EDITOR’S NOTE: The following is an excerpt from The Queen by Steven James (Revell). It contains mature subject matter. Parents, please be advised before allowing children to read.
Prologue
Present day
San Antonio, Texas
10:13 p.m.
Kirk Tyler turned the computer monitor to face his captive.
The video image showed a young woman leaving the Authorized Personnel Only entrance to Lone Star Mall. The mall had closed more than an hour ago. No one else around.
Nighttime.
The girl was the man’s daughter.
Dashiell Collet wrenched against his bonds, but the duct tape held him securely to the steel chair and he wasn’t going anywhere.
The empty warehouse loomed around him.
“This doesn’t have to end badly for her,” Kirk said, enjoying the view of the seventeen-year-old cheerleader sashaying to her car. Erin was obviously unaware that she was being followed, that she was being recorded, that her life was balancing on such a razor-thin edge. “Just answer my question.”
Dashiell was silent.
“Well?” Kirk asked.
“If you touch her.” Dashiell’s teeth were clenched. “I swear to God—”
“Let’s leave God out of this.” Kirk stared at the screen. The video feed came from a camera hidden in the top button of the oxford of his associate, now twenty paces behind the girl. “I just want you to tell me the name of the person you’ve been in touch with at the Pentagon. That’s it. Just your contact’s name, and this will be all over.”
“I told you before, I don’t know what you’re talking about!”
“You worked at the facility for fourteen years.”
“What facility?”
“Dashiell, please. Enough. I want to know the name of the person in charge of the project.”
Dashiell shook his head adamantly. “You’ve made a mistake. I’m the wrong man.”
Considering Dashiell’s situation, Kirk was surprised by the amount of resolve in the man’s voice. Apparently his training was serving him well.
So, a little convincing.
Kirk’s partner was wearing a hands-free Bluetooth earpiece, and Kirk spoke to him, said two words: “Take her.”
On the monitor he could see the distance between the camera and Erin shrinking as his associate moved swiftly, silently, toward her.
“No!” Dashiell cried.
Erin was fishing her car keys out of her purse.
“This will stop,” Kirk said, “when you want it to stop.”
Dashiell strained heroically to get free, but the way he was bound, his struggles only constricted the duct tape more tightly around his ankles and wrists.
“I don’t know anyone at the Pentagon!” he yelled. “I’m telling you I’m an insurance adjuster! That’s all!”
Erin reached the car.
Opened the driver’s door.
The camera was a yard away from her back.
And then.
She must have noticed the person in her side-view mirror or heard the rustle of movement behind her because she turned abruptly and opened her mouth to scream, but Kirk’s partner was on her before she could.
“I don’t know anyone!” Dashiell hollered.
On the video feed, Kirk could see a hand clamped over the girl’s mouth as she was shoved brusquely into the car. The images became quick, jerky.
