Nick made sure to stay abreast of all of his hard work. He couldn’t think of a better man to protect his daughter.
“Nick,” a deep voice called from behind him.
The room wasn’t large. It was all concrete. The walls and the floor. His bound hands were connected to a chain that was suspended by a pipe that ran along the ceiling and a large drain a few feet away from him. The chains were old with rust covering them. There was a stairwell behind him with a landing before it turned to another stairwell where the newcomer was standing.
He was being held in a dark, damp, cold space that told him he was underground. They could be in town or they could be in Bangladesh for all he knew. Since it was windowless, he had no concept of time. Had it been hours? Days since he’d been taken? He’d lost consciousness more than once.
He knew exactly where he was though. He knew every inch of this place. Which meant he was still in Colorado. Which meant what these people sought, they were positive it was here. When he got out of here, he had every intention of tracking down who’d leaked in Intel. It was highly secret. Only a select few knew of it. Nick wasn’t this man’s first victim to getting the location.
“This would all end if you’d just tell me where the base is.”
“You’re wasting your time.” His captor went out of their way to conceal their identity. They stayed in the shadows and used a voice changer to hide their voice to make it sound warbled, but Nick knew it was a man. He’d wait for the goons to use him as a punching bag before asking him this same question. When Nick refused to answer, he’d leave. It had become their routine.
“Maybe you just need a little incentive,” the man warned.
Nick’s body tensed. He knew without the man saying anything what he meant.
“You have a very beautiful daughter. It would be a shame to mar that soft delicate skin.”
Payton was safe, he had to remind himself. He needed to remain calm. “Using a woman to threaten me, that’s low even for you.”
“You know nothing about me,” the man spat. Nick heard a ping sounded like metal striking metal. Did the man have a weapon? “Tell me where the base is or I’ll tell my men to bring your daughter here for some fun.”
It was an empty threat. They’d never find her. He’d taught Payton from a young age self-defense and how to outsmart the enemy. Her detective training had only honed those skills. Between her and Alex, no one was getting near her.
By now his clever girl would know his accident wasn’t an accident at all. She would follow the clues he’d left for her and keep his secrets safe.
Nick had no doubt this man had been watching Payton. Just like he’d been followed the past few weeks. Nick thought he’d been clever following enough at a distance they hadn’t seen him and known what he was about and set a trap.
The last person he’d visited was Payton before he’d gone to the base. They would have seen her. He’d seen them waiting in the parking lot when he left. He’d thought if he allowed himself to be captured, he could find out what they were after.
His initial guess had been they were behind the other base attacks that Alex had asked him to look into. Little did the kid know he was already working on it. But this was so much worse than he’d first guessed. More than just a few base cyber-attacks. He was thankful now for his forward thinking and encrypting his work.
Only Payton now held the key to unlocking it. Well. Besides himself.
Gritting his teeth against the pain, Nick stood taller, alleviating a bit of the pressure on his wrists, and looked over his shoulder at his tormentor. A faint light glowed behind the man only revealing his silhouette. “You’ll just have to kill me because I’ll never tell you.”
The man chuckled, sending a shiver up Nick’s spine. “That’s where your wrong, Nick. Very wrong.”
He heard the man’s footsteps as he retreated, and Nick slumped down in his restraints, losing the last of his strength. “Stay safe, baby girl,” he whispered under his breath just in case there was an audio device listening to him.
Chapter 18
Payton kicked the blanket off her legs in anger. She wasn’t upset with the fabric. Far from it. It was the fact, she’d been tossing and turning for hours. She was frustrated. The clock read three o’clock. She’d gotten an hour of sleep and felt wide awake after that. Her brain refused to sleep any longer. It just needed a little bit of time to reboot, then it was ready to go even if her body felt like it had been run over by a city bus.
Would it kill her mind if she could just sleep a little longer? She could feel the aches and pains from her fight more acutely now. Her ribs and cheek had taken the brunt of the damage. That wasn’t helping lull her to sleep. At least nothing was broken, just bruised.
Was it sad she’d been in enough fights to know the difference?
Giving up on sleep, Payton got up and walked silently down the hall to the kitchen to grab a snack and get back to work. She might as well do something productive if she wasn’t going to sleep.
Stupid internal clock. It could be so annoying at times.
She knew the layout of the house so she didn’t bother with lights. She also didn’t want to wake Alex if he was sleeping. He’d looked just as exhausted as she had when she’d said good night.
Payton jolted when she saw a figure out of the corner of her eye as she opened the fridge. “Jesus, Alex.” She clutched her chest as her heart threatened to beat out of it.
“Sorry.” He didn’t look sorry as he sat on the counter two feet away.