“No. I allowed you to live so that I could make you suffer. We will meet, Hunter, but only when you’re begging to be released from your torment.”

“Whoever is behind this, I will kill him too.”

The man didn’t respond to that, which meant I’d hit a raw nerve.

“Tell him that this time I won’t hesitate to put a bullet through his skull.”

“Hunter,” the man said, “you think you know what this is all about? You know nothing.”

He hung up.

Bryce stirred from where he was sitting. He approached me slowly. He had grown pale. It probably had as much to do with the look on my face as what he already feared. “Was it him?”

Him? He was talking about Jesus Henao Abadia. A dead man.

Yes, it was a dead man. If I had my way I’d make certain of that. But it wasn’t Abadia. This man’s voice was North American.

Bryce’s face couldn’t have grown any paler if I’d put a slug through his heart. His eyes watered and I could see him shuddering.

“Get a grip, Bryce,” I told him. “You’re no good to anyone in this state.”

Harsh words perhaps, but they were aimed as much at me as they were at him. I’d failed to keep Kate safe, and now it looked like I’d failed her sister as well.

The man had expected me to call Imogen, and had waited for my call. His intention was to throw me off-kilter, make me fear what would happen next. Instead, he’d got me thinking.

Putting away my phone, I stared at Bryce. He hadn’t stumbled on this case all by himself. He was retired from the agency. Someone had fed him the details of the murders, someone had supplied him the photographs. Whoever had done so, they were not the same as the people threatening us. They wouldn’t have given him fair warning, they would have simply taken him and he would have been strapped in a chair and tortured like all the rest.

“You know more than you’re saying, Bryce. I want it all.”

“I was going to tell you everything, Hunter. I just wanted to be sure that we were on the same side first.”

“God damn you, Bryce. If you’d told me everything when you first contacted me, I could have stopped this from happening.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Yes, Bryce. So am I. But at least you know now whose fucking side I’m on.”