The two shared a nod before Trevor looked down at Derek. Once again, the boy genius was positioned on the couch in front of his computer. Knowing there was no point in delaying the inevitable, Trevor told him, “Go ahead. Open the message.”
“Wait,” Olivia said quickly. Eyes filled with regret, she looked at Trevor and then Jake. “I can’t. I’m sorry.” To Trevor she promised, “I will be here for both you and Lexi after you find her and bring her home safe, but it’s just...this is too much. I’m sorry.”
“Nothing to be sorry for, Liv.”
With a sad nod, she walked over to him and gave him a kiss on the cheek. “Stay strong, Trev.”
“I will. For Lexi.”
“For Lexi.”
“Come on, baby.” Jake wrapped an arm around his wife. “I’ll walk you to your car.” Jake gave him a look as they passed, and he knew his friend needed a moment with his new wife.
Trevor felt like such a dick. He’d been so worried about Lexi, he hadn’t stopped to think about how hard this had to be on Jake, too. The memories of that terrifying day when Olivia went missing were still raw for him, too. He could only imagine the emotions all this had stirred up for his friends.
Looking as though he was dreading seeing this newest message as much as Trevor was, Derek waited until Jake and Olivia walked out to right-click his mouse.
There was no text this time. Only a red box with a white arrow in the middle.
“He sent a video,” Derek muttered unnecessarily.
With everyone crowded around the back and sides of the couch, Derek looked to Trevor for the go-ahead.
Rubbing his hand across his tense jaw, Trevor gave Derek a nod. With every muscle in his body tightened, he watched as Derek clicked the mouse again.
Lexi was no longer tied to the chair. Instead, she was lying on a slanted, wooden table. There was a man next to her, but his back was to the camera, so they couldn’t see his face. He moved to the side, and Trevor had to force himself not to look at Lexi’s face.
Olivia was right. Lexi was counting on him and the others to find her, and he couldn’t do that if he was too lost in his own emotions to focus on what needed to be done.
“You did well for yourself, Soldier Boy,” the man said, still not looking at the camera. “Your girl’s a fighter.” He ran a finger slowly down one of Lexi’s arms. Trevor could see her muscles tense from the bastard’s touch, and he’d never wanted to kill a man more.
“Mygirl was a fighter, too,” the man said, turning sideways but still not giving them a clear shot of his face.
“He has to be talking about Lisa,” Derek said softly from where he sat.
Trevor studied the man in the video with an expert eye. He had no idea who he was.
“They beat my Lisa unconscious that first day,” he offered, giving them confirmation that this was, in fact, about what went down in Syria. “Day two, they broke her fingers one by one. Day three, they waterboarded her.” The man turned to fully face the camera, giving them a perfect view of his face. “Of course, you already know this, don’t you...Trevor?”
Coop whistled quietly between his teeth. “Dude, this guy has a major hard-on for you.”
“Shh,” Mac chastised him.
“I know you saw the same videos I did.” The man from the recording stepped closer to the camera. “Every day for six days I watched while the woman I loved, the woman I was supposed to spend the rest of my life with was tortured in a new, horrific way. You know what I did when I saw that final video?”
Pain filled the guy’s crazed eyes. “I begged her to die. I was watching it, part of me knowing she was already gone by the time the video reached me, but still. I sat at my desk, and I screamed at my computer. I yelled at her until my throat was raw, because I wanted her to quit fighting. I wanted her to give up and stop letting them hurt her.”
Angry tears fell down the guy’s face, but he didn’t seem to notice. “And when she finally gave up and took that last, gasping breath...you know what I did?” He paused as if he was actually waiting for someone to answer him, and then he whispered, “I laughed. I laughed with relief because I knew she was no longer in pain.”
Trevor watched as the man walked back over to Lexi. His heart felt as though it would pound right out of his chest from the fear of what this man may do to her.
Gently taking Lexi’s bound right hand in his, he began caressing her almost as a lover would. “Alexis has such pretty hands, don’t you think? So small and delicate.”
“Oh, shit.”
The two words had barely left Mac’s mouth when the man yanked Lexi’s pinky finger sideways. Her scream mixed with the enraged voices coming from inside Trevor’s living room because the man had just broken Lexi’s finger.
“Sonofabitch!” Trevor actually took a step toward the computer. He wanted to crawl through the screen and tear the bastard’s heart right out of his chest.
