She hopped back, all her weight now on her good leg, groping behind her to lean against the wall and try another kick. Too late, too slow. He was climbing to his feet, half turned away from her, hands lowered as he hauled in a breath.
Lucy took advantage of his pause and swung the rake at his throat, ready to follow up with a jab to his solar plexus. He saw the movement and grabbed the rake from her, sending her flying face-first into the wall, striking a metal circuit-breaker box hard enough that the crash rang through the space. Fresh pain brought tears to her eyes as the bones in her nose crunched.
Before she could recover, he grabbed her from behind. She launched her right fist back into his groin, throwing all her weight into it.
"Bitch," he gasped as he released her. She spun around. He was breathing hard, but it was from pain, not exhaustion. She was down to her last reserves of energy.
Lucy had to end this. Now. As he straightened, she pushed off with her good foot, put her head down, and rushed him. She plowed into him, spinning him off-balance so that he faced away from her, and shoved him into the side of a large piece of equipment that sat against the opposite wall. Its shadow suggested that it was big and heavy enough to do some damage.
Something at the base of the machine must have caught the man's foot, because he suddenly flipped forward, flying from her grasp. His scream echoed louder than the gunshots. There was a sickening thud of metal meeting flesh, and his scream died.
Lucy couldn't stop her momentum, crashing into him from behind, cringing at the feel of unrelenting metal crunching into the man, her weight pushing his body deeper into the maw of the machinery.
She twisted away, flailing her arms against a darkness so complete she could barely make out the man's silhouette; the machine had swallowed him. Her hand brushed a horizontal metal bar, then hit a sharp curved blade longer than the spread of her fingers.
She hobbled away, panting. The man didn't move, didn't make a noise. The smell of blood and the sour spray of stomach acid filled the air.
She backed against the wall, hitting the edge of the large sliding door, and finally found the lights. Flicking them on, three bare bulbs hanging from the curved ceiling twenty feet overhead, she was greeted by a macabre melding of man and machine: A huge combine, painted a cheerful spring green. In front of it, several rows of blades, deadly daggers arranged a few inches apart. Impaled on them, one row spiked through his face, a second through his belly, was the man, his blood pooling at his feet.
Then
10:24 a.m.
Lucy woke, mired in the cotton-packed grogginess of whatever drugs they'd given her. They? He? No, surely there'd been more than one? The void in her memory blindsided her. Terror lanced through her, starting in her gut, then spreading cold throughout her body.
She fought through the haze. Remembered Nick and Megan leaving, walking to her car-then nothing. It took her a minute to connect her senses to her limbs. Weapon-where was her weapon?
Not at her hip. Her feet were bare-socks and boots and backup piece missing.
She pried her eyes open. At least she thought she did. The blackness was so complete that she couldn't tell which way was up. The vertigo triggered a bout of nausea, and she closed her eyes again, focused on her breathing until it passed.
Her hands were bound behind her with zip ties, the plastic cutting into her skin. Tight. Very tight. She grabbed hold of that stray thought racing past, thankful to have one clear thing to concentrate on. Forced her muddied mind to repeat it, seeking truth behind it.
The zip ties were tight. Very tight. Ahh … yes. That was actually good-most people didn't realize the tighter they were, the more easily zip ties could be broken when stressed in the right way.
One clear thought led to another as she piecemealed her existence here and now into something she could make sense of. She lay on concrete. Cold. Roughly finished. Basement? Cellar? There was no light, not the faintest crack coming from a window or door. No sounds of the outside world, nor of the inside of a house.
A silence so deep it produced its own echo.
Which meant she was alone. No backup. No one to call for help. No one.
Her body shook with the cold, and she forced herself to return to her inventory. In addition to her weapons, they'd taken her jacket, her belt, her boots and socks, and all her jewelry, including her wedding ring and Megan's bracelet. Left her in her slacks and blouse-thin protection against the cold, but a comfort nonetheless. They needed her alive and unharmed … for now.
A quick list of possibilities filled her mind. There was Morgan Ames, the teenage psychopath, daughter of the serial killer Lucy had caught several months ago. But Morgan and Lucy had reached a tentative détente, thanks to Nick. Lucy let Nick counsel Morgan and keep tabs on her while Morgan stayed away from Megan.
So, not Morgan. Her father reaching out from prison? Maybe, but he had enough on his hands with his trial date approaching. The Zapatas, the drug cartel that had attacked Pittsburgh?
Maybe. A definite maybe. Because of Lucy, one of their favorite sons was dead, not to mention a huge distribution pipeline destroyed. Grabbing a federal agent from her own driveway? That had cartel written all over it.
Then why sedate her? Why not just throw her in a car, torture her in some spectacular way destined to go viral on YouTube, and dump her body as a warning?
Not that it might not still come to that … The chill of terror returned, her entire body shaking as she fought to push back images of what the Zapatas had done south of the border.
But this felt too … civilized? Too meticulous, too elaborate for the Zapatas.
Which brought her back to why? If she understood what they wanted, she could find a way out of this. Who were they? What did they want? Why her?
Without answers, she was helpless.
Before she could roll onto her feet to start exploring her prison and search for escape routes, a man's voice rang out from above.
"The bureau's official policy is no negotiating with terrorists," he said in a calm tone. He wasn't speaking loudly, but the room's strange acoustics made his voice reverberate as if attacking her from all sides. "You need to know two things about me, Special Agent Guardino. First, I'm not a terrorist. And second, this is not a negotiation."
She twisted her body, searching for the source of the voice. Impenetrable blackness greeted her from every direction.
"At seven o'clock-that's in eight hours and thirty-two minutes-your family will either be alive or at least one of them will die cursing your name. Who lives and who dies? That is the last choice you will ever make. Because you will die here today. That I promise."
It was difficult to understand his words, the way his voice echoed and boomed. But as she analyzed the sound, she realized that the space was smaller than she'd thought. And that the voice came from a speaker-there was a faint hum underlying everything he said.
So. He wasn't in here with her. More the pity-a hostage might come in handy when she broke free.
"Who are you?" she shouted, wincing as her own voice bounced back at her. She shuffled her body across the floor, assessing the dimensions of her prison. It only took two moves to find a wall.
"Names are unimportant. What you need to know is that I'm a man of my word, and I've done this before. Believe me when I tell you I know the outcome of our little encounter here today. I've already won. There is nothing for me to lose. But there is everything for you to lose. If I need to, I will kill every person you have ever loved. You will listen to their screams, watch them die, and you will be helpless to do anything about it."
Like hell, she thought, bracing herself against the wall. More concrete. Smooth, not cinder block. She pushed herself to a standing position and started to work on the zip ties.
He continued, "It won't come to that. It never does. Your only hope, your family's only hope, is for you to realize I'm telling the truth and give me what I want. You have eight hours and thirty-one minutes left."
There was a faint click, and he was gone. Leaving Lucy in the dark, no idea where she was, no idea who he was, and no idea what the hell he wanted from her.
Now
5:18 p.m.
Lucy smeared the back of her hand against her smashed lip, mixing her own blood with the dead man's.
It was good to finally have light so she could assess her situation. Make sense of it, make a plan. Why did that simple thought seem to take minutes to process?
Cold wind gusting through the barn door left her shivering. It didn't help that she was soaked through and barefoot. Even if she found her boots, she couldn't put them back on, not with one foot swollen and bleeding, bones crunching every time she placed her weight on it. She needed a doctor's attention, probably even a surgeon's, but she couldn't waste time on a distraction like a broken foot; there was too much at stake. Too much she had to take care of before she could take care of herself.
Like saving her family.
She retrieved the rake and gripped its handle, bracing her weight against it, taking the pressure off her foot. Didn't stop the pain. Her body felt like a firing range target after a SWAT team drill: a scattershot of holes and gashes and ragged tears.
Each beat of her heart throbbed through her entire being, pinpointing an assortment of injuries: Knuckles scraped raw. One hand not working quite right. Probably more broken bones. It was hard to breathe with her nose dripping mucus and blood.
Her throat felt swollen to the point that each gasp threatened to strangle her and finish the job the man facedown at her feet had begun. He'd promised that by seven o'clock someone would be dead.