“Bank account,” he explained what he wanted in broken English. “Transfer.”
“He just gave me the account information,” Evie told her father. “Do you have something to write on, or?—”
“There’s no need,” her father finally spoke up again.
When he didn’t add anything further, Evie asked, “Are you sure? There are a lot of numbers, so it might be hard to remember them all.”
Shecertainly couldn’t memorize a set of numbers that long. Not without some practice, anyway.
“I’m afraid you misunderstand.” Her father’s tone sounded almost rigid. “There is no need for me to write anything down because there will be no transfer of funds to that or any other account.”
Her stomach dropped, and her eyes flew to her captor’s hardened gaze.
“This is for real, okay?” She tried desperately to get through to him. “These guys…they aren’t playing around. Please, you have to transfer the money,” she begged. “It’s the only way they’ll let me and the girls go free.”
It’s the only way they’ll let us live.
“As I told the man who called before, I have no daughter. Please don’t call this number again.”
The line went dead, and Evie was left standing there, wondering what the hell had just happened.
A rush of tears formed as real panic began to set in. Her father—the one man on the planet who should have been willing to lay down his own life for hers—had just severed the only lifeline she had left.
Oh, God!
She bent over at the waist, her hands slapping against her knees for support as Evie fought the urge to vomit. She couldn’t breathe. Why couldn’t she freakingbreathe?
Because your very own father is willingly going to let these monsters kill you.
The voice filling her head was right. There was no way out of this. Not for her or the girls.
Evie had told her father about the men who’d taken her captive. That she and the girls woulddieif he didn’t pay their ransom. And rather than having done everything in his power to ensure their safe return, what had he done?
He hung up on me.
A fresh onslaught of tears filled Evie’s frantic gaze, but she ignored them as they poured down over her dirty cheeks. Disbelief unlike any she’d ever known threatened to crush her very soul. What the hell was going on? Did hewanther to die at the hands of these terrorist extremists?
You do this, consider yourself out.
Her father’s ominous words from their last day together returned with a vengeance. At the time, she’d been saddened and deeply hurt that he’d even speak of disowning her the way he had.
Evie had convinced herself he hadn’t meant them. Now, however…after hearing the callous man act as if she didn’t evenexistin his world…
It was almost enough to break her.
And from the look on her captor’s face as she handed him back the phone, Evie knew her father—her very own flesh and blood—had just sentenced her to die.
CHAPTER ONE
“Sorry, guys. Looks like this is gonna be a solo act, after all.”
Beckett “Bones” Stone adjusted the tiny mic in his ear. “Uh…Shadow? Can you please repeat that? My comms must’ve glitched because itsoundedlike you just said we’re on our own with this one. Which is?—”
“Exactly what I said, Bones,” the brilliant woman’s jovial voice filled his ear once more. “Owens just got word that the Delta Force team that was supposed to assist got diverted to a potential situation somewhere near the Iraqi border earlier this morning.”
Rafe Owens was former British Intelligence and the brainchild behind Tactical Operations. Known as Tac-Ops for short, the private hostage rescue team consisted of Beckett—orBonesas his teammates called him—and three other hostage rescue specialists.
Like Beckett, his teammates were all former special forces who’d decided to use their military experience and training to continue fighting the good fight for private citizens who found themselves in dangerous situations.