“Because you stopped me from getting to him before he makes the hit. He’s the trigger for a bombing tonight.”

Who the fuck was this scar-faced guy?

“Longer you talk to me the less time you have to find him.”

Hunter had no time to deal with him. He yanked off the guy’s tie and used it as a gag, then shoved him over to the side of the path and raced up the incline.

When he reached the high spot, he used a small handheld infrared device Gotthard had given him to search the area for a heat signature in a prone position… and found it. He couldn’t even send a click to Mako at this point without alerting Jackson too soon. When Hunter got within twenty feet of the shooter he’d lost any chance of approaching silently with so little time. Besides, Jackson was expecting him.

Hunter walked up with his 9mm in hand.

“Got here sooner than I anticipated.” Covered in a white ghillie suit and white knit skullcap, Jackson turned on his side to face Hunter. His index finger remained curled around the trigger of an Accuracy International.300 Win Mag sniper rifle.

“Where’s Abbie?”

“Close. And alive for now.” Jackson looked more ghost than man with his pale face inside all that white clothing. The only color visible was the tip of a blood-birthmark that dripped down the right side of his forehead as if he’d been shot.

I should be so lucky. “What do you want?”

“Aren’t you interested in who’s in my crosshairs?” Jackson asked in the tenor voice of a school bully.

“Prime minister.” Hunter had never wanted to kill anyone as much as he did now. His fingers tensed with the need to choke the life from this one.

“Ah, you did figure out something on your own. I can see the effort it’s taking to restrain yourself, but if you kill me, Abbie dies. You have to know by now that I’m a hemophiliac. Wound me and you lose her, plus anything else you hope to gain from me.”

Hunter had to think like the BAD agent he’d been trained to be and not a man ready to kill this psycho who dared to harm Abbie. “We have agents all over this place. You won’t get out alive. You want to show some good faith, my people will work with you if you have something on the Fratelli to trade and give me the coordinates on the bombing.”

“I didn’t mean I’d surrender to you.” He snorted at that. “And if another agent shows up, I’ll pull this trigger immediately. Besides, your people couldn’t keep me alive long enough to get any information.”

“Yes, we can.”

The sniper checked his watch, then looked back at Hunter. “Like Josephine Silversteen? You must be part of the group that captured her last year. She didn’t even make it to jail before her head exploded like a smashed pumpkin.”

“Wouldn’t take you to jail.” Hunter would enjoy handing this prick over to Joe and Tee. Tee was a tiny, frighteningly beautiful demon when it came to getting information out of a captive. “What Fratelli group are you with?”

“Should be obvious. The UK. That’s not why you’re here.”

“Why am I here?”

“To make a choice, of course.” Jackson pulled his thin lips up to one side, not resembling Abbie in the smallest way. “I’m curious how you’ll negotiate your way out of this tangle.”

“We don’t negotiate, so there are no choices.”

That made Jackson grin. “You should hear me out before you decide. If I kill the prime minister and send confirmation of that in the next twelve minutes then only one city in the United States will suffer, keeping the loss of life down to maybe a few thousand. That would be considered an encore after killing the prime minister, both events of which will result in destroying the fragile communication in progress between the U.S. and UK right now. Your president needs the UK prime minister to vote with the U.S. at the upcoming UN meeting.”

When the shooter paused to check his watch again, Hunter’s skin tightened. He wondered what Jackson was planning besides the shooting. If the sniper’s finger hadn’t been locked around the trigger and the rifle pointed at a room full of innocent people, Hunter would attack. The longer he kept Jackson talking the more time BAD had to get to the bomb if Linette managed to send location coordinates. This prick was sharing nothing.

“If I don’t kill the prime minister,” Jackson continued, looking up again, “then three American cities will be hit, each with more severity than the last, bringing the death toll up over a hundred thousand. Subsequent bombings would come with a message that any other countries willing to support the U.S. would do so at risk of the same fate.”

“Why are you willing to put our country into political and possibly armed conflict with your country?”

“I don’t actually have a country. I just perform a duty.”

“You want me to choose between killing an innocent man and destroying three cities? How about maiming you as an option?”

“There is that, but if you so much as cut me I’ll bleed out. I’m a type-B hemophiliac, the most prolific of free bleeders.” Jackson enjoyed showing off his perfectly white teeth again. “Speaking of blood, if you win our game without killing me, you’ll be able to save Abbie and her mother.”

“Your mother, too.”

“Genetic semantics.”

Hunter wanted to hurt this Jackson for so many reasons, Eliot and Abbie topping the list. But unsuspecting civilians would die by the thousands if he made a wrong decision. He had to find out why the shooter had brought him to this spot. “Are you through laying out the rules?”

The killer consulted his watch again, then cocked his head at Hunter. “Wait, it only gets better. You can go save Abbie or you can stop me from killing the prime minister, at which point only one city will be sacrificed when five compact bombs with a new strain of uranium detonate. Bombs capable of taking down nine square blocks in… Chicago, Chicago.” He sang the name of the city like the words from the musical. “The explosion will detonate at the Clark Street Bridge and shake the foundation of your ex-sister-in-law’s condominium building on Wacker. Now, who are you willing to save and who do you sacrifice?”

Todd, Pia, and baby Barrett would be home at Pia’s place.

Hunter struggled to breathe. His heart hammered his chest, threatening to burst from the blood surging through his body.

He had to get word on the bomb location to BAD.

“Abbie,” Jackson said, drawing Hunter back to him, “is hanging off a cliff exactly one hundred feet from here, but you don’t know the direction yet, so don’t get excited. And if you don’t leave in”-the killer glanced at his watch again and looked up-“twenty-six seconds you won’t reach her before the small bomb attached to the tension anchor snaps her connection to the wall. What’s it going to be?”

“You fucking bastard!”

“If you read the hidden files, you know I’m not a bastard. Twenty-one seconds.”

“Where is she?”

“Not yet… fifteen, fourteen, thirteen.” He looked up. “There’s a path six feet above you. At that point go twenty-two yards, then veer directly left and keep going until you reach the ridge.” He grinned at Hunter and counted down. “Six, five.”

Jackson’s finger relaxed from the trigger.

Time for a leap of faith that Mako was now in position.

A gunshot exploded from behind Hunter. The bullet hit the backside of the trigger guard and shattered Jackson’s fingers.

The killer howled in pain. He jerked his hand up in horror, blood spewing out of his ragged fingers.

Hunter kicked Jackson backward, away from the rifle.

Mako burst out of the dark and dove on Jackson, yelling, “We know about Chicago. More agents on the way. Get Abbie.”

Hunter had already taken off running. Joe had sent extra agents. Not that much of a surprise since Hunter hadn’t expected to get out of this clean. Mako had explained during the helicopter flight that if they had to wound Jackson, he’d use a tourniquet to stop the bleeding. Mako would inject a clotting agent into Jackson and had no problem tightening the tourniquet to the point of the sniper losing a limb.