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Warbucks frowned. He considered this, and then sighed, lowering his arm. “Then who did it?” He snapped, some of the red flush returning to his features.
Tom just shrugged. He could think of a couple people good enough in his line of work to take out a hive of Russians. He included himself on that list.
But he didn’t think any of them were currently in Florida. “I can check,” he said simply.
But Wardell shook his head. “No, no,” he said shaking his finger again. He sighed, inhaling and exhaling as he tried to calm himself down. After a bit, he bit his lip, paused, and murmured, “I think...I think maybe I have the solution...”
“Oh?” Tom said. And again, he tensed. He had a knife hidden in his sleeve. His gun on his hip. And the prosthetic itself had a detonator with plastic explosives in two of the fingers. One thing could be said: he never came to a job unprepared.
Tom stood as if he had all the time in the world, but inwardly, his mind was whirring, trying to gauge if he was in danger. His eyes kept slipping to the men with Ak-47s on the deck behind Wardell.
But they didn’t seem to be waiting for any subsequent orders.
So, Tom relaxed. A bit.
Wardell sighed and said, “My brother isn’t getting the message. That much is obvious. So why don’t we call him, hmm? Let’s let him get a good long look at our sister.” Wardell nodded to the hooded, whimpering woman. He frowned for a moment. “I never did like you, Susan,” he called out. But then he nodded, waving a hand towards Tom. “Make it look scary. Then make it painful. Either way, just get him to sign. Got it? I’ll be upstairs.”
The bridge,Tom thought to himself, but he didn’t correct the man who wrote his paychecks. What would the point have been?
As the small skeleton in the white puffy suit moved up the clanging metal steps leading up from the deck and curling towards the bridge of the yacht, Tom glanced towards the hooded woman.
She was begging now, pleading.
But Tom didn’t listen. Instead, he reached into his pocket, pulled out his phone, and without so much as a flicker of an expression, he dialed the mayor’s number.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
“When? Now?” Cora asked, her heart pounding.
Agent Brady nodded where he sat in the front seat. He kept glancing up from the steering wheel towards the road, then back again to his phone. Now, he flashed it in her direction. “An ongoing call from that number—where did you say you got it from?”
Cora said, “The mayor’s phone. Someone used it to contact him. So, someone’s calling him now from the same phone?”
“Yes...a video feed. Let me see if—Yeah, Sam can unencrypt it. One second...”
Cora watched on tenterhooks, a surge of excitement shooting through her as she waited for the techie on the other line with Saul to connect the video feed. It didn’t take long either, suggesting whatever connection was being used wasn’t as secure as one the mayor might normally employ.
But now, as the video feed connected, Cora realized why.
“Shit,” she said suddenly. “Is that...” She trailed off, and together, she and Agent Brady leaned in, staring at the image on the screen. Saul nearly veered into traffic and, refusing to use a cuss, he simply shouted, “Darn it!” He pulled over to the side of the road.
Cora stared at the phone, her heart pounding, studying the image playing across the screen. A woman in a hood was sitting in a wooden chair, whimpering. Her hair occasionally jutted from spots on the hood, caught by the wind. Her clothing was ruffled by a strong breeze.
Cora felt her own pulse quicken.
“Dammit,” she murmured softly. “He’s going to kill her...”
But Brady was shaking his head, his fingers tight on the steering wheel as he stared at the device. “No—no he just wants the mayor to think that. Who is that? Do you know?”
Cora shook her head. There wasn’t enough to go on. A woman in a blouse—that was it. The hood obscured her features. And then the knife came into view, pressing against the side of the hood. A voice whispered over the connection.
“Get it, Castillo? Tik-tok. Sign it.Now.You promised. Don’t make me hurt her, Castillo. Your own sister...you wouldn’t want that?”
Cora and Brady couldn’t hear the other side of the connection, but she could picture that same panicked look she had seen in the man’s eyes back in his bedroom. Her own heart was skipping wildly now.
“Dammit, Brady—where? Where is this guy?”
“Sam?” Brady shouted at the phone. Then, he coughed and cleared his throat delicately. “Apologies—no cause for that. Sam, can you help us?”
