Whispers in the Dark (KGI #4)(94)

Focus, Shea. Will the pain to go away. You’re strong. You can do this. Nathan and I are coming for you. Do you understand me? We’re going to get you back and then we’re going to take apart those sons of bitches who hurt you.

Breathe, baby girl. Breathe and calm yourself. And then I want you to think about the one thing you can tell me. Don’t even say it through your mind. Just picture it. Close your eyes and imagine what it looks like. I’ll see what you see.

She closed her eyes, shutting off his vision of her surroundings. She relaxed and some of the pain faded away, leaving her weak and shaky. Her nerve endings twitched and her fingers jumped spasmodically. Those f**king bastards. He’d take great pleasure in making them suffer for what they had done to her.

Slowly, the blackness drifted away and he got the sense of being outside. He bobbed up and down. It felt like someone was carrying him and then he realized he was reliving Shea’s memory. What she wanted to show him.

The surroundings came into view. Mountains. Crisp, clean air. The scent of pine. Cool temperatures. He shivered as the chill crept over his skin. Gravel crunched underneath the feet of the man carrying her. A doorway. Slowly her gaze drifted higher, above the door.

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Then everything went black again.

“Uniform, Foxtrot, Victor, five, five, niner, one,” he said urgently. Then he repeated it again until he heard Swanny say from seemingly a mile away that he’d gotten it down.

I’ve got it, Shea, he said gently. Rest now. Save your strength. We’ll find you. Cooperate with them. Don’t do anything to anger them. Stay alive. We’ll come for you.

He wiped his face and took several deep breaths in an effort to clear his mind. He felt so goddamn weak. He didn’t know how Nathan managed to maintain any lengthy communication with her.

Swanny and Nathan hauled him to his feet, and he sank into the chair that Donovan had shoved forward. He put his face forward into his hands and leaned over, still trying to put it all together.

Nathan took the chair next to him and pushed it so he sat face-to-face with his brother. Joe was pale and shaking. He finally raised his head so that his gaze met Nathan’s, and Nathan saw something there he didn’t like. Worry.

“Tell me,” Nathan bit out.

The others gathered silently, all waiting for Joe to relate what he’d discovered.

Joe looked pissed. Angrier than Nathan had seen him in a long time. But he also looked raw and worried. Nathan’s gut knotted because he was scared to death to know what Joe had found out.

Joe lifted his gaze to Nathan, pain still reflected in his eyes. “They have her in some goddamn cage. It’s like some futuristic cryotube or something. It’s narrow and long, plastic or glass. See-through and it opens from the top.

“She can’t move. She has clamps around her wrists and ankles and also at her neck. That’s the one that causes her panic because she feels like she’s constantly choking.”

Rage exploded in Nathan’s mind until he shook worse than Joe did. Swanny put his hand on Nathan’s shoulder in an effort to calm him.

“It’s worse, man,” Joe said in a low voice. “They have electrodes attached to her head that monitor her brain wave activity. That’s why when you try to talk to her, she suffers so horribly. She gets an electrical shock every time her brain activity spikes above a certain level. They’ve tried to disable her ability to speak to anyone. To ask for help.”

Nathan upended his chair and he shot upward. “Son of a bitch!” Tears burned his eyelids. He was so furious and so damn scared for her that he didn’t even know what to do. He was unraveling at the seams as fear choked the breath out of him.

Oh God, the thought of her in such pain, and the awful fear she experienced every waking moment, was more than he could bear. He had to get to her. Whatever it took.

He turned back to Joe, his fingers balled, seething with rage and sorrow. “What are those numbers? What do they mean?”

Joe didn’t look any better. Now that he’d had that connection with Shea, he’d experienced everything she was going through, and you only had to look at Joe to know it was hell.

“I told her to close her eyes and try to remember anything that would help us locate her. I didn’t want her to try and say anything telepathically. I just wanted her to remember something, anything, and hopefully I would be able to pick up on it through my link to her.

“She remembered being carried. She was dimly aware of her surroundings. Mountains. Scent of pine. Cooler temperatures. And then she looked at the door leading into the building and those letters and numbers I recited were above the door.”

“That’s it?” Nathan asked in frustration.

“It might be enough,” Resnick said slowly.

Nathan jerked his head in Resnick’s direction. “What do you mean?”

Resnick walked over to his computer and rapidly typed in a series of commands. In a moment, he brought up a picture of what looked to be a compound carved into the side of a mountain.

“That’s it!” Joe said excitedly. He lunged toward the monitor and pointed as he looked back at Nathan. “That’s it. See the numbers above the door?”

“Okay, so what the f**k is it?” Sam asked, for the first time pushing into the conversation.

Resnick clutched the back of his neck and rested the curled length of his arm against the side of his head.