be a prisoner. As long as she was alive, they could deal with anything else.
“Your op,” Nash reminded him. “How you want to do this?”
“Work our way around. As I recall, Lewis has a hot tub on the west side of the house with palms around it. Papa Lewis planted them for privacy with his model bride.” He remembered using the tub with Nikki in the early days of their relationship. She’d insisted they sneak in, though John would have given them permission. It was all part of the game to her, part of what gave him the rush he got from being with her. In hindsight, he wondered how he could have imagined such a passing adrenaline high could last a lifetime. How he could have wanted it to.
“The trees will give us some cover, especially at this hour when the sun’s still low enough there will be plenty of shadow. We can take out whatever guard John has on that side. We won’t have long, though, because these guys check in with each other on every pass.”
“Let’s do it.”
Lizards and rodents scurried away as the men continued pushing through the growth, heading east. They rounded the corner, and Mac sent up a prayer of thanks for the brush that continued to hide them as they made their way toward the grove of trees around the hot tub. But while Lewis had left the tangle of plants between his property and his neighbor’s alone for a measure of privacy, both men had erected fences, leaving only a narrow strip for Mac and Nash. The plants would move with their passage, and any alert guard would notice.
And if said guard started shooting, they’d be dead meat. Nowhere to run.
They had to go over the fence.
***
John winced at the sight of the cow’s pale, fat flesh as he stripped her. Looking at her lying there on the table brought all the doubts back. She was so far from perfect. How could Father have meant her to perfect him? But then, he didn’t need her outside. He’d tried that before.
He’d read her résumé. She was smart and didn’t have any apparent vices. If she’d gotten lazy about taking care of herself, if her body was unattractive, that served his purpose. It meant she’d probably polluted herself less than others like Nicole with her perfect figure and flawless skin, who’d had men trailing in her wake since her early teens.
He pushed the cow’s unresisting feet into the stirrups, then grabbed a roll of duct tape and taped her legs to the metal extensions from ankle to knee. He couldn’t have her trying to get out during the surgery. After testing the strength of the tape, he locked the stirrups to keep her legs open.
Satisfied with her legs, he moved up her body and wrapped tape tightly around her hips. He’d have preferred to coat her head to toe in the stuff, but he couldn’t afford to. He was no gynecological specialist, and he had to leave himself other ways into her body if his first attempt went awry. Not that he expected it to. He’d been studying for a long time, ever since he realized that as his psychological weakness came from his mother during the months he spent in her womb, he would need to perfect it with uterine cells as well as brain matter from the chosen one.
Still, he didn’t want to cut her open too soon. Abdominal surgery was risky if you cared about keeping the patient’s blood flowing to the brain. Better if the uterine tissue could be extracted vaginally, so her brain would remain perfect right up to the moment he cut into it.
He’d wanted to try the process with Nikki, but he’d been forced to kill her too soon. The hand, well, that had been a last-ditch effort to make lemonade. No, this was the way it had to be. Living tissue, dying breath.
He snapped her wrists into restraints.
***
; Callie woke to hell. Bright lights blinded her, but when she tried to shift her head to the side to avoid them, she realized that what she’d first felt as a bandage around her temples was actually some kind of restrictive device. In fact, she couldn’t move any of her limbs. She’d been strapped to a table, her feet in those stirrups she’d found so shocking. And she was naked.
A gag had been stuffed into her mouth, but she tried to scream around it.
“I thought you might do that,” said John, appearing above her. “Which is the reason I had to gag you. The room’s soundproof, so screaming when you’re not even in pain won’t do anything but make me angry. I would rather do surgery without it, so if you promise to behave, I’ll take it out.”
Behave? This lunatic wanted her to behave?
“Nnn-hnnn” was the best she could manage behind the gag. The headgear prevented her from nodding, though she could still shift her upper body a bit. Too bad she didn’t need to shrug.
“Good.” He stood over her and pulled a piece of duct tape off her mouth. She almost screamed again, this time from the pain, but she held it in. Instead, she pretended to be coughing, choking on the gag. But the ruse didn’t work. John took long forceps and grabbed the cotton wadding. She’d been hoping he would use his fingers, giving her a chance to bite them off his hand. That have would put an end to his surgical dreams for a while at least.
“What do you want from me?” Her mouth was parched, all liquid absorbed by the cotton, but talking was the only weapon left to her. “You could have asked. Are you sick? You need an organ transplant or something?”
“I’m not sick!” John snatched a scalpel from the tray and held it over his head, aiming down at her chest. She shrank back into the cold metal table as best she could. “She made me weak. It’s her fault! Now you’re going to make it right. That’s why he created you. Why he created all of you.”
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