An answering machine picked up after two rings, its greeting in the Gordian child’s voice—her home phone. Kuhl disconnected. Most likely the purpose of her call had been to remotely check incoming messages, but he wanted to assure himself she had not left a message intended to alert anyone who might discover it as to precisely what had occurred here.

When they learned, it would be at his will.

Poised over his captive behind the shop counter, Kuhl turned his MP5 down at her, peripherally aware his men had gathered in the small back room to his right. Sorge and Arek sat at wait behind him.

“Give me your remote play-back code,” he told her.

Silent in her pain, her eyes bright with defiance, she glared at him over the barrel of the submachine gun. Blood dripped from her arm over the alpha’s clamped, bristling jaws.

There was, Kuhl realized, much of the father in her.

He pushed his weapon closer to her face, decided to make a threat of what already had been done.

“The code,” he said. “Give it to me, or I will order the woman and infant in the house downhill killed.”

She kept looking up at Kuhl, her eyes boring into his own.

“I do not bluff,” he said.

A flicker of hesitation on her features. A blink. Then her silence broke.

“Six-four-eight-two,” she said.

Kuhl recalled the home phone number, interrupted her recorded greeting with the code. There were no incoming messages stored in the machine.

Good, he thought. His assumption had been correct. She hadn’t had time for hasty warnings.

Kuhl hit the END button again, moved the scroll bar down to the next listed number, and then dialed it as an added precaution. He listened to a prerecorded announcement for the business hours of a sporting goods shop. Yet another prosaic call.

Good and better.

“The people down at the house,” the Gordian daughter said in a croaking voice. Her arm still locked in the alpha’s mouth. “I don’t know what you want from me . . . but promise you won’t hurt them.”

Kuhl said nothing. He motioned to his men.

They closed in around her, rifles leveled.

“Wait, please.” A single tear spilled from the corner of her eye and tracked down her cheek. “My dog . . . at least let me take a look at the dog . . . I can’t just leave her—”

Kuhl interrupted her with a shake of his head.

“No, my caged robin,” he said. His face set. “No promises, no negotiation.”

TEN - VARIOUS LOCALES

TEN

VARIOUS LOCALES