Page 41 of Barry

Barry swallowed hard and shook his head. “I don’t know how.”

“She’s wearing her running watch. It has a fitness tracker … a GPS that logs her miles.” She glanced over at Tegan. “She promised she’d wear it.”

“Why?” Ken asked.

Kate shook her head. “It’s a very long story, and I’ll explain later. You can find her that way, can’t you?”

“No.” Ken shook his head. “We don’t have that technology.” He looked south. “But I know someone who does.”

Andrew nodded. “I’ll make the call.”

Barry stared to the south. He prayed Guardian could help because, if they couldn’t, he would walk out into thefield and keep walking until he found the bastard who had her. Then he would skin the bastard. Piece by piece. He’d laugh at the fucker’s agony. He wasn’t frozen and caught in his mind’s prison. Action wouldn’t be a problem. If Kathy were hurt, stopping him would be.

His phone vibrated in his pocket, and he pulled it out. “It’s Kathy.” He slid his finger across the screen and put the phone on speaker. “Kathy?”

“No.” A man’s voice grated across the sudden silence.

Barry’s lip curled. “Where is she?”

There was silence on the other end of the line. Finally, the male voice said, “I’ll call you with a location. You will come alone. If I see anyone, I will kill her.”

“How do I know she’s alive?”

There was the sound of a struggle. “Say something, bitch.”

Kathy’s voice, tiny and strained, came across the connection. “Barry?”

“Kath—”

“Be ready.” The man cut him off.

“Why are you doing this?”

“You need to know what it is like to watch someone you love die.”

CHAPTER 17

Kathy moved her jaw slowly; the filthy rag that had gagged her was on her lap, and the madman who’d walked into her bedroom was pacing at the cave’s opening. She looked around her. It wasn’t really a cave. More like a depression in one of the many plateaus in the area. Her foot hurt but had stopped bleeding, which didn’t matter because her hands and feet were tied with a wire that was so tight it was cutting her skin and bleeding around the bare metal.

“Why didn’t he ask?” the man muttered as he took the battery out of the phone. Kathy studied the man. His teeth were rotted, his hair was matted, and she swore he had lice crawling in his hair when he shoved the phone at her. He reeked. A stench she couldn’t describe, but it was so repugnant she gagged at the thought of it.

She drew a shaky breath. He needed to see her as a person. That was what all the documentaries she saw about hostages said. “The wires are making me bleed.”

He swiveled and stalked over to her, backhanding her when he reached her, which made her topple back from the black rubber storage bin where he’d put her. Her cheek erupted in pain, and her vision exploded in red and black patches. “If you don’t want to die now, you’ll shut up, bitch!”

Kathy gasped when he grabbed her arm and jerked her back up onto the bin. Blood oozed from her wrist. She swallowed hard, gagging at his smell. “You are bait. Dead bait.”

Kathy gagged. She couldn’t stop the reaction. He grabbed her face, squeezed her jaw, forcing her to open her mouth, and then spit into her mouth. Her stomach lurched and heaved, emptying her stomach.

He laughed as she choked on the bile. He didn’t let her move her head, and she strangled on her own vomit. She couldn’t breathe, and her vision tunneled.

The sound of the man talking was the first thing she heard. Kathy blinked and opened her eyes. She’d fallen next to the dirt wall in the small space between it and the black bin. Her throat and nose burned, but she didn’t move. She couldn’t see him, but she could hear him.

He muttered something, and she heard a faint click. Then, what sounded like another person was talking.

A man’s voice panted. “I’m hurt bad. The attack was asurprise. It wasn’t supposed to happen. Not what the intel told us. Everyone is fucked up or dead, I think. I heard choppers.”

“It’s never supposed to happen,” the man in the cave said.

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