Hardy sighed in exasperation.
“Oh, all right then.” He nodded to her. “Go on, say something to your idiot boyfriend.”
Her mind raced. Could she somehow give him a clue to her location? Tell him something about Hardy that would help him find her? This could be her one opportunity to save herself. Her throat went dry as she felt panic rising in her chest.
She managed a plaintive, “Bronnik,” and her voice cracked tearfully on the first syllable. She closed her eyes, drew a deep breath and steeled herself. She had to be tough so he could be tough. When she spoke again her tone was even and unwavering. “I’m fine. I’m not hurt.”
“Not yet, at least,” Hardy added with a chuckle.
There was a prolonged, dangerous silence on the other end of the line.
“Tell me what you want, Hardy.” Bronnik’s voice was flat and utterly devoid of emotion. If anything, he sounded disinterested. He would come for her, wouldn’t he? She felt the anchor of her hope beginning to come loose and start to drift, and with it came a dizzying mix of emotions.
“I want you, Sergeant Mason,” Hardy replied with a sick smile. “Just you. None of your little Task Force friends, and you know I’ll be checking to make sure you don’t try to sneak any in. I know how you pathetic men like to travel in packs.”
“Anything else?”
“No weapons. No Kevlar, no blades, no guns.”
“Fine. Where am I headed?”
As Hardy spelled out the address, her hysteria rose again. The call was ending, this was her last chance to communicate something, anything, to Bronnik—but what? She wanted to tell him she loved him, that even if she never saw him again she wanted him to know that. It would enrage Hardy, but it would be worth it. Resolute, she opened her mouth and drew breath to speak, but just as the words began to form in her throat Hardy pressed a button and ended the call.
What was left of her optimism dissolved and vanished, leaving only fear and despair in its place. Bronnik was coming here with no backup and no weapons. And if he decided he felt like it, Hardy could kill her at any point.
Hardy turned to her with an eager grin, withdrawing a knife from a sheath on his belt. “Now we wait.”
Bronnik looked down at the phone and pressed a button to clear the display panel. Then he hurled it at the cinderblock wall. It shattered on impact, sending a shower of plastic shards raining down noisily on the floor.
“Mason,” Thando admonished sharply. “That’s enough. Get hold of yourself.”
“I’m going to kill him,” he muttered hotly, ignoring his partner. “If he thinks telling me not to bring a gun is going to change that, if he thinks I couldn’t do it with my bare hands, he’s never been more wrong.”
Thando scrubbed a weary hand over his face. Dassie looked down at the floor. There were ten operators in the overlit, white-walled room and Bronnik knew they all thought he was insane. He’d seen their eyes flicking back and forth, full of secret meaning, as Thando had briefed them on the situation while Bronnik sat by his side, fuming in silence. He knew there would be whispers in the canteen, in the corridors, on the firing range, that Mason had come unhinged. He chased this guy for six months, they’d say, until he fell for one of the women himself, like a fool. He tried to run down the car until they found him on the sidewalk, they would whisper, slumped right there on the pavement.
He knew what they thought. And he didn’t give a damn.
“I am going to kill Lloyd Hardy,” Bronnik repeated, loudly, enunciating each syllable. “I swear to God, he will by dead by dawn.”
“Better hurry then.” Warren pushed into the room, shutting the door behind him. “It’s getting late.”
“Has everyone on this force gone mad?” Thando threw up his hands. “Copley, you should be in hospital.”
“I’m fine,” he insisted, ripping the admission bracelet off his wrist as he spoke. “It was just a fast-acting tranquilizer. Amateur, really. He got very lucky.”
“You did get a shot off before you went down,” Dassie noted. “Put a nice hole in Mason’s wall.”
Warren pursed his lips in annoyance. “Let’s talk about something else. What’s the plan?”
“Mason just spoke to Hardy,” Thando explained. “Hardy wants him on the scene alone, no weapons. He gave us an address.”
“So I’m going to drive over there and break his neck,” Bronnik informed him.
Warren rolled his eyes. “Of course you’re not. Are we thinking concealed backup? Roof entry? Is there a map of the building?”
Warren’s dismissal turned Bronnik’s already simmering rage into a rolling, consuming boil.
“Why is no one taking me seriously?” he addressed the room at large. “This is not a game—there’s a woman’s life at stake.”
“We know it isn’t,” Warren said, in the tone adults use for explaining things to children. “That’s why we need to be sensible.”
“Sensible?” Bronnik’s laugh was hollow and bitter. His anger had built to such a consuming level, he felt he didn’t even know these men anymore. There was no way they could understand what he was going through. This was just another routine hostage situation for them. None of them had any idea what he stood to lose, when he’d only just found it.
He advanced on Warren, poking a finger in his chest to punctuate his words. “I don’t have time for sensible, jou naaier,” he cursed vehemently. “I have to get in there and take what’s mine.”
Warren laughed in his face, and it took everything in Bronnik not to haul back and punch him. “I’d like to see you try.”
White-hot rage coursed through Bronnik’s veins. His hands clenched at his sides. Warren stepped closer.
“Do it,” he whispered. “I know you want to.”
He narrowed his eyes. The room around him had gone tense and silent. The last remaining part of his logical brain wondered what Warren was playing at. The rest of him just wanted a fight.
Before he could even register that his friend had moved, Warren pulled back and slapped him across the face. Hard.
He barely felt it—he was numb, blind with fury. In less than a second he had Warren on the floor, with his hands around his throat, as a guttural howl ripped loose from somewhere deep within him and rattled through his chest. Warren thrashed beneath him, clutching at his wrists, but Bronnik had never felt so steady, so strong.
Then there were men all around him, tugging at his arms, trying to pull him off. He braced himself against their efforts, gritting his teeth, until Dassie tackled him from the side, and the two of them went crashing to the floor.
Bronnik felt his skull bounce against the linoleum, and just like that, the anger ran out of him like water down a drain. Dassie pinned him to the floor, holding one forearm against the back of his neck while his arms were twisted up behind him, but he didn’t need to. There was no fight left in him.
From the other end of the room he heard Warren coughing and assuring everyone he was fine. “It’s all right, Dassie,” he told his fellow officer softly. “I’m done.”
He felt his friend hesitate above him. “Mason,” he began, and then stopped himself. When he spoke again his voice was low, intended for Bronnik’s hearing only. “We’ll get her,” he murmured. “And you can have your kill. I promise you.”
Dassie backed off, and Bronnik rolled up to a sitting position. He propped his elbows on his knees and pressed the heels of his palms against his forehead.
Lacey—that was what this was about. Not his bloodlust, not his vengeance. Rescuing her was the only thing that mattered, and she deserved to come back to the same man she knew when she was taken.
The man with principles, ethics and moral standards. Not a cold-blooded killer.
Warren crouched beside him and extended his hand. “I’m sorry, Mason, but I had to do it. You weren’t thinking straight. You had to blow off some steam.”
Bronnik shook his friend’s hand gratefully. “I’m sorry you have such a thick neck.” He cracked a tentative smi
le, and Warren grinned.
“If you’re quite finished,” Thando barked. “We have a rather pressing situation to resolve.”
Bronnik hauled himself to his feet. “Let’s do this.”
Chapter Fifteen
Lacey rolled her shoulders as Hardy drew back the side of the blind on the front window, peering out at the street. Her muscles were stiffening from sitting in the same position, and her light summer dress offered little insulation from the cool interior of the office.
“If that moron doesn’t turn up soon, I may just have to kill you and get out of here. I’m getting sick of waiting,” Hardy muttered from his place by the window.
She let her head fall back against the chair. It had been half an hour since the phone call to Bronnik, and her whole body was drained and shaky from spent adrenaline. She had racked her brain for some innovative way to free herself and had visually scoured the room for anything she might use as a weapon. Eventually she’d given over to a sort of detached, sorrowful resignation. There was no way out of this.
She didn’t want to die, she thought pitifully, squeezing her eyes shut against hot tears. She still had so many plans, so many dreams, and things she wanted to do and experience and accomplish. Maybe if she’d been hit by a car or struck down with a terminal illness, she could be more at peace with the idea, but not this. Not at the hands of this vile man who’d picked her at random out of a newspaper.
The recollection of her absolute anonymity in Hardy’s designs was like a cold slap, and she sat up straight, seething with fresh anger. He picked her as a template, not a person. He just thought she looked right. He didn’t give a damn about the twenty-eight years that brought her here, or the woman they’d made her into.
She glanced around the room with renewed purpose. No way was she going down without a fight. Hardy would know the true measure of her character if it killed her.
And there was a good chance it would.
There was nothing in sight that seemed to have any potential as a weapon. Her wrists and ankles were bound, and the rolling chair had been placed right in the center of the room, with nothing nearby except the high outer wall of the reception desk. She sighed in exasperation.
Hardy was still looking out at the street, twirling the knife in his right hand. She thought about the methodical, hyper-choreographed nature of his killing: the phone call warnings, the similar settings, the choice of women who all looked alike.
And then there was his obsession with an audience. He didn’t just want to kill her, he wanted Bronnik to suffer, to know his power. In Kansas he’d taken his chances in public places, in the firing range and the mall, and he’d known the police were all over the dental office.
He liked having everything in his control. He wanted to be the big man, the one calling the shots, and he loved it when the supposedly powerful police had to dash around at his beck and call.
But having his victim fall for his enemy? He hadn’t planned on that. That was way beyond his control, and that was why he was so angry—and so sloppy.
Putting a bomb in her car was haphazard and desperate. So was trying to stage a siege with a fresh injury. Hardy was not working to his usual standard. He could see the situation slipping out of his hands, and he was panicking.
Lacey fisted her hands in excitement. This could be her chance.
Hardy turned to her with a smug smile. “Evidently the Special Task Force doesn’t require its members to be able to read a map. Then again, given the backwater hole he crawled out of, I suppose we’re lucky the good sergeant isn’t completely illiterate.”
“How do you know where he’s from?”
“I do my homework, Miss Cross,” Hardy replied primly. “When he was first assigned to the case I did some rather illegal reconnaissance in the police’s personnel department. I read his file, and it wasn’t exactly a page-turner. Reared on an arid shell of a farm, a few years spent sucking his thumb at Stellenbosch University, and then a series of sickeningly enthusiastic performance reviews from his professional betters. So he can run fast, do a few chin-ups and shoot a gun.” Hardy rolled his eyes. “What a star.”
“Did you read Thando Zarda’s file as well?” she asked, eager to keep him talking.
Hardy flicked his hand dismissively. “Zarda’s not a threat to me.”
Bingo. “But Bronnik is?”
Hardy advanced on her so quickly from across the room that she instinctively pushed back against the chair.
“Does he look like a threat to me?” he demanded, gesticulating wildly with the knife. “You’re in here with me, not out there with him. If anything, he should be afraid of me.” He began pacing the room. “What on earth is taking so long?” he muttered, brows furrowed in agitation.
By Lacey’s reckoning, the more he lost control, the weaker he would be. It was a gamble—if she pushed him too hard, he might snap and kill her before Bronnik arrived. But if she was right, and he was already off-balance when Bronnik got here, it might be that much easier to press him into doing something wrong, or Bronnik might catch him in a moment of vulnerability.
“He’ll be here,” she said calmly. “I know he will.”
Hardy snickered. “What makes you so sure? Back in Kansas he had all his boys and his toys. I’m not sure he’ll be such a warrior without his Task Force security blanket.”
“Because he loves me,” she replied, infusing her tone with a confidence she didn’t feel, and ignored the twinge of uncertainty in her heart.
Hardy’s cheeks reddened. “How can he love you? You’ve known him less than a week. You’re living in a fantasy land, Miss Cross. Perhaps killing you would be doing you a favor, because otherwise you’re in for a rude awakening when your beloved Mason runs off with some busty young waitress he meets in a bar.”
“He loves me,” she repeated firmly. “And he’ll kill you to save me.”
To her surprise, Hardy threw back his head and laughed. “Oh Miss Cross, you really are naïve.” He came toward her again, and trailed his fingers down the side of her face. Lacey braced herself against his touch, keeping her face stony and unchanged. “Bronnik Mason doesn’t kill anyone. He doesn’t have the nerve, or as you Americans might say, the cojones. Not like me.”
He straightened with a grin, and her stomach clenched in worry. Her attempts at unbalancing him didn’t seem to be having as much of an effect as she’d hoped. She glanced at the clock—another five minutes had passed. Surely Bronnik would be here any minute. She had to keep trying.
“Oh, I don’t know about that,” she said brazenly, praying her instincts were leading her in the right direction. “I’ve seen his cojones, as you put it, and it’s all there.”
Hardy’s eyes widened. “What did you say?”
“You heard me. I said that Bronnik is all man. In fact, he’s more like three men put together. He made me scream so much, I practically lost my voice.”
Hardy slapped her across the face with an open hand. She cried out at the sudden, fierce sting of it, then turned back to him with renewed fury. “He could probably do that better too.”
“Filthy slut,” Hardy hissed, and raised his hand again, but there was a knock on the door and he froze, his hand held in midair.
The knock sounded again, louder this time. Hardy looked at her indecisively for a second, then lowered his arm and hurried to the window.
“He’s here,” he said, mostly to himself. “He’s alone.”
He moved back to Lacey’s chair and positioned himself behind it, the hand holding the knife resting just above her shoulder.
“Come in, Sergeant,” he called, and the door creaked open.
Bronnik moved slowly into the room, and Lacey worked hard not to burst into yearning, grateful sobs at the sight of him. He wore a black T-shirt and camouflage trousers tucked into his combat boots. She couldn’t see a radio or the Beretta, and she desperately hoped he knew what he was doing.
“How are you, Lloyd?” he asked coolly, hands at his sides.
“Never better. But I would appreciate a little reassurance that you’ve stuck to the deal.”
Bronnik nodded, his face expressionless, and raised the hem of his T-shirt to reveal his belt line and bare torso. “I’ve got nothing.” He pivoted to show the scar on his side. “Except this.”
Hardy chuckled behind her. “A nice addition, if you ask me. Anyway, it doesn’t seem to be interfering with your ability to attract loose women.”
She heard the rage edging Hardy’s tone, and she hoped Bronnik could hear it too. His gaze flicked to her quickly and then returned to Hardy. “Which loose women are we referring to, Lloyd?”
“My apologies, I didn’t realize there were so many that you struggled to keep track.” Hardy sneered. Bronnik just stared, and Hardy continued, “Don’t play dumb with me, Mason. It seems that sweet little Lacey here is as much of a tattletale as she is a whore.”
She gritted her teeth. Please understand, she begged silently. Please see where this is going.
Bronnik blinked once, twice, and then there it was, registering plain on his face—comprehension. She exhaled a tense breath.
“What can I say.” He shrugged. “I’ve never been able to resist a beautiful woman.”
Lacey could feel Hardy’s hands tightening on the back of the chair. “That you’re a pervert who fucks the women under his protection doesn’t surprise me,” Hardy shot back. “But convincing her you’re in love with her? That you two have some kind of epic romance ahead of you? That you’re not planning to chuck her onto the first plane back to Kansas as soon as you’ve cleared your paperwork? That’s low, Mason, even for you.”
Lacey’s heart thudded as she watched Bronnik’s face for a reaction. If he showed any kind of surprise or denial, Hardy would know it was all exaggerated and the control would be right back in his hands.
But Bronnik’s expression was steady. “I am in love with her,” he said calmly. “Every word she said is true. If anything, Hardy, I should thank you for introducing us.”
That was the step that sent Hardy over the edge. With an inhuman roar, he dragged Lacey up out of the chair and pressed the knife to her throat, its cold point pressing into the soft flesh beneath her chin. She bit back a whimper as she struggled to stay upright on her bound ankles. The blade was so tight against her neck, she was afraid to swallow.
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