“We don’t know. It looked like a woman, but there was a bag over her head. They were dragging her. It all happened too fast for us to do anything.”

“Where did they go?” she asked.

“Who knows? They were headed south, but we couldn’t track them from our position.”

Kit considered the possibilities. She couldn’t think of why Soh would be taking a woman hostage, and she didn’t know whether it had anything to do with his war with Cormack. “OK,” she said. “Keep up the surveillance and let me know if you see anything else.”

She hung up the phone and looked out the window, down toward the harbor. She wondered where Cormack was, and whether he was making better progress in getting information than she was.

Cormack stood over Buddy Cavanaugh. The young man was tied up, lying on the cement floor of the union offices. His face was bloodied, and he’d been hit in the ribs, but other than that, Cormack’s men had left him alone. Looking down at him, Cormack felt nothing but the need for information. The lad was no longer human to him; he was a tool to be used to help win the war that Soh had started—the war that Buddy Cavanaugh had helped Soh start.

Cormack walked over and picked up one of the folding chairs that was leaned against the wall on the far side of the room, brought it over, and set it near Cavanaugh, a few feet from the cement wall.

“Pick him up,” Cormack ordered.

Hall and one of the other men stepped up, grabbed Buddy under the arms, and pulled him to his feet. Cavanaugh gave a slight grunt of pain as his shoulders were pulled back.

“Put him in the chair.”

The two men walked him over and set him in the chair. Buddy was hunched over, his head hanging down, and it took a moment for him to look into Cormack’s eyes.

“Cicero, you stay here. Everyone else, head upstairs to the coffee room. Make sure the front door is bolted. We’ll be up shortly.”

Hall and the three other men filed slowly toward the front of the room, then up the staircase. They continually looked back, curious to witness Cavanaugh’s ultimate demise.

Cormack walked back to the stack of chairs and pulled another one off the wall. He brought it over and set it down directly in front of Buddy Cavanaugh. He nodded for Cicero to stand behind Buddy, and then he sat down. The chairs were close enough that if Cormack leaned forward, his head would collide with Buddy’s.

As soon as Cormack sat down, Buddy started trying to talk through the tape. His mouth was sealed shut, and blood had congealed in his nose, so the effort made him gasp and choke, and all that could be heard was a guttural sound from his throat.