The Rebel King (All the King's Men Duet #2) - Kennedy Ryan Page 0,4

and you can tell me what I should do next.”

In moments, she receives the email and clicks the link to the video.

A face—or rather, a mask—appears. A tall man, ripped with muscles and wearing a Kurt Cobain T-shirt and an Abe Lincoln mask, adjusts the camera. They’re in some dark space, illuminated dimly with a few lights strung along the back wall.

“Hi,” he says, his voice as American as the president he’s hiding behind. He waves, and the mask shifts with his grin. “Don’t be thrown off by the mask. I know it’s kind of . . . “He touches his chin like he’s searching his mind. “. . . comical, but I assure you I’m completely serious.”

He tips his head, beckoning someone off camera to come forward. Wallace steps into the frame, his steps reluctant and his eyes darting nervously from the camera to the hulking armed man.

“State your name,” Abe says.

When Wallace doesn’t respond right away, Abe taps his head with the butt of a semi-automatic weapon. Wallace winces.

“Name,” Abe commands again.

Wallace glances at the camera from beneath a heavy frown, his eyes anxious, hollow. “Wallace Murrow.”

“As the team at CamTech knows,” Abe says, “Doctor Murrow here has been up to some revolutionary things with that vaccine of his.”

Kimba and I exchange a quick look. I lift my brows, silently asking if she knows what-the-hell vaccine. She gives a swift negative shake of her head and returns her attention to the video.

“I want to keep this simple,” Abe says. “You want your wonder boy back, it’ll cost you ten million dollars and the formula for the vaccine he’s been developing.”

“What can you possibly think you’ll be able to do with it?” Wallace asks, his voice pitching high, his eyes stretched open wide.

Abe hits the side of Wallace’s head with the butt of his gun. Wallace grunts in pain, stumbles back, and another masked man, this one wearing Richard Nixon, drags him from the frame.

“As you can see . . .” Abe sighs dramatically. “I’m still training Doctor Murrow how to behave, but I have another hostage. He knows the deal.”

He tips his head toward the camera, and Nixon returns, marching a hunched figure with a black bag covering his head into the frame.

“This is Paco,” Abe says, ripping the bag from the man’s head. “Paco, say hello to the nice people back home.”

Time has chiseled deep grooves alongside the man’s mouth and into his forehead. His swarthy skin sags around his jaw and his once-dark hair is more salt than pepper. In his eyes, when he glances up at the camera, there’s fear and a solemn resignation.

“I said,” Abe emphasizes, “say hello to the people back home, Paco.”

He leans down and loud-whispers, “You’re making me look bad, buddy.”

“Hello,” Paco says, the English sounding forced and foreign on his lips.

“Paco here,” Abe says, “is what I like to call disposable. Wrong time, wrong place. I don’t need him. I only need Doctor Murrow, but fret not! Paco does serve a purpose.”

Abe pulls a .357 magnum from the waistband of his camouflage pants and presses it to Paco’s temple. The older man immediately starts whimpering, eyes closed. He lifts his plastic-cuffed wrists and presses his palms together in prayer. I catch the odd “dios” and “ave maria” strung into a rosary of fear and pleading.

Abe’s voice goes wooden, his eyes like marble. “Paco’s going to demonstrate that I mean business.”

He pulls the trigger without further warning, the bullet firing into Paco’s temple in a spray of blood and violence. Paco drops like a domino, setting a billion things inside me into motion.

“Jesus!” Kimba drops the iPad onto my desk like the blood and gray matter could have splashed on her clothes. It lands face down, and I steady my hands to turn it back over so we can keep watching.

“See?” Abe’s pleasant tone is back, his mask stained with Paco’s blood. “Business. I don’t do idle threats, Mr. Vale.”

“Who’s Mr. Vale?” Kimba asks, her voice and hands trembling.

“CEO of CamTech,” Jin Lei answers from the door. “He’s on the line.”

I don’t reply, but hold up a staying finger to Jin Lei so I can watch the rest of this lunatic’s macabre show.

“You’re already responsible for the death of one innocent person,” Abe says and turns to Nixon. “Bring her in.”

Kimba and I stare at one another in a silence so tense, the muscles in my neck and back scream, braced for what will happen next.

The man in the Nixon mask

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