“Prove that Liz is still alive.”

• • •

LIZ FELT A SURGE OF hope as Simon’s voice spilled from the speaker.

“Send a video update. Now.”

Max pressed a button on the console. “Marta?”

“Do it,” the woman’s Russian-accented voice ordered. “Let him see you damage her a little more.”

“Cool,” Rudy said.

Her stomach cramped as he turned toward where she was cuffed to the Nautilus machine, her arms stretched painfully above her head.

“Hey, Max, I’ve got an idea,” the broad-shouldered Russian said. “Why don’t we make our own Rambo movie?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Remember, when he was tied to the bedsprings.”

“You should see a shrink. You’ve got Rambo on the brain.”

“No, listen. When they weren’t shooting electricity through him, the guys torturing him heated his knife and made it look like they were going to burn out one of his eyes.”

• • •

THE SAFE HOUSE WAS A split level, with a huge lawn and a two-car garage under lace-curtained windows. Walking toward it, Simon told the phone, “I said I want a video update.”

“Your impatience is nothing compared to mine,” the voice of the Russian woman replied.

The phone made a chiming sound that indicated a text message had arrived. Simon opened an attachment. With a mixture of fear and rage he again saw Liz positioned on the padded bench, but this time her arms were stretched above her head, her wrists still locked around the metal pole. More blood covered her face. Abruptly her arms jerked higher, the force great enough to slam her head back against the wall.

She groaned.

With equal abruptness, her arms fell, only to be jerked upward again as if she were a puppet.

Her head sagged forward.

The camera tilted down to reveal the scarred hand that Simon had seen earlier. The angle suggested that it belonged to the man who held the camera. The fingers gripped a long, saw-backed knife, holding its blade against the noisy blue flame of a butane blowtorch set on a table.

“Out there, you might be the law, but in here, we are,” a voice with a Russian accent said. He seemed to be quoting from something. “Mess with us, and we’ll show you a war you’ll never believe.”

“Yeah,” another Russian voice said. “You don’t want us to come for you, Murdock.”

Who the hell was Murdock?

They sounded insane.

The point of the blade glowed red as the camera followed it toward Liz. She pressed her head desperately back against the wall. The fiery tip moved toward her left eye. She struggled to turn her head, but the blade went this way and that, matching her frantic movements. At once, it shifted toward her ear and branded it with the silhouette of the knife’s tip.

Liz screamed.

The video ended.

“It’s six minutes after twelve,” the Russian woman’s voice said from the cell phone. “You have less than nine hours to give me my brother.”