There was no way out, none. Even if, by some insane series of events, Nicole managed to overcome two armed men—and there might be more—and run away, she couldn’t. Her father couldn’t walk, she couldn’t carry him and she’d never leave him behind.
Another sharp jab in the back, hard enough to break skin. Nicole’s heart beat painfully hard as she eyed the open doorway, utter blackness beyond. Something, some animal instinct told her that she and her father wouldn’t escape this building alive. The rusty abandoned warehouse would be their tomb.
“Get going, bitch.” Behind her, the driver’s voice was low, rough. This time instead of stabbing her in the back with the gun, he gave her a violent push that almost sent her to her knees.
Slowly, heart thundering, Nicole walked toward the blackness, stumbling over the threshold, then waited. She had no idea where he wanted her to go.
A heavy hand on her shoulder. “Right,” he rasped and she started walking.
There was a faint light in the distance that grew brighter as she approached it. A door slightly ajar, light behind it. She stopped outside the door, suddenly terrified of what might be behind it.
“Move it.” A hard push against the door and she tumbled into the room. What she saw raised the hair on the nape of her neck.
Her father, duct taped to a chair, hands in restraints clasped on his lap, head hung low, dried blood from the slashed cheek all over the side of his face and his pajamas.
There was a large plastic sheet under the chair. For the blood. To ensure that no DNA be left behind. A tense shiver of horror ran through her. These men were thorough. They were not going to make mistakes.
On a stool next to her father was the man who’d broken into her office. A powerful lamp on a nearby steel table provided enough light to see the hellish scene by.
The man’s head rose at their entrance and Nicole stepped back at the fierce coldness in his eyes.
She bumped into the man behind her.
He pushed her forward. “Watch where you’re going, bitch.”
Nicole barely heard him. Her father—she couldn’t see his chest moving. Oh my God, was he?—
“Daddy?” she whispered out of a tight throat.
Nicholas Pearce’s eyelids flickered, opened. His head wobbled up, brows furrowed, eyes narrowed, unfocused.
“Daddy!” Nicole sobbed and he saw her.
In terrible pain, restraints so tight his hands were white and bloodless, duct taped to a chair by thugs, her father tried to reassure her. He made a stab at a smile and the deep wound in his cheek began sullenly bleeding again.
“It’s okay, darling,” he whispered. “I’m okay.”
Pain made her heart miss a beat. She couldn’t stand seeing her father hurt. The room swam as tears flooded Nicole’s eyes. She rushed forward to hold her father, but was abruptly yanked back by a big, strong hand on her arm.
“Very touching,” the man on the stool said, coolly. “Fatherly love. A daughter’s devotion. It helps me.” He picked up a big gun. Nicole heard a sharpsnick!A thousand movies told her it was the safety coming off. He pointed the gun at her father’s knee. “Now. Do you have what I want?”
Shaking so hard it took her two tries to unzip her purse, Nicole reached in and brought out the portable hard disk.
Please let this be what he wants, she thought. Otherwise he’d shoot her father in one knee, then the other. She met the man’s eyes, cold, inhuman. The feral eyes of a creature of the night. There was no mercy there at all.
Still, she tried.
“Please,” she whispered, and placed the hard disk on the ground with a trembling hand. The man curled his free hand up in the universalgimmegesture. Kneeling still, Nicole sent the hard disk skimming over the floor to him. He stopped it with a booted foot and picked it up.
He put the gun back down. He could afford to. Her father was tied up in a way a strong man couldn’t break, let alone a weak, very sick one. She was at least ten feet from him. Even if she didn’t have a gun pointed at her back, she’d never be able to make the leap, pick up the gun and shoot. The other man’s hand was a second from the gun and he obviously knew how to use it.
She had no options here, none. She was helpless, unable to save her father, unable to save herself.
The man reached behind him, bringing out an ultra-thin laptop. He fired it up. It looked expensive and it was fast. With a couple of beeps, everything was ready. Connecting the hard disk via the USB port, the man stared at the monitor. Nicole couldn’t see anything other than the silver back of the monitor and the blue-green wash of light over the man’s cold, expressionless face.
“Password,” he grunted.
“Nickyblue,” she said shakily. Her mother’s nickname for her.
