Liz trembled. Zeke tightened his hold on her, then stared at the woman Carreon pulled into camera range. She was young, quite beautiful, her blue-black hair fanned over her shoulders, her eyes an unusual shade of green, given her warm skin tone. The camera revealed her bare breasts, just like the first woman. Had Carreon raped her and the other one? Had the young man? One of them had tied this young woman’s hands behind her back. Tears dripped from her sooty lashes. Her expression registered pure terror.
“She’s next,” Carreon said, “unless Liz and her father return to my—”
“Please do as he says,” the young woman cried out. “Help me. Please.”
“I’m giving you twelve hours,” Carreon said. “After that, it’s her life, then someone else’s. Perhaps I’ll choose a child next.” He gestured to the woman on the floor. “That one has—or had—two kids. Twins. Do you want to be responsible for those little boys dying too? Remember, it’s your decision.”
The monitor went black.
Liz moaned.
Zeke held her close and spoke to his men. “Did you get the location?”
Paul shook his head. “He has it set up so we couldn’t track it.”
“I can’t let someone else die,” Liz cried.
“You won’t,” Zeke said. “We’ll fix this.”
“How? You don’t know where he is. Where he has those women.”
“Why were they nude…at least from the waist up?” Jacob asked.
“He probably raped them,” Ike offered.
Liz whimpered.
“Maybe not,” Kele said.
Zeke frowned at her. “What do you mean?”
“Didn’t you notice their makeup? How heavy it was? Who looks like that?”
“Prostitutes,” Jacob answered.
“Or performers,” Kele said, then spoke to Paul. “Play it back. Stop when Carreon moves out of camera range.”
Zeke watched the recording as the others did. Once Carreon’s image was gone, Kele said, “Freeze it there.”
The frame filled the screen.
“Look to the left of that guy’s right shoulder,” Kele said, pointing her pen. “See that thing on the wall? Looks like a calendar to me. The kind used to promote businesses—maybe the one where they are. Could be it’s a gentleman’s club or a strip joint. Can you bring the calendar up?”
Using image-enhancing software, Paul isolated the area, blowing up the picture until a fuzzy blob filled the screen.
“Sharpen it,” Zeke said.
Paul tried. However, the way the light fell on the glossy paper had created shadows that obscured part of the wording.
“Lighten it,” Kele said.
Paul did. That only washed out more details.
Jacob swore.
“You’re not going to be able to find that other woman,” Liz said to Zeke. “She and those kids are going to die because of—”
“No, they’re not,” Zeke interrupted, then spoke to his people. “Keep working on it. Do a search of all the strip joints and gentleman’s clubs in a two-hundred-mile radius of here.”
“That could be hundreds,” Jacob said. “If Carreon drove there. What if he took a private plane or helicopter after he fled his stronghold? He could be in Vegas for all we know.”
“Show the recording to our prisoners,” Zeke said. “They must know where that office is. If they refuse to talk, remind them of what they’re facing when we release them into Carreon’s hands. How he’ll believe they betrayed him.”
Leading Liz from the room, Zeke spoke over his shoulder to his men. “Do whatever you need to in order to get an address.”
“Then what?” Liz asked in the hall.
“We find Carreon and kill him. We save that woman and anyone else he’s threatened.”
Carreon checked his watch against the clock on Ernez’s desk. Fifteen minutes had passed since the transmission with Trinidad playing the role of her life.
“Please do as he says,” she’d cried. “Help me. Please.”
Carreon turned to her.
She watched Ernez wrapping Maria’s body in trash bags, readying it for pick up by another of Carreon’s lieutenants that Ernez had just called. Within hours, the corpse would be in a remote part of the desert. By the time anyone found her, if that were even possible, only bones would remain. The authorities wouldn’t waste a moment on her. They didn’t grieve missing and possibly murdered strippers.
“You were very good,” Carreon said to Trinidad.
She smiled smugly.
Carreon answered with a grin, thinking how nice it would be if she also had a bit of humility to go with her conceit. He sobered. “However, you better hope that Liz believed you.”
His tone and that “however” finally did it. For the first time, Trinidad regarded him as one would a dangerous predator. Unfortunately, it didn’t temper her arrogance. That, he sensed, would come a bit later.
She asked, “Are you going to have Ernez kill me if she doesn’t?”
Carreon shrugged helplessly. “I promised Liz that. I wouldn’t want to disappoint her, now would I?” He glanced at his watch once more. “Better hope she gets with the program. If she doesn’t, you have less than twelve hours to live.”
Chapter Twelve
It was worse than Liz had ever imagined. She’d known Carreon would never give up until he got what he wanted. Even so, she hadn’t allowed herself to consider that he would murder his own people—defenseless women, for God’s sake, and possibly children later—until she and her father returned. How had Carreon even known she was alive? That her father had reanimated her?
Oh my God. He’d watched the tapes from the security cameras in his stronghold. How could she have forgotten about them?
“Liz.” Zeke tightened his grip on her hand, refusing to let her pull away from him.
She had to, leaving him forever. Only by returning to Carreon would she save innocent lives. Who knew how many would die if she didn’t do what that monster demanded? Her belly ached with grief even as crushing rage tore through her. As she had on the night of the battle, Liz considered how she might get close enough to murder Carreon. Stop this insanity.
If that were even possible.
A part of her knew how hopeless it was. Once she returned, he’d imprison her as he had her father, not allowing a moment’s freedom. The only time she’d see him or anyone else would be when he forced her to heal.
“Dammit, Liz.”
She continued to fight Zeke, trying to pull her hand from his as she considered her future.
If Zeke was correct about her condition, she wouldn’t last very long after she healed someone. He and Jacob wouldn’t be around to pour back into her what she’d given them. Her father couldn’t help either. There’d be no further reanimations, because she wasn’t about to allow her father to return to Carreon.
Even if everyone was wrong and she survived a healing, Carreon might torture her on camera to force her father’s hand, to make certain he came back.
Was that what Zeke’s vision had foretold?
“You were backing away from me,” he’d said. “Your cheeks were wet as though you’d been crying. Carreon wouldn’t let you go. Then I saw fire. The kind that destroys a body. I saw a woman’s legs. The flames touched her foot. She didn’t move.”
Was she that woman? Had Carreon or Roberto brutalized her to the point of unconsciousness? Had Zeke’s refusal to let her father return so angered Carreon that he’d actually burned her alive?