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“Listen to me very carefully, asshole. I may have let her go, but Mina will always be under my protection. If you harm her in any way, if you send anyone else after her… If anything happens to her, I’m going to assume it was you, and then you will be on a very special, very short list of people whose body parts get lost in multiple states.”
Before Lindsay could respond with anything intelligible—assuming he had anything intelligible to say—the phone rang.
The doctor picked it up, and Brian sat back down. He wasn’t done here. Not by a long shot. He’d kill Lindsay right now if he couldn’t reach some reasonable assurance that his threat would be heeded and Mina would remain safe.
There was frantic yelling on the other end of the phone with barely a breath between sentences.
“Vivian, I can’t understand anything you’re saying. You have to slow down.”
Brian rolled his eyes, still wishing he’d truly gotten his hands on the precious princess Michael collared. Just once.
“What about Mina?” Lindsay said.
Brian lurched out of the chair and ripped the phone out of Lindsay’s hand. “Vivian. Shut up.”
The line sounded as if it had gone dead, but he knew better. “Tell me slowly and calmly what about Mina?”
“I—I—I…”
“I—I—I…” he mocked. “Spit it out or so help me I will drive to your house and drag the information out of you. And if your husband thinks he’s got the balls to stop me, he can come right on ahead.” He was spoiling for a fight. Any fight.
“How are you helping her to be more calm?” Lindsay asked.
Brian just glared.
A couple of minutes passed as Vivian collected herself. “M-Mina and I were shopping at an outdoor market. It was a safe area of town. I stepped away to another booth, and when I turned around, a black sedan had pulled up and some Asian men were shoving her into the back of the car. I-I couldn’t get a license plate.”
Brian hung up on her and turned to Lindsay. “Matsumoto has her. I told you there was something fucking wrong with him. Call the pilot and fuel up the jet.”
“How did he know she was out? How could he have known where to find her?”
“I don’t give a shit how he knew.” He left the doctor gawking after him and went straight to the dungeons. He sorted through keys on a keyring until he found the one for the door inside his room. He slammed the lights on and smiled as he took in the rows and rows of guns, ammunition, knives, flashlights, body armor, grenades, and more interesting specialized toys for special circumstances.
Lindsay rushed in, out of breath, as Brian started dropping magazines, checking chambers, and packing a large black bag.
“What are you doing?”
Brian glared at the doctor as if he were the stupidest human being to ever walk the earth. “You know what I’m doing.”
* * *
Mina felt like her head was stuffed with cotton as the room came into focus.
“There she is. You Americans are so delicate. You’ve been in and out for the past day.”
She had the vaguest recollection of waking in the presence of strange men a couple of times. Voices had faded back out as soon as they’d faded in, and then everything had gone away again. It had felt like tendrils of odd dreams trying to string themselves together. She’d heard sounds in those brief moments that she now knew had been a plane. She was only now awake enough to realize things had gotten very bad for her.
Just when she’d thought she was free.
She was far outside the hope of safety or freedom now. Even without a collar around her throat or an electronic leash or any type of binding, she knew she’d never been more truly bound than she was at this moment.
A short, but still somehow very frightening Japanese man came into focus above her. His accent was thick, but his words had been clearly spoken.
“That’s the fuckingGaijinwhore you were going to pay one and a half million for?”
Mina’s head swiveled to the left to see another man in the room. Larger, also Japanese. He looked like a bodyguard and probably was.
She scrambled to a seated position as her eyes continued to adjust to the light. The room had the sparse, minimalism of a zen garden. There was a bright red mattress and bedding on the floor. Meditation pillows sat in a row next to a short, square table. Lamps lit the space. The floor was bamboo with rugs on top. The room had sliding doors that were pale cream and looked translucent like fine quality paper.
