what I know now, f**k, they were the K Mart of commandos.”
I started toward him but he put his hand up and clipped,
“Don’t get near me.”
Effing.
Bloody.
Hel .
I stopped.
Juno, feeling the vibe, whined.
Mace kept talking.
“They f**ked it up, botched the job. They left a man behind. The kidnappers sent him back in pieces. No f**kin’
joke. In pieces.”
No gut kick this time. This time, my stomach turned and I was worried I might get sick right there.
Duke hadn’t told me that part.
“As retribution for that stunt, they cut off Caitlin’s hand, sent it to my father. After she died and they examined her, I found out they did it surgical, precise. These guys knew what they were f**kin’ doin’. They had training. They had resources. They weren’t guys you messed with. My father knew that. He knew it the whole f**kin’ time.” I chanced a question. “What did they want?”
“They wanted my father. Even exchange. Caitlin for him.” Duke hadn’t told me that either.
“I take it he wasn’t wil ing to make that deal?” I asked.
Mace laughed but there was no humor in the sound. “No f**kin’ way. Preston Mason sacrifice himself for his daughter? Not a chance.”
Mace stopped talking.
It cost me but I stood stil and waited.
After awhile, he went on, “I lost patience with my father f**kin’ around. I got the police involved, the FBI. Offered myself instead.”
I felt my heart squeeze and closed my eyes but opened them when he continued talking.
“I had no idea who they were, what they wanted. I was relatively famous, I had money. I thought I could bargain with them. I didn’t know they wanted my father dead or they wanted him to pay, not with money, they wanted revenge. It was about revenge. They had no clue our father didn’t give a shit about us and I had no idea what I was doin’ but I was desperate so I did it anyway.”
He paused and stared at me.
I waited then asked careful y, “What happened then?” He kept staring at me a beat then he continued, “I got cocky and gettin’ cocky means bein’ stupid but I was desperate and cocky so that’s a whole other scale of stupid. I fed the media stories. I thought to put pressure on them, a sixteen year old girl losin’ a hand, didn’t read wel in the papers. They didn’t give a shit about their reputations.
They didn’t even care if they came out alive. They were kamikazes, workin’ for a larger organization, doin’ a job for the greater whole. Makin’ a statement in a world that didn’t see the light of day. It wouldn’t matter how much the papers tried to dig up, they wouldn’t find anything. These guys were underground, when I say that I mean underground.” He paused, his intense eyes burning into me and I nodded, thinking he wanted to know that I understood.
Once I nodded, Mace kept speaking.
“The FBI knew what they were up against but they didn’t share this with me. I put pressure on them too. Fed what I thought was their bul shit to the media to get them to move.
It worked. They moved. They had to. It was a PR nightmare for them, Caitlin’s pictures in the paper and on the news every day. The way she looked. They had to make it go away. They knew Caitlin wouldn’t survive. What I didn’t know was, they were tryin’ to keep me alive.” He stopped, I nodded again and he kept going.
“I made it hard on them. I struck a deal with the kidnappers. Me for her. They sent me in, vest, helmet. I got in there and saw her. They’d had her three weeks by then but she’d lost so much f**kin’ weight, weight she couldn’t afford to lose. Her hair was… ” He stopped, closed his eyes, my heart slid up into my throat and he opened his eyes again and kept right on going. “I didn’t take much in. I was only there seconds. They had a gun to her head, blew it off, right in front of me then turned the guns on me. I took a number of hits and went down. They turned the guns on themselves. They were al dead by the time SWAT and the Feds got there.”
He stopped talking and I stayed where I was. My heart was stil in my throat, I could feel it beating there.