“She would have done it, anyway. Besides, I knew you were there.”
“What you’re really telling me is that she’s expendable. If she can pull this off kudos to the CIA. If she doesn’t, no big loss. Right, Martin?”
“If you weren’t so emotionally involved in this you’d see it was the only thing I could have done.”
“Yeah, and now I’m going to do the only thing I can.”
“Sean, damn it, don’t do anything stupid. We can still salvage this.”
Cutter disconnected. The initial shock of terror was wearing off. His brain was beginning to function. He knew this was probably going to cost him his job, but he didn’t think twice about calling in the only men he knew could help him save Mattie’s life.
Mike Madrid answered with a gruff utterance of his name.
“I’m initiating a Code 99,” Cutter said.
Madrid hesitated, then said, “What’s the situation?”
Cutter rapidly summarized everything that had happened. “We’ve got to get to Logan before The Jaguar…” He couldn’t finish the sentence. The mere thought of Mattie enduring the same horrors he had was simply too much to bear.
“Easy, Cutter,” Madrid said. “We’ll get her.”
“For God’s sake, Mike, he’s going to torture her. We don’t know the location of the compound.”
The silence that followed was deafening.
“The Jaguar has a weak link,” Cutter said. “But I need your help.”
“Tell me and I’m there.”
He told Madrid about Mattie’s coworker, Daniel Savage. “I believe he’s the one who framed her. There’s a possibility he’ll know the location of the compound. We know he’s been in contact. If we can get his cell phone we can do a triangulation and find the nearest tower.”
“Where’s Savage?”
“D.C.”
“I can be there in half an hour. I’ll pay him a visit, see what I can get out of him.”
“No holds barred.”
“Roger that,” Madrid said. “What’s your twenty?”
“Silver Lake, Alberta.”
“I’ll scramble the Lear.” Madrid paused. “It’s still going to take a couple of hours.”
“Let’s hope Mattie can hang on that long.”
“If I were you I’d start praying,” Madrid said, and disconnected.
Chapter Sixteen
Mattie woke to the glare of a bright light. She was lying on her side with her knees pulled up protectively to her chest. She blinked, and a wall painted two-tone institutional beige came into view. She shifted, straightened and tested her limbs. Everything appeared to be in good working order. In the distance she could hear the clang of steel against steel.
At first she thought she had somehow landed in prison. Then she remembered walking into the wire office. The dead clerk. The man behind the counter. Sean Cutter just minutes away…
Gasping, she sat up and looked around. She was in a small cell with a concrete floor and steel bars on one side. There were no windows, just a single light overhead, and she got the sensation of being underground.
Beyond the bars, a man wearing a brown paramilitary uniform sat with his boots propped on a scarred wooden desk, watching her with piggish eyes.
“Where am I?” she asked.
Never taking his eyes from hers, he reached for the phone and punched numbers into the keypad. “She’s awake,” he said and hung up.
Mattie shivered. Where on earth was she? What did The Jaguar have planned for her? She thought of how worried Cutter must be, and pain twisted inside her. He’d been right all along. He’d known she was in over her head. That she was unequipped to handle a brutal man like The Jaguar. And now here she was, in mortal danger.
“Ah, Ms. Logan, you’re awake.”
She rose abruptly at the sound of the deep, cultured voice. A chill swept through her when she found herself staring at The Jaguar. He was shorter than she’d imagined. Well under six feet. But what he lacked in physical stature he made up for with the power of his presence. He was an attractive man with eyes the color of bitter chocolate and the high cheekbones of a male model. His skin was flawless and olive. His hair glossy black and pulled into a neat ponytail at his nape.
Two men in uniform flanked him. Mattie stared at the pistols strapped to their hips, and the grave reality of the situation slammed home.
“Who are you and what do you want?” she asked.
“I think you already know the answer to both of those questions.”
He reached the door to her cell and studied her for a moment. “I am The Jaguar,” he said simply. “And you have something I want.”
A shudder moved through her at the way he was looking at her. It was as if he was searching for the best place to hurt her.
One of the uniformed men removed a ring of keys from his belt and unlocked her cell door. The second man took out a set of nylon restraints from his belt.
“The real question,” The Jaguar began, “is whether or not you’re going to cooperate with me.”