“No. I’ll tell you anything you want.”
The corner of Cat’s mouth twitched in a stifled smile.
Lizard Breath’s shoulders sagged. “Word on the street is that there’s money to be made on that lady.” He pointed toward Liz. “All we gotta do is hold her till the Coercion-something dudes get here.”
“Then what?” Mitch asked.
“I don’t know. Said they’d take care of her after that.” Lizard Breath moaned as he shifted his weight to his damaged leg. “Now, what about that doc?”
Two more answers. Mitch needed only a couple more answers to know how serious this case had become. He took his phone out as he leaned against the wall. Time to play the nice guy routine. “Sure thing. By the way, do you happen to know how much the lady’s worth to these dudes?”
“Fifty thousand bucks.”
Damn. That was a serious chunk. “Any stipulations on dead or alive?”
“Alive. Of course, they didn’t say anything about roughing her up a bit.” The man waggled his eyebrows and grinned.
Mitch jabbed his elbow, hard and straight, into the man’s ribs. Reactively, Cat caught the man before he fell to the floor. From across the room, Liz sucked in an audible breath.
“These two are a dead end. They wouldn’t know Coercion Ten if it walked up and bit them.” He pushed a button on his phone, and Drake answered on the first ring. “We’ve got two live, in custody. Contact the FBI to pick them up. They’re nothing but a pair of local slimeballs out to make a quick buck.”
He gave a quick report, wondering what Drake wasn’t telling him. Or, worse yet, what OPAQUE hadn’t found out so far. This case had rapidly gone from a typical security shadow to OPAQUE level.
Why the hell did CT have a bounty on Liz’s head? A lot of things weren’t adding up.
“Hey, send a doc. One of the men’s got a busted knee.” He ended the call.
Keith walked back into the room after depositing the other thug in the bathroom. “Everything under control?”
“For now.” Mitch couldn’t shake the shiver on the back of his shoulders. Never a good sign. “Keith, you and Cat reacquaint Lizard Breath with his friend. Then monitor the property’s security panel.”
“On it,” Cat said, as Keith nudged the guy down the hallway.
Liz had eased herself onto the sofa. Her elbows were braced on top of her knees. Head bent into the palms of her hands. There’d been no way to keep her from hearing the remarks, but that was nothing compared to where this case might take them. He’d hoped she’d be strong. Right now, she looked a little pale.
He walked over and nudged his leg against her arm. “You okay?”
She didn’t look up. “Why am I worth so much money?”
“When Coercion Ten wants people to do something for them, and they refuse, they kidnap someone of importance to the person, and…” How could he word this without destroying what courage she had left? “They—”
“Do whatever’s needed to persuade compliance. Right?” She stared into his eyes as she asked her question.
“Something like that. We call it leverage.” Her color had come back, besides which, now she was the one up and walking.
“Okay. What could they possibly want my dad to do?”
“We’re trying to figure that one out. Drake got a CT List update five minutes before I jumped on the personal watercraft to get here,” Josh said.
“They keep a list of people to use?” she asked.
The truth was always best. “Yeah, they keep a list. Every so often we intercept one, or they let us see the update.”
“This time we think our contact on the inside was able to send the info out.” Josh raked his fingers through his dark hair. “The list has Liz’s name next to her father’s.”
Her name being added to the list didn’t surprise Mitch. “Any other remarks by her name?”
“Nope. Funny thing, though,” Josh paused to look back outside. “A few lines later, her name was first, then her father’s as leverage.”
