“What was she doing there? How could you let her go to a hellhole like that?”
The words shot from Tanner’s lips uncensored. He didn’t give a damn. Neither, apparently, did the general, who walked to the loveseat, sank down on it and folded his hands in his lap.
“I told you, Lieutenant. We are—we are not in touch with each other. Alessandra didn’t ask my permission or seek my advice. Even if we’d been, you know, close, even then, she’d have done what she wanted. She’s very independent. She’s always made her own decisions.”
Tanner nodded. What Wilde meant was that his daughter didn’t give a crap for him or for the rules most people lived by.
He knew the type. The offspring of the rich and powerful were often raised to believe the world belonged to them. Being a SEAL meant you met people you wouldn’t otherwise meet, and that included the spoiled, pampered, bitchy daughters of the wealthy.
The problem was, every now and then reality bit them in their well-tailored derrières.
“Lieutenant?”
“Yes.” Tanner looked at the photo again. “You said she’s working for an organization.”
“Yes. The FURever Fund.”
“I’ve never heard of them.”
Wilde snorted. “Neither has anyone else. A bunch of idiots, if you ask my opinion.”
“I don’t give a damn about your opinion. Sir,” Tanner added quickly, at Wilde’s look of shock “I’m trying to determine what you need to do next if you want to get your daughter back.”
The general rose to his feet. “Of course I want her back! That’s the reason I’m here.”
“Yes. Okay. I get that.” Tanner paused. “Did they send a note? A list of demands? Information on how they intend to make contact?”
The general took a plastic baggie from his briefcase. It contained a piece of paper.
“My man at State bagged it, but a dozen people at the wildlife place had probably already handled it.”
Tanner took the baggie and held it up. The piece of paper was a message, written in English and addressed to someone named Tomas Anerson.
Tanner looked at the general.
“Thomas Anderson,” the general said. “The head of the wildlife organization.”
The message itself was brief and to the point.
One hunert thousand dollares you get her live. There is a cafe on the square in San Felipe. Be there too days from now. Only you an the mony. Tell anybody an she dies.
There was no signature, just a crude, almost childlike drawing of a star.
Tanner frowned.
Something wasn’t right. Forget the misspellings. They didn’t matter. What bothered him was the relatively low amount of the ransom demand. Bright Star dealt in millions, not thousands. And the drawing of the star was off, too. He’d seen what the guerrillas used as a logo. It was a five-pointed star, not this crude rendering.
“Lieutenant. Tanner. I need your help. You’re the one man who can get my daughter out of there.”
It was almost true. Why waste time being modest?
He wasn’t the one guy who could organize a rescue, but he was definitely one of only a handful who knew Bright Star, knew San Escobal, knew its fetid, hot, all-but-impenetrable rain forests.
What made him the only man for the job was that the others were the guys in his unit, and they were deployed thousands of miles away.
He’d vowed not to sit behind a desk, but how could he not do it this one time? As it was, even with him coordinating things, the odds were against saving the woman.
Bright Star’s record in returning victims after collecting ransom money for them was not encouraging. That this victim was young, female and beautiful made the chances of things going well about as good as the chances of Tanner’s leg ever being completely normal again.