Chapter 49

forty-nine

DYLAN

By five-thirty in the morning, I was exhausted. I’d spent the night making sure the house was secure and going over the information we’d collected about the Haqani Army. I re-checked Alex’s emails, scrutinizing the language they used and the way they structured their sentences. I even studied the photos they’d sent, hoping to find clues about where they might be hiding.

It was clear that at least three different people were responsible for the emails Alex had received. The words were similar, but minute grammatical differences became glaringly obvious when I compared the messages. But it wasn’t enough to locate them. The emails could have been sent from someone working in a warehouse in Arlington or from a yacht in the Gulf of Mexico.

Running my hands through my hair, I sighed. No one was any closer to finding the terrorists, and that worried me. The longer they remained unidentified, the more havoc they could cause.

I took off my glasses and glanced at the kitchen clock. I had more than enough time to do a final sweep of the property before Connor arrived for the morning shift. As I pulled on my jacket, I peered through the kitchen window. The shadowy gray of the pre-dawn sky made everything appear more dangerous than it was. Even so, I checked my holster, making sure my gun was where it had been all night.

When my cell phone beeped, I frowned at the screen. Alex had received another email. After five days with no contact from the terrorists, I was hoping they’d realized they wouldn’t get what they wanted. But obviously not.

I walked across to my laptop and typed in my password. This message was different. Bile rose in my throat. A photo of a middle-aged man filled the screen. Dark hair flopped over a face that was a bloody, bruised mess. There were no words, only the haunting image of a man who feared for his life. He had to be working on the EMP project team with Alex.

Quickly, I opened the electronic document my boss had sent me. As I flicked through the profiles of the people on Alex’s team, I stopped at one of the photos. Anthony Sorenson was a retired physics lecturer. A year ago, Anthony and his wife had moved to Spokane to be closer to his daughter and their grandchildren.

I pushed aside the horror of what was happening. Before anyone came downstairs, I forwarded the email to my boss, then sent him an urgent text. Ryan would pass it on to a team of analysts and to the FBI. I just prayed that someone, somewhere, was watching over Anthony.

Because if they couldn’t find him, he could be gone forever.