CHAPTER 46
Caught flat-footed because something on Hawker’s phone had distracted her, Danielle raced to catch him before he went too far.
As he slammed the door open, she saw Scindo stirring, a look of fright in his eyes. Hawker grabbed him, yanked him out of the chair, and threw him against the wall. Dropping down beside him, Hawker ripped the tape off the man’s mouth.
“You’re going to tell me where they are, you bastard!” Hawker yelled. He hoisted Scindo up, just far enough to knee him in the gut and then fire a right cross to his jaw. Scindo’s lip burst open with blood.
“Hawker, stop!” Danielle shouted. “We don’t have to do this!”
Hawker wasn’t listening. When Scindo didn’t reply, Hawker threw him to the ground again, kicked him again, and then stood on his chest.
“Listen to me,” Danielle said. “There’s something wrong here.”
“Get out of here!” Hawker shouted. He grabbed a pair of pliers off the shelf, dropped onto Scindo with a knee, and jammed the pliers into the drywall beside him.
Scindo’s eyes were as large as saucers as Hawker gouged out a huge hole right above the electrical socket. Slamming his fist into the wall, Hawker widened the hole, then he reached in and, using the pliers, tore the copper wires loose from the socket.
“Hawker, there’s a message on your phone. It came from my phone but I didn’t send it.”
Hawker wasn’t listening. “You murdered her father!” he shouted.
For the first time the man replied, his eyes filled with fear. “I did not,” he said in English.
Danielle took that as a positive and a negative. Scindo’s determination not to talk might be breaking, but did that mean Hawker’s insane plan needed to be tried?
“You lie!” Hawker shouted, yanking more of the electrical cord through the wall.
“I don’t,” Scindo said. “It was not me. I never saw him.”
Hawker stood, pulled the gun out of his belt, and put it down on the table behind him.
“Where are they taking her!” he yelled.
No answer.
“Where!”
When Scindo refused to speak, Hawker moved away from him an inch or two. Careful not to touch him, he jammed the two copper leads into Scindo’s side. Sparks jumped, the lights dimmed and came back on, and Scindo screamed.
Watching this, Danielle’s heart went into her throat. She knew what was coming. There was no way to turn back now.
“Tell me, you son of a bitch!” Hawker shouted.
“Stop it!” Danielle screamed at him.
“Tell me!”
Scindo held quiet and Hawker shocked him again.
The lights in the room dimmed and Scindo screamed. Hawker held the prongs on him, singeing the man’s skin. The smell of hair and skin burning filled the room.
“For God’s sake, Hawker!”
“Get out of here!” he yelled back.
“Please,” she begged.
His response was to shock Scindo again. And Danielle could wait no longer.
She grabbed the gun off the table and cocked the hammer. The sound got Hawker’s attention.
Hawker turned and Scindo’s eyes followed. Both of them stared at her.
Tears were streaming down her face, welling up in her eyes, and rolling across her cheeks.
“Get away from him,” she said firmly.
A look of utter shock appeared on Hawker’s face. “Are you out of your mind?”
“Please,” she begged. “I can’t do this. I can’t go where you’re going.”
“You’re saving him?” Hawker whispered in disbelief.
“I’m trying to save you,” she said.
Hawker’s face hardened, as if this was another betrayal. “No,” he said. “Go to hell. You’re not stopping this.”
He turned back to Scindo and shocked him again. The prisoner writhed and slammed his head into the wall.
“Hawker!”
“Tell me what you know!” Hawker shouted.
“Hawker, please!”
Hawker shocked Scindo again, only this time a gunshot echoed along with the prisoner’s screams. Hawker fell forward, dropping the electric wires and slamming into the metal chair in the corner of the room.
It collapsed with a loud clang and Hawker rolled over on it. Lying prone, he turned back to face her. Staring back from the corner, he clutched a bleeding shoulder.
“Are you insane?” he grunted.
She ignored him. “Get up!” she shouted to Scindo.
If Hawker was in shock, Scindo was even more surprised.
“Get up!”
Scindo staggered to his feet, the shackles making it hard to walk, traces of smoke rising from his charred skin.
Hawker moved as if he were about to get up but winced in pain and fell back down. “What the hell is wrong with you?” he shouted.
She backed out the door, motioning for Scindo to follow. He shuffled through and she shut and locked the door behind her.
“Come with me,” she said, heading toward the front door and wrapping a coat over Scindo’s taped hands.
She opened the front door, her heart sick, her mind spinning. She hadn’t wanted to do this, but Hawker had forced her.
“Down the stairs!” she shouted. Scindo hesitated as muffled sounds came from the interrogation room, where Hawker was shouting at the top of his lungs and slamming something against the locked door.
“Move!” Danielle shouted.
Scindo complied, hustling down the stairs as fast as his shackled feet would allow. Danielle followed, wondering where the hell she was going to go and not even wanting to think about what would happen now.
CHAPTER 47
Danielle found an abandoned building two miles from the safe house. It looked like it had once been a garage for large vehicles or a military depot, but heavy shelling or bombs from above had obliterated much of it. Half the roof was gone and the place was filling with sand and desert plants.
She pulled into the most sheltered part and hid her car. She ordered Scindo out and forced him into an abandoned office. File cabinets in one corner sat scorched and partially melted from the heat, either from the bombs that fell or the fires that must have followed.
She helped Scindo in, leading him to a place against the wall, where he sat knees up, hands in front of him, the bandaged hand Hawker had fired a round through bleeding heavily once again.
“Thank you,” he said.
“Shut up!”
She pointed the gun at him.
She thought of Hawker’s words, the devil always fights by dividing, dividing people against each other, Eve from Adam, mankind from God. She felt as if she’d been torn apart herself.
“The people you’re protecting are murderers,” she said, glaring at Scindo. “Even if you didn’t kill Dr. Milan or the French policemen, you’re part of it.”
“Then why did you save me?” Scindo asked defiantly.
“I was trying to save him,” she said.
He went quiet.
“Why are you protecting them?” she asked.
“They took me,” he said. “I am part of them.”
He spoke English well, but with something of a French accent.
“If you were part of them they would have come back for you,” she said, trying to gain the upper hand.
“They did.”
“Not here they didn’t,” she said. “And they’re not going to, unless it’s to put a bullet in your brain and keep you quiet. Like they did to your friends in France.”
This seemed to hit near the mark. “You shot those men,” he said sharply.
She shook her head. “Did we kill you when we had the chance? No, we captured you. We interrogated you. Murdering people is not what we do.”
He glared back at her. He didn’t believe her, she could see that. Or he didn’t care. “What do we gain by killing off people who can tell us things? Huh? We didn’t kill your friends. We would have interrogated them if we could have. So would the French. One of your people murdered them to keep them quiet.”