Page 102 of Every Last Breath

Cole would do absolutely anything to find her.

Gideon, Reece, and Castle would be torn, their judgments clouded, but they’d stick with the mission. They’d better. The ethics they lived by dictated it.

Novak was a pro, but even pros made mistakes. Maybe whatever call he had made was traced.

“I know what you’re wondering.” His eyes narrowed, and that grin turned taunting. “The call was untraceable. I used a scrambler. Bounced the signal from one cell tower to the next.”

Novak stayed one step ahead of them. She’d expected cunning and skill, but how in the hell had he found her? He knew her real name, but she wasn’t listed. She’d been careful about safeguarding her identity and whereabouts to the point of paranoia.

“On the yacht, how did you know who I was?” He’d gotten inside information from someone. She needed to know from whom. “How did you find out where I lived?”

His spooky smile deepened with sinister joy. She’d have nightmares about it for weeks—if she lived that long.

A ragged breath rocked through her chest, and she fought to steady it, to focus on this tiny window of opportunity. She had to shake the tree to get some fruit. “Who is your informant in the Gray Box?”

“The only person I know who works for the Gray Box is you.” He touched her nose with the tip of his gloved finger.

She jerked her arms against the restraints, turning her face away from his touch.

“But…I have an expensive friend.” He leaned into her face, and she recoiled, pressing the back of her head against the wall. “A powerful information broker with little birdies everywhere.”

And one of those birdies was their mole, feeding this broker intelligence, which he was in turn selling to this soulless animal.

“Does your friend have a name?”

“My friend has many names. And many ears and eyes, everywhere.”

She gritted her teeth through the frustration souring her stomach. There had to be something she could get out of him. The smallest nugget might lead somewhere. “Where am I?”

He craned his head back, looking around. His face was close enough for her to sink her teeth into one of his ears. She could hold on and do her best to rip it off. But then what, with her hands and feet tied?

“Someplace that’ll make it very difficult for your men to find you.” He flashed that creepy-crawly grin. “But after a long search in all the wrong places, I’ll send them to you.” He angled his head toward her, those dead eyes stuck to hers. “And then you can go home and sleep in your bed tonight. Safe, but knowing you failed.”

She swallowed the vitriol burning the back of her throat.

This wasn’t over. Not yet.

He wasn’t going to win. She refused to let him.

“You don’t have to hurt anyone else.” Reason wouldn’t work on Novak, but she had to try and talk him down, get him to rethink a bloodbath. “Taking more lives won’t bring back your wife and daughter. Killing innocent people isn’t justice.”

“Justice,” he scoffed. “Justice isn’t possible. I want vengeance. I want to punish this country. It’ll be slow and painful. It’ll rip out the heart of every citizen as I make them watch. This mighty nation will be glued to the television, helpless to look away, powerless to stop it once it has begun.”

“That’s what makes you a monster.”

“I want to hurt and humiliate your government. I want your leadership, the heads of the most powerful country in the world, to feel small and helpless to defend their own. Just as I felt small and helpless to protect my family. If that makes me a monster, then yes, I suppose I am.”

Everyone could be baited with the right hook. If she pressed the right button, he might let something slip. “If your wife and daughter could see you now, do you think they’d be proud that you’re about to kill innocent women and children as payment for their deaths?”

“Save your breath, Agent Kinkade. Or I’ll have to find something in this room to use as a gag. Something filthy and rotten you wouldn’t like in your mouth.”

He grabbed her chin with gloved fingers, and that sickening vulnerability gripped her even tighter. Novak wrenched her head to the right. A black leather-covered finger pointed to a dead rat in the corner. Maggots crawled through its decomposing flesh.

Bile inched up her throat. She gritted her teeth, grateful her belly was empty, or she might’ve heaved.

Scrunching his face in mock disgust, he tsk-tsked. “Silence is best. If you keep talking, you might make Levik angry. He already wants to kill you, but…” He shook his head.

Who in the hell is Levik? His son’s name was supposed to be Valmir.