Page 1 of His Witness To Save

CHAPTER ONE

For the fifth time in as many minutes, Mack reached for theglass of water on the table. He gulped it down hurriedly, barely feeling or tasting anything. With shaking hands, he carefully placed the cup back on the coaster, spilling a little on his sleeve.

Every minute that passed worsened his imagination of the horrors Brie and Rachel must have been put through already at the hands of the mad man who kidnapped them. He could not stop blaming himself for what had happened. He refused to stop blaming himself, going over the events of the previous night, thinking of a thousand things he could have done differently.

"Would they still be here if I had never left?"he wondered internally.

A splitting headache raced through the back of his skull, and he instinctively massaged it, grimacing as he did so.

He remembered the alarm he'd felt when he got to Rachel's townhouse and saw the lights off. He'd never been so afraid in his life.

He'd snuck in, hoping to catch the criminals off guard before they had the opportunity to do any real harm to Brie and Rachel. Unfortunately, he hadn't been ready for the hostage situation waiting for him inside.

He should have known that a killer as ruthless as the man he was after would not be working alone.

His eyes began to water as the headache threatened to blind him.

With some effort, he wrenched his mind back to the present, back to the meeting with the FBI leaders. All the head agents present in the Chicago area had been called in to discuss the next step. That only included six agents, and with the agents under them, it was barely a full team.

Most of the agents were all away on missions of their own, and most of them were not expected back until next week. It would be too late by then.

He forced himself to listen as suggestions flew back and forth,all of them sounding useless. He wanted to be gonenow.Yesterday.

"They could be anywhere by now," he heard Dave Simmons, the leader of Omega Two, say from across the room.

Mack grimaced and reached for his glass of water again.

As the team leader of Alpha Team One stationed in Chicago, Mack felt the failure on a personal level that was deepened even more by his personal relationship with Brie. Over and over, he cursed himself for having not seen the trap coming.

After the argument he'd had with Brie in Destiny Falls, he'd dropped her off in Chicago and returned to the FBI office to check out a source.

A member of the terrorist agency he'd been after for years, "The Brotherhood of Blood," had finally been spotted in New York after weeks of running.

On returning to the office, he'd barely been able to concentrate, feeling like he'd left things unsettled with Brie. He'd taken the case files with him, deciding to see Brie and tell her how he felt before he left, unsure of how soon he'd be able to see her again.

They'd had a big fight at his father's house after his ex-girlfriend had shown up, calling her names.

Had that really just been yesterday?

Everything felt surreal. Nothing that happened yesterday mattered right now. All he wanted was to get Brie back into his arms, to hold her warm, pliable body, and push her soft hair behind her ear.

He grimaced as he thought of the last time he'd seen her– afraid, lost, broken – in the killer's hands.

He could not get the monster's voice out of his head, the disturbing way his hands had brushed over her breasts. The way he'd leered at her.

Mack took off his sunglasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose, hoping to massage away the migraine that threatened to drive him mad. The pills he'd swallowed this morning seemed to be doing nothing for him, and he felt he'd have to take a few more before the day was done.

He flipped through the file on his desk. It was the same file he'd come back for the previous night, just before he'd gone back to find Brie.

The scarred face of the killer stared back at him defiantly.

His name was "Kamal."

Mack said the name over and over in his mind, trying to get a feel of the man to which the name belonged.

With his eyes, he followed the line of the tattoo snaking around Kamal's neck, trying to read his mind.

What are you thinking?he asked the picture in front of him.What have you done with Brie?

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