of the family, but that wasn’t exactly true. Though she was incredibly compassionate, she was very much of the “teach them to fish” mind-set. Her father was right about one thing, though: she couldn’t save the entire world by herself. She looked forward to going home in a few short months. She’d been away too long.
* * *
An hour later Hanna picked at her dinner at the small table that served as a dining room, her laptop next to her. The living conditions of the small farmstead apartment should have been uncomfortable for a wealthy American, but she had a genuine appreciation for the simplicity of it all. She tried to email her parents, but the farm’s satellite internet signal was down, as usual.
Headlights flashed across the ceiling as a vehicle turned onto her lane, the beams casting eerie shadows as they filtered through the high window frames. She heard footfalls on the stone walkway as a figure approached. Visitors after nightfall were not a normal occurrence. Listening to her sixth sense, Hanna looked around for something to use as a weapon and picked up a battered kitchen knife. The knock at the door sent a shiver down her spine, but a woman’s voice put her at ease.
“Excuse me,” the woman said in Romanian.
Hanna peeked through the window shade and saw a young, well-dressed female.
“Can I help you?”
“My husband and I are lost. Is this the road to the bed-and-breakfast?”
She could see that the woman was holding a smartphone, presumably trying to find a location on the map that would not come up due to that lack of coverage in the area. Still suspicious, Hanna unlocked the door and stepped out to help, holding the knife in her right hand, the blade pressed upward against her forearm to conceal it. The woman smiled and held out the phone so that Hanna could see the map. She leaned in to see where she was pointing.
“Thank you so much.”
Hanna opened her mouth to respond but was grabbed in a powerful bear hug from behind. She slashed backward with the knife and felt the resistance of clothing, flesh, and bone. The vise grip loosened as her attacker grunted in pain. Twisting away, she turned and ran back through the doorway, sprinting through her home for the back door that led into the night. If she could get out of the house, she would have a two-hundred-yard dash to the forest. She heard footsteps behind her and threw a chair into the doorway to slow her pursuer.
Almost there. The back door. A chance to escape.
Slamming her shoulder into the back door, she catapulted herself toward the tree line and was knocked to the ground with a two-by-four to the face. She fell backward, crashing back into the door frame, the knife slipping from her grasp. Bloodied and barely conscious against the side of the house, she had no defense when the man she had stabbed appeared and struck the left side of her head. Before the others pulled him off, he landed another blow where her jawline met her ear, sending her spiraling into darkness.
CHAPTER 52
Boundary County, Idaho
United States/Canadian Border
HE’D SEEN THE TECHNIQUE once before, and it had stayed with him. Having been attached to the CIA in the days when IEDs became a tactical weapon of strategic importance, Reece had witnessed the unleashing of the most aggressive elements of the U.S. intelligence apparatus. Though Americans were strictly prohibited from practicing the darkest arts of tactical interrogation, they could teach host-nation forces some of the more refined elicitation methods and then leave the room when partner force interrogators applied their most recent knowledge on the enemy. Reece knew the importance of maintaining the moral high ground in war. Sometimes that’s all that distinguished the good guys from the bad. If you abandoned the moral high ground, all was lost.
You’ve lost your way, Reece. Tell that to your wife and daughter.
Reece swung the med kit from his shoulder and looked at the man strapped naked to the leather chair in front of him. Reece and Liz had set the chair on a tarp to help contain the inevitable DNA. Riggers’ tape secured the prisoner’s legs, arms, and upper chest to the chair. A rope fixed in a noose was looped securely around his head and was tied to a beam running the length of the cabin. He wasn’t going anywhere.
The man was covered in ink. Almost every inch of his body was overwritten by intricate