Free Threat Warning by John Gilstrap Page A

thinking and makes you do stupid things.
    She wanted to scream, to call out to him. The warnings from the guards made the difference. They demanded silence. Hadn’t she already brought enough harm to her family?
    What could they be doing to him?
    She took a huge breath and tried to settle herself. The panicky thoughts were counterproductive. She was powerless to affect the outcome of this nightmare. What would happen would happen.
    If she told herself that often enough, maybe it would bring solace.
    For now, all it brought was more fear.
    They had her son .
    After easily ninety minutes of isolation, she heard movement of the lock again. This time, when the door crashed open, she had been anticipating it, and was able not to yell out in fear. The team of gunmen streamed in as before, guns at the ready, all of them trained on her. As four of them stopped six feet away, the fifth one—the man with the threatening eyes—approached another two steps, stopping only when he was face-to-face with Christyne.
    “Where is Ryan?” she asked.
    “Put your hands behind your back and turn to face the wall.”
    “Please,” she begged. “Is he okay?”
    “If you make me hurt you, I will,” the gunman said.
    Christyne turned and faced the wall, crossing her wrists behind her back as she had seen Ryan do. The plastic loop closed over her wrists tightly enough to restrain her arms, but not tightly enough to hurt. Yet. A moment later, a hood was placed over her head, but to her surprise, it had a mesh front that allowed her to see. Not well, but enough.
    “Walk to the door,” the gunman commanded.
    The line of gunmen parted to allow her to pass, and as she did, they curled in around her to follow. The air approaching the door was easily twenty degrees cooler than the air inside the cell. She nearly asked where they were going, but then decided not to. They would tell her what they wanted her to know when they wanted her to know it.
    Ryan was kneeling on the floor immediately outside the room, facing her, surrounded by at least a dozen of the black-clad gunmen, all of whose faces were covered by masks. Ryan’s hood had been removed. She could see the desperation in his eyes. His left eye and cheek were swollen and purple. The healthy eye showed an emotion she didn’t quite recognize from him. It was as if something inside him had been rewired.
    Once she’d been allowed to see, the gunmen slipped the hood back over Ryan’s face.
    Behind her, the man who’d been doing all the talking said, “It’s time now to atone for your sins.”

C HAPTER E IGHT
     
    Back in Fisherman’s Cove, Jonathan sat at his desk, with the fickle yet adoring JoeDog sleeping flatulently at his feet.
    No matter how much he tried to avoid the soul-stealing administrivia that came with running a company, investigative findings had to be reviewed and approved, checks needed to be signed, and the occasional mega-client needed to be stroked. Most of the truly painful boredom was shared by his lead investigator, Gail Bonneville, and his office manager and technology guru, Venice Alexander. (It’s pronounced Ven-EE-chay, by the way, and she was known to lose patience with people who blew it more than once.) Even with layers of middle management in place, though, the boss was still the boss, and only so much could be delegated.
    On the far wall, Fox News was running with coverage of the jihadist attacks that threatened to “paralyze America.” Some outfit that called itself the Army of Allah had released a video of a mother and her half-naked teenage son cowering at the feet of black-clad gunmen. The mother recited a prepared text—a rant about godless heathens and the inevitability of Islam’s rule, blah, blah, blah. While they spoke, an Arab translation crawled along the bottom of the screen.
    The Army of Allah took responsibility for both the mall and bridge shooting incidents, plus the school bombing this morning. They promised that more violence was on