Undercover Captor (Shadow Agents 5)

One man knew specifics. One man knew everything.

The man smiling as he taunted Drew.

Tina rushed for the door. She wasn’t going to let this happen. Not to Drew. Not to his sisters.

The agents guarding the room tensed when they saw her. But they knew she’d just been in the observation room with Mercer, and she had treated these EOD agents before. They understood she wasn’t the enemy, so she just said, “Mercer wants me in there as backup.”

They weren’t used to her lying, so they let her in.

She hurried into the interrogation room just as Anton said, “If you want them alive, then you’ll give me what I want.”

Tina squared her shoulders. “Here I am.”

Drew whirled toward her. “Tina.”

She didn’t look at his face. Right then, she couldn’t. Tina focused completely on Anton. “You wanted me, and I’m here.”

His smiled faded as his gaze raked her face. “What I want is you dead.”

Drew stepped in front of Tina, blocking her from Anton’s sight. “You aren’t getting what you want.”

“Then you don’t get to see your sisters alive again.” His voice had gone low and rough a

nd mean. “Because if you did want them back alive, you’d be bending down, taking that knife from the sheath you keep strapped to your ankle, and you’d shove it into her heart, right now.”

Tina locked her knees.

“I kill her,” Drew rasped the words. “Then how do I know you won’t still let my sisters die? I’m not a fool. I know how you operate. You turn on everyone that you can. Your only loyalty is to yourself.”

The door was shoved open again and it banged against the wall. Tina glanced over her shoulder. Mercer was there, chest heaving. His eyes blazed at her. “Out!”

Anton laughed. “Brave is she? Coming in here, getting away from you. Maybe she’s more like Marguerite than I first thought.”

Marguerite. Tina had heard that name before. Not from Mercer, but from her real father. He’d been talking to Tina’s mother once and he’d said, “Bruce won’t ever be the same. Losing Marguerite broke him.”

Mercer grabbed Tina’s wrist. “Come on. I told you—”

We don’t negotiate with terrorists. “I have a deal,” Tina said flatly. “A deal that I want to make.”

The room got real quiet. The tension was so thick she could feel it pushing at her.

Tina tugged free of Mercer. She stepped around Drew. And she faced the nightmare in that chair. How many lives had he destroyed?

You won’t destroy any more.

“You can’t be trusted,” Tina said simply as she stared at Anton.

“Neither can he,” Anton immediately replied as his head jerked toward Mercer. “You think he’s so good? That he’s on the side of the law?” His lips thinned. “You’re losing your life, dear girl, because of him. Because of what he took from me. Your father says that he works for justice—but how was killing my Jonathan justice?”

Mercer shoved past Drew and slammed his fists into the table, sending spider-web-like cracks across the top. “That attack was meant for you! How the hell was I supposed to know you’d brought your boy into that life? You were behind the attack on Marguerite. You killed her—”

“She wasn’t meant to die!” Anton tried to surge to his feet, but the handcuffs jerked him right back down. “I was taking her. Taking your daughter. It was leverage because you were too close to finding out—”

“That you were a traitorous bastard who’d sold out not one but two countries? Yes, Anton, I figured that out!”

They were fighting over lives long lost. What about the lives still hanging in the balance? “Neither of you can be trusted,” Tina said. Her breath rushed in and out. In and out. “And we’re running out of time.”

Anton and Mercer both swung their attention back to her. She focused just on the man who was pulling the puppet strings, even while in EOD custody. “We already know the women are in Louisiana.”