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see you’re finally awake,” a heavily accented male voice said somewhere to his right. “I was beginning to think my associates gave you too much happy juice.”
    Landon scanned the room through hazy vision. The edges were dark. No windows. No natural light. The only illumination came from a naked bulb hanging from the center of the room over a metal table and single chair. Ductwork ran along the ceiling, and one look up confirmed his hands were cuffed to a chain slung over a four-inch pipe, his feet dangling a foot from the floor. They had to be in a basement or warehouse of some kind, but since they’d drugged him, he didn’t know where. And common sense told him odds were good they weren’t still in Barcelona.
    Two shadowy figures stood near a door on the far end of the long rectangular room, but he couldn’t see their faces. Based on their sizes and shapes, though, they were both men. Another quick scan of the room told him Olivia wasn’t anywhere close.
    His pulse ticked up, and all kinds of horrendous thoughts about where she was and what was being done to her flashed through his head, but he pushed them aside, zeroed in on his training, and let it guide him.
    The man who’d spoken circled around his front. “You have nothing to say to that? Not surprising, considering your job description.” He stopped in front of Landon, his face cast in shadows. “Ask me,” he added in a low voice. “I know you want to.”
    The voice was unfamiliar, and since Landon’s vision was still murky, he couldn’t see well enough to focus on a face. But his mind flipped back to that tattoo he’d seen on Chantal’s shoulder, and he knew these weren’t people to fuck with. “If this is about the sheikh, he’s probably halfway back to the Middle East by now.”
    A slow smile spread across the man’s face, the whites of his teeth flashing in the dim light. “No, this isn’t about the sheikh. We work for someone with a little more power. And you have something we want.”
    If he had information they needed, it meant Olivia was still alive. They wouldn’t kill her if they wanted him to cooperate. But they would use her. Quickly if they had to.
    His stomach tightened. He glanced around the room again, narrowed his eyes to try to see more clearly. The two pricks by the door were definitely the ones who’d grabbed her from the street. And the victorious smirks across both their faces told him they knew what he was thinking.
    His gaze swung back to the man in front of him. “What do you want?”
    “Information.” The leader stepped back toward the table. Light from the naked bulb illuminated his shaved head as he looked down and flipped a file folder open on the table. “Seventeen months ago, you were given an assignment by the DIA. You failed to complete that assignment even though you claimed otherwise when debriefed.” He pinned Landon with hard, black eyes. “Does any of this ring a bell, Mr. Miller?”
    An ominous feeling rolled through Landon’s stomach. And flashes of that night in Crete echoed in his head.
    “I’m guessing it does.” The man lifted a photo from the file and crossed the floor, stopping in front of Landon once more. A flashlight beam cut through the darkness, and he held the photo up so Landon could see it, passing the light over the surface. “But if it doesn’t, something tells me this will.”
    The photo was of a teenage girl. A girl with long, dark hair, smiling eyes, and a wide grin across her youthful face. She was sitting on the end of a yacht, blue-green water sparkling behind her, and at her side, with his arm slung over her shoulder, was a man. A man Landon would never forget.
    Every muscle in Landon’s body grew taut and rigid. Not just because he recognized the faces, but because in a flash he knew exactly what this was about. And what these terrorist thugs truly wanted.
    “She’s dead,” Landon said.
    A dark, disturbing chuckle echoed from the leader’s throat. “I’m not