Page 5 of His Witness To Save

He'd then rape them and take demeaning pictures of them in compromising positions before murdering them in cold blood.

The interesting thing was all his victims bore a striking resemblance to his mother. They all had the same blond hair, the same plump bodies, and nerdy demeanor.

Apparently, Kamal had unresolved mommy issues.

CHAPTER FOUR

Mack and Dave read and digested the information with dread. They closed the case file and stared at the busy street; neither man said anything for a long time.

They sat sipping their now cold coffee, neither of them willing to break the silence just yet.

Mack gazed at the little girl skipping along the pavement ahead of her mother, pushing a stroller. The woman half-heartedly called out to her daughter, warning her to slow down.

How many little girls would never see their mothers again?he wondered.How many would need to be lost before the mad man was finally taken down?

He pulled out the note again and read the childish scrawl over and over, the words familiar to him by now.

They're dead.

They're dead.

They're dead.

He felt his head begin to throb again and rubbed the bridge of his nose. Sighing, he tore his eyes away from the little girl and her mother and forced his eyes back to the face of the man in the file.

Dave watched him for a few minutes, genuinely worried. He broke the silence. "Do you really think we can do this?" Dave questioned, taking a loud, obviously nervous sip from his coffee.

"I'd have more lies under my nose than Pinocchio if I said I was sure," Mack said, trying to ease the gut-wrenching tension they felt with a little humor, but nothing seemed like it could ever make him relax unless he saw Brie – alive at most, and smiling back at him for making such a lame joke.

Dave set down his cup and stretched his hand over to rest on Mack's shoulder. He gave his buddy a squeeze and let out a heavy sigh.

"We will get them back, okay?" he said with a weak smile.

"I really hope we do," Mack said in a mutter. No matter how hard he tried looking at the entire situation, every moment leading up to this point, he couldn't shake off that voice in his head, constantly reminding him that this was his fault. Maybe the deputy chief was right after all.

He looked outside the window once again while Dave got up to make a phone call. He noticed that the little girl he saw skipping past earlier had fallen and scraped her knee on the pavement while her worried mother kept trying to calm the crying child, scolding her for refusing to heed her warning. In a few minutes, the little drama was over, and the girl was giggling once again, flashing a big grin to her mother as she took her hand and followed at her pace.

Somehow, that scene had sent a subliminal message to Mack, telling him to pick himself back up after the rough 'fall' he had with Brie and Rachel getting kidnapped by Kamal. He got a sudden rush of energy, and the will to give his all in the rescue mission came back. He had to start planning and fast.

Dave walked back into the room with an expression difficult to decipher on his face. He held his phone tightly in his right hand and scratched his thick brunette hair with the other. Mack hadn't noticed his presence and, for some strange reason, still had his eyes out the window.

"Ummm, Mack?" Dave called out in a nervous tone.

Swiftly, Mack turned his head to face his friend.

"News getting to us is that another woman has been abducted in the early hours of the morning," he said. "On her way to Walmart."

Mack's blood started to boil. He didn't know what upset him more; Brie and Rachel still in the serial killer's clutches or the fact that he had the nerve to abduct another barely 48 hours after.

Dave could read Mack like an open book. He could feel the same mixed feelings of rage, worry, and stress he did, and he didn't regret it one bit that he was barely a few workable plans away from a mission that could either make or maim his future with the FBI.

CHAPTER FIVE

Mack couldn't sleep. He hadn't been able to for two days because of the horrific hallucinations he had. He kept seeing Brie and Rachel getting raped by Kamal and his gang, and the images he saw of her at Rachel's townhouse didn't help matters at all.

He paced restlessly across the room as he tried to think of the suitable weapons he could request from the FBI higher-ups for this mission. He wasn't authorized to request for the high-grade weapons whose names he had written down in his journal, but he was willing to try anyway –anything to get Brie back.

As the new day dawned, he wasted no time in calling for a meeting with the six men he was about to rope into his 'suicide mission,' as the deputy chief called it. He was grateful for their presence in his office, and it even gave him a little confidence boost when the men helped in drawing out the inception plan for the mission.

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