Against All Odds (28 page)

Authors: Irene Hannon

Tags: #Mystery, #Romance, #Suspense, #Thriller, #Contemporary

BOOK: Against All Odds

4.78Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub

“We should gag her.” The man who’d punched her spoke.

“No. If she throws up again, she’ll choke. We need her alive. For now.” He touched the knife at his belt. “Clean her up.”

Once more she was jerked upright. The sudden move caused the world to tilt, and she grabbed the edge of the sink as the man propped her against the wall beside it. While he twisted the faucet and dampened a washcloth, Monica ventured a look in the mirror.

And was sorry she had.

The battered woman who stared back at her bore little resemblance to the Monica Callahan she knew. One cheek was puffy and bruised, and blood continued to seep out of her nose. An abrasion on her temple capped a massive lump, and her hair was tangled and matted with blood. Her right eye was swollen and blackening, her lip was split, and the gash on her jaw was bleeding.

Iron fingers grasped her chin close to the injured spot, and she gasped as the man jerked her head around. He scrubbed at the blood, his pressure increasing when he encountered an abrasion, as if inflicting discomfort gave him pleasure.

Monica did her best to fight back the whimpers of pain clamoring for release. But she could do nothing to stop the tears that coursed down her cheeks, the salt stinging each raw patch of skin they encountered.

“That’s good enough. Put her over there.” The leader gestured to a blank wall on one side of the room.

Once more, Monica was propelled across the room. The other man positioned her with her back against the wall. Like a firing squad, she thought in panic, wondering for one brief, terrified instant if they were going to shoot her.

But instead of a gun, the man lifted a small digital camera. A bright flash blinded her.

That’s when Monica understood.

She had become the fourth hostage.

More than an hour had passed, and they were no closer to knowing where Monica was than they’d been five minutes after they’d discovered her abduction. And with every second that ticked by, Coop knew the odds of finding her alive diminished exponentially.

Wiping a weary hand down his face, he reached for his BlackBerry as it began to vibrate. Checking the caller ID, he winced.

“Who is it?” Mark looked over from the new command center in the kitchen of the main house. Agents from the Charlottesville FBI office were arriving, and the Richmond ERT was en route.

“The embassy in Kabul. David Callahan, I suspect.” Angling away from his partner, Coop braced for the call. “Cooper here.”

“David Callahan. What happened?” Cold fury tightened the man’s voice.

“I’m sorry, sir. We had excellent security here. We’re still trying to determine how the abductors managed to breach it. An Evidence Response Team is on the way as we speak.”

“I know that. I already talked to Les Coplin. I want to hear your version. How did they know where she was?”

“I don’t know, sir.”

“Where did they take her?”

“We’re trying to determine that.”

Silence. Coop could feel the man’s seething anger—and his terror—as strongly as if the diplomat was standing inside the room instead of seven thousand miles away.

“Mr. Cooper, I trusted you and your team with my daughter’s life.” Tension chiseled his words into sharp arrow points. “
She
trusted you. The HRT is supposed to be the best civilian fighting force in the world. Yet you failed me. And her.” He stopped. Drew a harsh breath. “Let me tell you what I expect now. Find her. Save her. Is that understood?”

“Yes, sir. We’re doing our best.”

“So far, that hasn’t been good enough. Do better. I’ll be in touch.”

The line went dead.

For half a minute after the diplomat ended the call, Coop stood unmoving, mired in gnawing guilt, struggling to hold on to his composure. Finally, he pulled the phone from his ear and slid it back into the holder on his belt.

“What did he say?”

At Mark’s quiet question, Coop closed his eyes. “Nothing I haven’t already said to myself.”

“This isn’t your fault, Coop.”

He turned toward his friend. “Then whose is it?”

“Everyone shares responsibility. We were all in this together. But I don’t know what else we could have done.” Frowning, Mark raked his fingers through his hair and propped his clenched fists on his hips.

“We could have sent her to the Marine base.”

“That may not have been any safer. Besides, she chose this route.”

“Because she trusted us.”

“We’ll find her, Coop.”

“We have some news.” Rick set his BlackBerry on the table. “The police car patrolling out back was just found on a forest road a quarter of a mile up. The officer was in the trunk.”

“Is he alive?” Mark asked.

“Barely. Two stab wounds. He’s lost a lot of blood. It doesn’t sound good.”

“Any chance we could talk to him?”

“Not according to the officers on the scene. He’s critical. Paramedics are on the way. I’m diverting some of the ERT technicians to that location. They might pick up some tire tracks or footprints.”

“Lab work isn’t going to give us answers fast enough.” Coop joined the conversation, his lips settling into a thin, unyielding line as he paced. “Monica may be alive now, but she doesn’t have a lot of time. These guys are playing for keeps.”

“We’re doing our best,” Mark reminded him.

“I know. But as David Callahan pointed out, our best hasn’t been good enough.”

The twin creases on Mark’s brow deepened. “That’s a pretty harsh assessment.”

“Maybe. But I can’t disagree with him. Can you?”

His partner’s silence was more eloquent than words.

“I want to review the security video.” Coop headed for the door. “Let’s go back to the guest cottage.”

They walked through the early morning darkness in silence. The feed from the security cameras was still playing on the monitors as they entered, but Fendler was preparing to shut things down.

“I’ll meet you over there in a minute.” Coop tipped his head toward the screens. “Pull up the video for the thirty-minute segment when the abduction occurred.”

As Mark strode toward the kitchen, Coop detoured to their room to retrieve his watch from the nightstand. As he picked it up, his gaze fell on the Bible. The book Monica turned to for comfort and guidance and strength.

He rested the tips of his fingers on it, wishing it would infuse him with those very things. While the concept of faith and religion wasn’t yet a comfortable fit for him, much of what Monica had said over the past few days made sense. And he’d liked what he read last night too. As he’d paged through Mark, one verse in particular had stuck with him. “For with God all things are possible.”

He clung now to that hope, wanting to believe, as Monica did, that God would stand by them through this storm and bring them safely to shore.

I’m not much of a believer yet, Lord. But I’m trying. Monica believes in you, and I believe in her. I think, with her help, I could learn to believe as she does. Please . . . give me that chance. Let us find her before it’s too late.

As a prayer, his plea was pathetic, Coop knew. But he hadn’t had a lot of practice. Nor was he good with words. With talking the walk.

He had to trust that God would give more weight to intent than to execution.

“Unless our demands are met, she dies with the first hostage.”

In shock, David reread the message that had been sent to the embassy’s general email address and forwarded to him by security. The text chilled him. And the accompanying photo of Monica turned his blood to ice.

“Sir, are you still on the line?”

The voice of Bob Stevens, the embassy security chief, echoed in his ear. He was glad the man had called first to warn him about the graphic nature of the photo before sending the email.

“Yes. What’s being done to trace this?”

“We’ve got our top cybercrime investigators already on it. Based on a preliminary look, however, it won’t be easy to nail down the source. The header’s been stripped. That doesn’t leave us a lot to work with.”

“Can we respond?”

“No. It’s formatted as an announcement.”

“I want the FBI on this too.”

“Of course.” The man’s businesslike tone softened. “I’m sorry about your daughter, sir.”

“Thank you.” He cleared his throat, struggling to hold onto his composure. “I’m hoping there’s a clue embedded somewhere in the message that will help us. Keep me informed.”

Ending the call, David dropped the phone back in its cradle. He’d spent a lifetime in the most violent parts of the world, seen sights that could turn the most ironclad stomach. He wasn’t a hard man, but he’d learned to steel himself against horror, to build up an immunity to cruelty and carnage. The only way he could do his job was to ignore concerns about individuals and focus on the needs of humanity as a whole. Nothing he had seen in forty-plus years of diplomatic service had shaken his commitment to that mode of operation.

Until now.

As he stared at the image of his daughter’s battered face, his resolve wavered. The terrorists believed he had sufficient influence to convince the secretary of state and the Afghan government to release political prisoners and pay a twenty-million-dollar ransom. And, in truth, he did. He was a skilled negotiator. Good enough to convince those in power that, Monica’s involvement aside, there were reasons to cooperate in this case. Behind the scenes, if not in the public eye. He’d accrued enough credibility and political capital in his four decades of diplomatic service to pull off that argument.

Doing so, however, went against every principle he believed in.

Yet how could he let Monica die?

It was the toughest moral choice he’d ever faced. And David didn’t know how to resolve his dilemma.

But he did know one thing.

He had less than twenty-two hours to figure it out.

“What the . . . ?”

Coop’s frown deepened as he stared at the screen displaying the feed from the camera mounted on the tennis court.