Then he kicked up his speed and raced frantically back to Tina.
* * *
THE REDHEAD WAS BACK. Tina stared up at him—no, she stared into the guy’s phone. He’d turned the phone sideways; he was video-taping her.
“This is what we call proof of life,” he murmured. “We need you to prove to your dear old dad that you’re still alive.”
They weren’t proving anything to her father. Her father was dead. So was her mother. They’d both died shortly after Tina’s eighteenth birthday.
Their blood had soaked her fingers. She hadn’t known how to save them.
I do now.
“Look into the camera,” he ordered her. “Say your name.”
The door opened behind him. Drew. Drew was back.
It got easier for her to breathe then.
She stared toward the redhead and his phone. “My name is Tina Jamison.”
“Good girl,” the redhead murmured. Lee. That was his name. She’d heard one of the other men call him that earlier. “Now tell us the date.”
She did. Her voice didn’t tremble. Tina was proud of that fact.
“Bruce Mercer, we have your daughter,” the redhead said. His voice was cold and flat. “She’s alive right now, but, if you don’t follow our orders exactly, she won’t be alive for long.”
Tina kept staring at him.
“We want an exchange,” Lee continued. “Her life for yours.”
That wasn’t going to happen. Not ever. Mercer was too important. He had ties to too many governments, too many agents, too many secrets.
She was just the doctor who patched up the team members.
I’m expendable.
Bruce Mercer wasn’t.
“For every day that you delay, we will hurt her.”
Oh, wait. What?
“We gave you proof of life,” he continued. Her eyes narrowed. Was he recording these images of her? Or streaming them live to Mercer? If the fool was streaming them, the EOD would be on top of this group in hours. Sydney would trace the signal back to this location.
His hold tightened on the phone. “Now it’s time for proof of pain.”
He’d barely even got the words out before the other guy—the blond who’d kept her terrified for the past hour—came at her with his knife.
Tina tensed, but the knife just went to the ropes that bound her. Carl cut through the ropes that circled her right hand.
“What the hell...” Drew began.
“Slice off her finger,” was the order that followed.
Carl smiled.
Tina tried to jerk her hand back.