Page 8 of Mine to Take

CHAPTER FIVE

MAX

“She can’t just vanish without a trace like that! There has to be chatter somewhere,” I raked my hands through my hair. “Frank it’s been over a month.”

“Max, we are well aware of how long it has been and we are doing everything we can to find them,” emphasis on the word them. Frank knew my history with Kirsten, but she was not the only one missing. I knew Chaz, knew what he did to Kirsten, and while his law enforcement brethren may look the other way, I hoped he was suffering over there. Their last known location had been on the outskirts of a vast wasteland of desert. Why they would even be out there I had no idea.

The total absence of a ransom demand or prisoner trade or any desire to negotiate was concerning on two fronts.

One, it could mean they’d had some sort of accident and were dead out in the desert and at this rate we would be lucky to find skeletal remains.

Two, they had been captured and whoever had them had gotten what they needed and killed them. It was highly unusual for no one to claim credit for snatching them. In my many years of studying terrorists and attempting to perfect our we-don’t-negotiate negotiation tactics, I knew of only one man who defied every stereotype in every training manual out there.

If Farid Mahdavi had them, we were screwed, as were they.

The man was a ghost. So elusive that no one could identify him or even describe him. He could waltz in and out of any country undetected and frequently did so, according to chatter. He stayed not just one-step ahead of us, it was more like 10. He had no family. We had killed them in a raid by accident. We’d had intel that he was there, but we hit the wrong area obliterating the homes of five families – the families of known terrorists and their connections – but women and children nonetheless. Farid had gone deep underground and began to meticulously build his network and plot his revenge. He doesn’t hate us because we are Christians. His hatred grew out of the human feeling of loss. The loss of love.

I stared out the Washington Monument waiting for the report from the latest drone surveillance.

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