“Connor said Trask had to have been watching to know when to call the cell phone. That there was a camera across from the door.
“I’m sure it’s melted, but we have the best people looking at radio and Internet feeds. Time is not on our side.”
“You don’t have to tell me that,” Dillon said.
“I’ll send an agent out to Morton’s house first thing in the morning. E-mail me the list of names and I’ll get them out there.”
Dillon hung up and heard a voice behind him. “Feds know anything?”
Jack. Dillon turned around. “Patrick hasn’t regained consciousness. They’re heading back to San Diego for surgery.”
“I know. My team is on its way back to Hidalgo.”
“And you?”
Jack’s dark eyes narrowed almost imperceptibly. “I’m in it till the end.”
Dillon raised an eyebrow. “I guess I just don’t know what to expect of you.”
Dillon’s brother stared into nothingness. “I suppose I deserve that.” He turned back to Dillon, a tic in his neck showing that he was angry. “I’m a lot of things, Dillon. But more than anything, I’m a man of my word.”
Jack walked off into the darkness.
Mick had hoped Roger would forget or change his mind. He’d been physically ill since Roger had told him he would be next up with Lucy Kincaid.
He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t even get hard. Thinking about hurting her had him so twisted in knots he doubted he’d ever get it up again. He was perspiring and wondered if he’d eaten something bad.
Or maybe it was fear eating at him. He was about to do something that would get him killed. Get Lucy killed as well. But he didn’t see that he had a choice.
He’d used his homemade sextant at sunrise and sunset to figure out the longitude and latitude of the island. But if he was off by a fraction of a degree, he could send Kate Donovan miles in the wrong direction.
Did he trust his skills? He had to. He didn’t have much choice at this point. He’d been trying to figure out a way to get Lucy off the island, but she was never unwatched. Denise, Trask, or Roger watched her at all times through the numerous cameras on the island. He was being watched, too. He’d had to be extremely careful, and he feared that between his caution and fear of exposure his coordinates were off.
But he had to do something until he found a hole big enough to rescue Lucy.
He had no way of contacting Merritt without Roger or Trask seeing the transmission. If they caught him, they’d kill him and Lucy before the FBI could make it to the island.
The only thing he had was knowledge. Knowledge that Trask had an open line on Kate Donovan. Though Mick didn’t know why, Trask had been watching Kate closely, watching her every cyber move. If Mick could piggyback the transmission on the open channel, Trask wouldn’t notice. Probably wouldn’t notice.
If he did figure it out, Mick would be dead. But Mick was already staring at his death warrant. He didn’t see any way out of this operation alive.
Mick used an old FBI training code from his Academy days. It meant nothing except to other graduates. A joke. Kate would get it.
Mick had never met Kate, but he knew of her. Everyone did. She was almost a legend. His boss hated her, but Mick liked her. You had to like someone who went balls to the wall when they believed in something.
She’d be able to decipher the coded message, and then hopefully recognize the numbers as time and degrees of sunrise and sunset. Then all she had to do was look up the data on the Internet to get the exact longitude and latitude.
She was smart. She had to understand. He just hoped she was smart enough not to come alone. She had to know that Trask wanted to kill her. Torture her first. Trask hated her. Whenever he spoke of Kate it was with a sick, twisted anger that showed in every molecule of his body, down to his black soul.
It would be brutal, worse than anything he’d done to those other women. Worse than anything she could possibly imagine.
The transmission had just gone through when the door opened.
“You’re on, lucky boy,” Roger said, slapping Mick on the back. “Watcha doing?”
It was innocuous in tone, but Mick didn’t trust Roger.
“See this?” Mick pointed to a camera that was flickering. Mick had programmed it to flicker.
“What’s wrong?”
“Don’t know. I need to go out and check the wires.”
“It’s just a flicker. Come on. The show must go on.”
Mick followed Roger, wiping sweat off his brow.
As soon as Dillon walked out to call Quinn Peterson, Kate went to the time stamp that Trask had told her would lead directly to his location.
Too easy. Right there was the primary satellite information. She traced the satellite and found the computer that was bouncing the webcam to it. Northeast of Seattle, Washington, near Mount Baker.
It took her a little time, and she kept looking at the door waiting for Dillon to walk back in. But after hacking into every ISP in that area, she found him.
Thirty minutes, but still it seemed too easy. He’d had to point her to the time stamp. Why hadn’t her computer picked up on it? Had she messed up her program somehow? Had Trask planted the data and had her program ignored it because it wasn’t a live feed?
She rubbed her head. This was more than she’d had before. And Trask had contacted her. Why would he send her on a wild-goose chase? The FBI, yes-he didn’t want them around. But he wanted her. She’d known it since that night five years ago, and she knew it now.
She had the exact coordinates of the webcam that sent up the signal. That’s where Lucy was. Dillon and Jack were off somewhere. She hoped they were sleeping, but doubted it. Lucy’s screen had been quiet, and Kate packed her bag. Guns. Ammo. Emergency supplies. Check. Key to the plane. Check. Her codes and another laptop and a handheld. Her backup laptop wasn’t as fast as the one she’d given to Patrick, but it was all she had left.
She hated leaving Dillon. She wanted to trust him. She wanted to trust someone. But bringing him along would most certainly get both him and Lucy killed. There was no way Dillon would allow her to intentionally sacrifice herself for Lucy.
Kate didn’t see any other way to save her. If Trask even suspected that Kate was bringing in anyone, he’d kill Lucy. Without remorse, without hesitation.
Though she knew she could die, accepted it as part of her job, Kate didn’t want to die. She’d worry about that when Lucy was free.
Movement on the screen. A man came into view. He looked familiar.
No. Not another rape.
She frantically typed on her computer.
I’m coming, you bastard! Don’t touch her. You touch her and I’ll send the fucking military to your location!
Nothing. He wasn’t there. Damn him!
Lucy cried out, her voice vibrating in the small room. Kate muted the sound and prayed that Dillon wasn’t on the other side of the door, that he hadn’t heard his sister’s pleas.
Something odd came over her computer terminal. At first she thought it was Trask responding. She stared at the series of numbers and letters. It looked familiar. Why?
She glanced up at the screen. That man with Lucy. He was familiar. Why? Was he a fed? She couldn’t name him, but she’d seen him before, a long time ago.
She looked back at the code on her screen and it came to her instantly. The FBI training academy. A test code in one of their textbooks.
She wrote down the numbers and letters, then translated the code from memory. It was a simple code, something all trainees used to pass messages and have fun. It helped them see the patterns behind words and actions, not just learn to decode.
What did these numbers mean? They looked like degrees. Degrees of what? Or time. Military time. Wait. Both. The code had been backward, and now she saw that the numbers were definitely time of sunrise, noon, and sunset and degrees, which would be the degrees of the sun over the hemisphere.