Hard Line - Pamela Clare Page 0,65

straight to him.

Also, the perpetrator had to be a stone-cold sociopath and extremely intelligent, capable of concealing his true emotions and intentions behind a mask of friendship. Barclay wasn’t capable of that. Jason Huger couldn’t control his mouth or his temper. Hamidi and Wei had both broken down during questioning.

There had to be something in Hardin’s background, something the analyst team had missed.

Down the hallway, Thor saw Hardin standing just outside the B1 Lounge. Hardin spotted Thor, waved to him, met him halfway.

“Can we talk for a second? It’s about Sam… Samantha. That’s what she prefers to be called, I guess. I’m worried about her.”

Hva’ fanden? What the hell?

“Okay.”

“My office. It will only take a second.”

Thor’s instincts told him something wasn’t right. He pulled out his radio, called Jones and Segal just to let them know where he was going—and who he was with. “I’m meeting briefly with Hardin in his office. I’ll be there in a minute.”

He hoped they understood the subtext.

If Hardin shows up at the meeting without me, kick his ass.

He followed Hardin through the warren that was the admin offices, noticed ice on the plastic mat just inside the emergency fire exit. There was also ice on Hardin’s boots.

Hardin had just come through that door.

This was fucked.

Thor reached down, loosened his pistol in its holster, kept his hand at his hip, ready to draw.

Hardin opened his office door, gestured for Thor to enter, his gaze dropping to Thor’s right hand. “Go on in.”

“You first.” Thor stood his ground.

Hardin’s pupils narrowed, but he smiled. “Are you getting paranoid? It’s the twenty-four-seven darkness. It happens to all of us.”

Thor followed him inside. “What is this about?”

Hardin sat on the edge of his desk, a grin sliding over his face. “I’m going to need your pistol, your radio, your phone, and the location of the Golden Horde components—or Samantha will die.”

Thor drew, pointed his weapon at the bastard’s head. “Where is she?”

Hardin didn’t flinch. “Check the webcam.”

Thor hazarded a quick glance at Hardin’s screen, the green glow of a night-vision camera showing… His heart gave a hard knock, a single, sickening thud. “Samantha.”

She lay still on the ice, tied up without a parka or any cold-weather gear. Thor couldn’t identify where she was, exactly, and he couldn’t see her face or tell whether she was breathing. But he recognized the sweater—and her long hair.

Fuck! Son of a bitch!

Rage such as he hadn’t felt since Afghanistan surged through him, made his face burn, blood lust pounding through his veins.

Thor grabbed Hardin by his hair, slammed his face into his desk, jammed the pistol into the fucker’s temple. “Where the fuck is she? Tell me, or I’ll splatter your brains around this office.”

“You’ve got one chance to save her, and you’re wasting it. If you kill me, she dies. If you delay, she dies. She’s already been out there for, oh, I’d say, about five minutes. Even if you mobilize everyone on station to search for her, she’ll be dead before you find her. Give me your radio, your weapon, and the location of the Golden Horde components, and I’ll tell you where she is. And don’t say the goods are in my safe. I already looked. That’s all fucking Legos and scrap metal.”

For Satan! Damn it to hell!

Thor knew he had no choice. If he killed Hardin, the bastard couldn’t tell him where she was. It was eighty below out there right now. If Thor didn’t get to Samantha soon, she’d be dead. “You fucking bastard! If she dies, you die, too. That’s a promise.”

He lowered the pistol, handed the weapon, his phone, and his radio to Hardin. “The package is locked in the vacant room across from mine. It’s locked in a biometric case hidden in the ceiling—check the rear corner tile above the bed.”

Biometric safes were easy to crack.

Hardin laughed. “Clever.”

Jones and Segal would know the moment Hardin entered the room. The security camera would ping their phones, and they would know Thor was in trouble. They would act to keep the components and the rest of the people on station safe, no matter what happened to Thor and Samantha.

But Thor needed to hurry. “You got what you wanted. Where the hell is she?”

Hardin pointed Thor’s pistol at his chest. “Move.”

Thor walked out of the office, careful to keep Hardin in his peripheral vision. “Do you think you’ll get away with this? There’s nowhere to run. You’re already at the top of our list of suspects. They’ll catch