Page 3 of The Devoted Game

“Maybe not to you, but to those of us who admire what you accomplished during your career, it matters.”

“Tell that to the kid’s father.” He turned his back to her, braced against the counter, and squeezed his eyes shut in a futile attempt to block the images tumbling one over the other through his head. He couldn’t dothis.

“We don’t have the luxury of time, McBride.” Apparently bolstered by a blast of latent courage, she moved in right beside him as she spoke. As hard as he tried not to react, he tensed.

“We have less than twenty-three hours. If we don’t find her before then, Alyssa Byrne will die.”

Alyssa.The name reverberated through him. He banished it. Couldn’t help her. He’d given the Bureau everything he had for ten years. He’d maintained a perfect record. Never failed. Except that once. And the mistake hadn’t been his. When the proverbial shit had hit the fan, the Bureau had refused to take the heat. They had needed a scapegoat, and he’d been it. A decade of hard work hadn’t made a difference any more than his so-called legendary status. Case in point. For nearly a year afterward, he’d actually expected someone to show up and beg him to return to duty.

No one had shown up. No one even called.

So he had found other ways to spend his time and fill the void left by the part of his life ripped away from him. He blamed the booze on his current on-again-off-again occupation, but that was just an excuse. The ugly truth was that every time an Amber Alert had been issued, he turned to the one consistent thing within reach to help him forget that he wouldn’t be there—distraction. With enough distraction, he could forget that he no longer made a difference.

That part of his life was over. There wasn’t any going back ... not for Agent Vivian Grace and all her hero worship ... not for Alyssa Byrne and the people who loved her.

Truth was, even if he wanted to go back, he wasn’t that man anymore. The pressure of working that kind of case was immeasurable. If he lost his focus, screwed up, someone died. If he wasn’t fast enough, smart enough, someone died. He no longer had that kind of nerve, the edge it took to get the job done. The hero he used to be was long gone. Pretending otherwise would be a mistake. The kind he didn’t want to make twice in one lifetime.

Nowadays he was just your plain old garden-variety coward.

Before he sent the agent on her way, there was one thing he had to know. “Why now?” He couldn’t keep the resentment out of his tone;didn’t really try. “In three years the Bureau hasn’t once acknowledged that I still exist. What makes this case different?”

She searched his eyes, her own still hopeful that he would change his mind.Not going to happen.

“The kidnapper,” she explained, her voice somber, “asked for you by name. He claims he’ll provide clues to facilitate the search for the girl but only to you.”

That damned headache started bearing down on him again, hammering at his temples. “What kind of clues?”

“Don’t know. No you, no clues.” She swallowed hard, the effort visible along the length of her slender neck. “No clues, McBride, and the little girl dies.”

Two

22hours, 55minutes remaining...

She had one shot. She couldn’t screw it up.

Vivian Grace held McBride’s icy-blue stare without flinching. If he said no, she had failed. She couldn’t go back to Birmingham without him. Too much was riding on his cooperation. For starters, a child’s life. Getting the bastard, officially designated as the unknown subject or unsub, who had done this ranked a close second.

“How did the unsub communicate?” McBride asked grudgingly.

Relief trickled inside her. At least she had his attention now. That was a step in the right direction. She reminded herself to breathe.

“There was an email at six last evening. Alyssa had been missing for ten hours at that point. Since she never made it to her classroom yesterday morning, we have to assume he picked her up somewhere at school immediately after her mother dropped her off. The email informed us that she was in his custody and that she was safe. He gave us the time constraint and one instruction: that he would only deal with you.”

At this point, there were details she couldn’t share with McBride. Her supervisor, Special Agent in Charge, SAC, Randall Worth, had instructed her to provide the minimum amount of information possible to get McBride on board. Not that they had that much. They didn’t.Irrespective of that less-than-optimal situation, until McBride could be completely ruled out as a potential suspect, he had to be handled as one.

But Worth was wrong. McBride wasn’t involved. If she’d had any doubts, finding him in bed with a friend at this hour of the day and obviously hungover had discredited most of those reservations. The flicker of pain and the surprise in his eyes on hearing about the child and the promised clues diminished the rest.

Then there was the matter of his overall appearance. McBride basically looked like hell. Nothing like the man depicted in the legendary stories of theHunter, the last of the true bloodhounds, she had heard whispered about at the academy. The theory that he had plotted a kidnapping to draw attention to himself or to get back at the Bureau was ridiculous. The man she was looking at right now was pretty much a disaster that had already happened. He wasn’t planning anything except his next smoke, drink, and twist in the sheets.

“He provided proof of life?”

McBride’s question interrupted her from her ruminations. Allowing her attention to drift like that was a strategic error she couldn’t risk repeating in his presence. As far down skid row as it appeared he had gone, she had a feeling that beneath that hangover and I-don’t-give-a-shit attitude, he was still damned sharp at drawing conclusions.

“Yes,” she told him. “The email included a photo.”

He moved around her to help himself to another cup of coffee as if they had all the time in the world.

Anxiety and anticipation tightened her chest, making every beat of her heart an unnatural effort. Each second seemed an eternity. Each minute that got away from her was one she couldn’t get back, one that might prove pivotal as this case played out. Standing around here wasting those precious moments had her tension mounting at breakneck speed.