Read Online Operation Proof of Life by Misty Evans - Free Book Online Page B

in disgust but continued speaking to his phone companion without missing a beat.
    Brigit watched the landscape as the driver began making the necessary lane changes and turns to follow his new route. It was a beautiful fall day. Crystal blue sky as far as you could see. Sunshine brightening the few leaves still left on trees. The library board had chosen a perfect day for Cormac O’Bern’s dedication and reception.
    Grabbing the book in her lap, she flipped through the stanzas of poetry and examined the back cover. While he looked older, the crisp, terse words of poetry he used in his verses still rang with authority. There was nothing warm or fuzzy about Cormac O’Bern’s preachings, on paper or in person. He was a man of passion and strength, only these days he used his gift to promote peace instead of war.
    If only Peter had chosen the same path. Her half-brother possessed the same type of character as Cormac. The two had been inseparable during their teens. While Cormac had gone on to college, Peter had joined a splinter group of the Real IRA. Each found his place in the new generation of Catholic versus Protestant war. Cormac ended up in jail with a group of his college buddies for inciting riots on campus. Peter had ended up there at the same time with his own comrades for similar antics in downtown Belfast. In jail, the two groups joined arms and went on a hunger strike.
    Brigit’s mother had begged her father to pull political strings to get Peter and Cormac released. He’d refused. “They aren’t boys anymore,” he’d told her. “They’ve committed crimes and now they have to pay the price.”
    As Peter and Cormac wasted away in jail, Roberta had sent them boxes of books, mainstream bestsellers to military history. One day, the books were returned. “I have my Bible and God,” a note from Peter stated. “I need nothing, and no one, else.”
    Roberta had cried.
    To Peter, Roberta’s marriage to William Kent cut their blood ties. When Peter was finally freed from jail, he was fifteen pounds lighter and his heart was hardened against his mother and her husband. During the hunger strike, one of the boys died and several others were hospitalized. Upon their release, Peter and Cormac struck a bargain. All for one and all against the British.
    In retaliation against his British stepfather and his traitor of a mother, Peter kidnapped Brigit and Tory. As the new leader of his freedom fighters, he’d planned to use the two girls as a weapon…to trade them for money to buy guns and bomb-making supplies for his new army.
    His plan failed when Roberta, who knew her son well, found the girls and in the end died saving them. Peter disappeared and William, along with certain friends in the government, covered the incident up. Fearing he couldn’t protect his daughters, William moved them to America, far away from the continuing unrest between the Irish and the British, Catholics and Protestants.
    Only years later, after Brigit had undergone intensive therapy, did she understand the depths of Peter’s extremist personality. The human psyche was a fascinating puzzle to her. She’d been a psychologist for nearly eight years, but she’d been studying people her whole life. Long before she’d received her doctorate, her aptitude for code breaking had emerged.
    Human beings were one giant code from their DNA to their personality triggers. Once you understood the code, you could dissect it and rebuild it for better purposes, or exploit it for negative ones. Either way, Brigit’s in-depth studies and experiments had received attention from every government on the planet.
    Every few years, a kidnapping occurred fitting the parameters she was interested in. The young son or daughter of a dignitary, a drug company president or a financial guru would go missing, usually from a public arena. Local law enforcement would immediately tag it a kidnapping. Leads would be nonexistent. There would be no ransom demand. A call