Tough Enough (Tough Love Book 3)

by Trixie More

  She seemed to run out of steam. The tears began again. “I couldn’t stop him. I tried everything, but you know, it’s not as easy to take a guy out with a head butt as they make it look.” She smiled at him, then her face slackened, watery, and sad. “The whole time, I kept thinking, it can’t be this easy, for them I mean, how can it be this easy for them to overpower me?”

  Fuck. “It wasn’t easy,” Doug said. “I swear it. You fought hard.”

  Alice shook her head. “But it was. They didn’t like me taking a bite out of one of them, but it was easy as pie for him to tie my hands and then backhand me.”

  Doug felt weak. He looked over at Liz, she was wide-eyed, with her hands over her mouth. Behind her, Jesse had his arms around her waist. His face thunderous.

  “Do you want to tell us what happened next?” He almost couldn’t stand to ask, but the more he knew, the better chance he had of ending this.

  Alice let go of his arm, and wiped her face with her hands, blew her nose and sat up straighter. “They tossed me into the front cabin, there’s a V berth there, a bed that is fit like a V into the nose of the boat. They heaved me in there like a sack of potatoes. By then, there were three of them, and someone had dropped the sails. I could see the sailcloth hanging over the side, through the windows. I was so worried the sails would slide off and either drag the boat over or just get lost. Crazy, huh? Anyway, there were three of them. The leader came down last, and then they made the phone call, took my picture, and then asked if they had the right woman. I didn’t know what to pray for. If I was the wrong woman, would they just kill me? And still, I couldn’t believe I was caught. That’s what I remember the most, this feeling of disbelief. I never thought I would lose a fight like that. I never thought I’d be in a fight like that.” Alice shook her head, a look of stunned amazement mirroring her words.

  I don’t want to hear this, Doug thought. But he knew he would listen to every word.

  “So, they decided they had the right person. They turned on the engine, bundled the sails up, they said they wanted it to look ‘normal.’ We motored for a long time. You know, they ate my food. They sat right the fuck down in the cabin and raided my kitchen. By then, I had wriggled back and sat up. I didn’t want them to get any ideas about me lying there, helpless. They didn’t gag me, they just tied my ankles together, but any time they came near my face, I tried to bite them, and I spit. So they stayed in the main cabin, ate my food. A bit later, he called you. I heard him say your name, and I tried to call out to you, but the bastard came over and cracked me a good one. By then, I thought for sure I was dead. I thought I’m never going to live, never. And that was better because I didn’t care so much.”

  “I don’t know what you told them, Doug. When they hung up, they were all like, is he coming? They weren’t sure. They seemed to think they’d be in trouble if you didn’t come. Anyway, that’s when I remembered the damn GPS. Oh my God, what hope I had then. I was afraid they would sense the change in me. I had to pretend to have no hope. I felt like they might see my face and just know.

  “About an hour after that call, one by one, they went up to the cockpit. I heard my engine cut out. When I heard the engine of the other boat start, my blood turned to ice. As much as I hated them, I didn’t want to be alone, tied up, and adrift.”

  Doug bent over and put his forehead on the bed. The desolation in Alice’s voice was enough to kill him. That was the moment that Liz seemed to get her strength back, because she came to the bed now and sat on the other side, putting her arms around Alice.

  “You survived. You did that, Alice. You survived.”

  Alice hugged Liz back. “You can’t know how quiet it was. I didn’t hear any birds, just the quiet of the water against the hull. The sun went down, and the walls of the hull got cold, and I thought no one would ever find me. That’s when I finally decided to rip the cabinets apart.”

  “What?” said Jesse.

  “My feet were tied together. The rope was tied to the wooden rail that runs in front of the cabinets at the bow. So I could turn around on the bunk, but I could only get far enough to have my head hanging off the mattress if I did. So I turned around and then, I thought, heck, maybe I can kick the rail off or break it. So I spent a good long time beating the shit out of my boat. She’s very well built, but a few hours of kicking with my feet finally did it. So I was just starting to hop around the cabin, trying to get a knife between my teeth when I heard a helicopter. Oh, my God.” Her face crumpled, but she didn’t cry again. “I was hollering and screaming, trying to get up the fucking four little steps to the cockpit when they started shining a spotlight on the boat. I was so scared they would leave me. Then I heard a bull horn...’Ahoy, Border Jumper, this is the United States Coast Guard.’ When I say I wept, you know it’s true. I’m telling you, as soon as I get myself home, I’m making a donation.”

  “I don’t think they run on donations...” Doug began.

  “Oh! I don’t give a hoot what they run on. I’m going to find something I can do to thank them.”

  The sound of Alice, belligerent and confident, if only about her ability to thank someone, was like watching the market soar. It made him glad to be there to see it.

  “They were so kind, Doug. I wish you could know. So gentle with me, so decent. Two of them had come down on those ropes, just like you see in the movies. I could see them through the doorway. They stayed with me until they got me up in a basket to the helicopter. They said not to be scared, that after what I’d been through, the basket would be a breeze. They were right.”

  The account of his sister’s brave efforts to outrun the pirates and her desperate fight to avoid capture felt like a live beast inside him. She’d been so close to death so many times. Again and again, his thoughts came back to one fact. Tommy had been involved. And then he remembered.

  “Sophia!”

  “Who?” asked Alice.

  “Sophia,” he said, his chest tight and his breathing shallow. “I asked Tommy to keep her safe while I was down here.”

  Chapter 29

  The train ride back to Harlem from Pelham wasn’t as bad as Sophia had made it in her mind. The train left her at 125th Street, and that was a bit of a haul, but the first leg was only about twenty minutes. Her phone had run out of battery last night, and she’d been in a hurry to leave for work this morning. The twenty minutes would be plenty of time for her to check her emails and catch up on the news.

  Sophia settled into her seat, giving a gawking Latino kid a smirk. She wasn’t sure when it had happened. Maybe when she lost her raincoat? Lately, the looks men gave her just didn’t matter. Sophia looked him in the eyes and flicked her hair over her shoulder. When he looked away with his eyes cast downward, she laughed just a little inside. She drew in a deep breath, feeling the slight lift of her mouth, the smile hiding there, and then consciously let herself grin. The part of her that observed herself noticed that she felt good. Just smiling at nothing.

  Amazing.

  She slouched in her seat to check her cell, but snapped her phone case shut the instant she recognized the man staring at her from the other end of the train.

  “Tom?” The question was out of her mouth before she could stop it. He nodded at her. The seat beside her was empty, and she slid over, gesturing to the aisle seat. Tom Kretlow stood. He had on a navy pea coat and jeans. In the slanting light on the train, he looked older than his years.

  “Hi,” he said and slid into the seat.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked.

  “I’m, well, shit,” he said. “This is going to sound bad. I’m following you.”

  “You’re what?” Sophia had to laugh at that. “You’re doing a terrible job of it.”

  “Yeah, well, I just started.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Doug went to Florida. He’s worried about you,” Tom said and shrugged.

  Sophia shook her head.

  “He went to Florida? Why? He’s not
supposed to leave the city.”

  “I know. I think something came up.”

  None of this made any sense.

  “Well, you can stop right now. Doug’s an ass.”

  “That’s exactly what I said.”

  “Doesn’t he know you...” She stopped. It wasn’t her place to say it. Just because Tom was a man and she was a woman, didn’t mean she could really say out loud what they both knew. This love triangle thing was tricky. The trouble was, a part of her felt really sorry for Tom.

  Doesn’t he know what?” Tom asked stiffly.

  “That you have a freakin’ life?”

  Tom laughed at that, and Sophia was proud of herself for heading off that line of talk.

  “I’ve made a life out of following him around,” said Tom. He frowned. “I don’t think he realizes it was a choice.” Tom looked at his hands. “I shouldn’t have let you see me.”

  “What?” Sophia bristled at the thought. “Of course, you should have. He shouldn’t have asked you to do it, and you can stop right now. Tell him I caught you. Tell him it’s a misdemeanor or something.” She leaned back. “Why did you, anyway?”

  “I guess I’m a bit worried about you, too,” he said. Something in the way he moved his eyes and glanced away from her—Sophia didn’t believe a word of it.

  “Well, don’t be,” she bit out the words, just a shade away from snapping at him. “So what are you going to do, get off at my stop? Follow me to work?”

  He blushed. “Not now. Maybe you and I can just have lunch a few times while he’s gone.”

  Sophia couldn’t believe it. “Why would you bother? Look, there’s no need for any of this, and frankly, I want it to stop. I’ll give him a call and tell him.”

  “I thought you and he...” Again, Tom gave her that sideways glance. Lying again, she just knew it. “I thought you two were over.”

  Over. Was her relationship with Doug over? They hadn’t discussed it. Had done everything they could to avoid it. How could they talk about it when she still didn’t know what she was going to do with his damn confession?

  “We were never started,” she said firmly. Now it was Tom who thought she was lying. The look of disbelief on his face was palpable.

  “Well,” he cleared his throat, “just as long as you’re safe.”

  “Why wouldn’t I be?” she demanded.

  “Because someone’s kidnapped his sister.”

  The words hung there, frozen.

  The train was rolling to a stop. Tom rose, a knit cap sliding out of his pocket as he stood. Sophia picked it up. It was gray wool with some kind of yellow emblem sewed to the front. As she handed it to him, she felt something sharp prick her finger.

  “If you start to think you might be next,” Tommy said, “call me.”

  She was still trying to think of something to say to that as the train pulled out of the station, leaving Tommy standing on the platform. She glanced at the seat he’d vacated and picked up a thin, gray shard.

  The sky was blue outside the train windows, as it pulled away, leaving Tommy behind. Sophia checked her phone. The dozen texts from Doug made her stupid heart leap in her chest, giving a happy stutter, and she swiped to her messages like a child on Christmas morning. Instead of the lovelorn texts of a man who couldn’t stop thinking about her, there were a dozen dire warnings to stay away from Tom Kretlow. #AsIf. Each message ended with a plea for her to call him. So she dialed Doug, and it went right to voice mail. So much for urgent. Wasn’t he in Florida?

  Sophia worried about that for a minute, wondering if he would get in trouble with his bail bond for leaving the state, and then her mind turned back to Tom Kretlow. Why on earth would Doug tell her to stay away from him? Hadn’t he asked Tom to check up on her while he was gone as if she was a pet or something and couldn’t take care of her grown-ass self?

  Well, she was all fired up now, so there was no time like the present to get to work chasing down whatever leads she could find. She was at work by eight thirty, Jacob’s office dark and silent. She decided she’d need to investigate the last call he’d received on his office phone. If she could get the number of the person who’d called Jacob, she might begin to have a better idea of just why he was in the basement of the house in Jersey and what he might have been doing with the freezer. She went to work on her next theory.

  She took a baggie out of her purse and laid it on her desk, looking at the shard she’d picked up from the seat on the train. It was about a half-inch long and just a millimeter or so wide. She knew exactly where she’d seen one like it. On her finger was a tiny red spot where whatever had been in Tommy’s hat had pricked her finger. If her blood was on this splinter and the splinter matched the ones from the house explosion, that would place Tommy at the site in Jersey. But he hadn’t been there, had he?

  She thought about what Doug had told her about the night he’d been hit. He’d said that someone had called him by name. Someone wearing a hat, and this morning Doug had warned her to stay away from Tom Kretlow.

  If Tom was the other person at the house in Jersey that night, why would he hit Doug? How would Tom know Jacob Park? Why would the two of them have been at that house?

  Did any of this have to do with George? After all, the tip that had come in that night had been a tip on George Connelly’s murder. What the hell was the connection between them?

  The hairy man who’d scared Debra and who had taken Ben’s payoff had also been in a picture with Nuri and MacDonald and the elder Camisa. The elder Camisa. She scribbled that on a notepad and circled it. The man she and Doug had chased through the subway had been in a photo of a Camisa party. Children and grandchildren were in attendance. He’d had a hat with the name of a bakery on it. What had Doug said to get him to agree to meet? That he had information Marco Junior might want. He believed that Colton Gerrimon’s server was empty. What if Doug was right about that?

  She unlocked the file drawer to her desk and dug out her notes. She found the list of account numbers that Doug had given her to investigate. He’d said that he wanted to know whose accounts they were. Frustrated, Sophia knew she hadn’t had any legitimate reason to check them out. Transfers of money into Doug’s business account had come from them. That meant, at some point, someone with access to Doug’s accounts had provided the information to allow the transfers. Since Doug didn’t know whose accounts these were, the most likely person to have done that was Tom.

  Sophia had promised to help Doug, so she’d shown the numbers to Jacob. That had been before the explosion that killed Jacob.

  Her head was spinning. None of this made sense. Except she was pretty sure that the person who’d hit Doug and blinded him was Tom. And she was pretty sure that the freezer in the house had once held George’s body. And if Jacob had been wiping down the freezer, that meant he’d been trying to cover up evidence in George’s murder. Why would Jacob do that? There were only two reasons she could think of. Either he’d killed George, or he’d known who did.

  That didn’t explain Tom being at the house. Tom couldn’t be George’s killer, he didn’t know George. She believed Doug when he’d said he never met him. As far as Sophia could tell, the only connection between George and Doug was Ed Walker by the most roundabout way. And she knew that neither Tom nor Doug wanted anything to do with Edward. Doug had wound up in jail, trying to avoid being connected to the guy.

  That line of thought just brought her back to Doug’s confession.

  Don’t go there, she thought

  She decided to take a trip to visit the team investigating the death of Jacob Park.

  Doug was in the Atlanta airport when the call from an unrecognized Manhattan number came in. He swiped his phone, noticing that since Alice was safe in the hospital and Liz, Mary, and his mother bunked with Jesse, his hands no longer felt like they were on the verge of trembling.

  “You didn’t show up with the money,” the man said.

  Ice-cold calm. That was the feeling he had. He recognized it
well. It was the phase of anger that was deeper than fear, the anger that was permanent. That anger? Had all the time in the world. There was no adrenaline any more. The voice of that anger was his voice now. Calm. Low. Certain.

  “I didn’t need to,” he said softly.

  “I think you did.”

  Doug stayed quiet, waiting the guy out.

  “You found your sister?”

  “What do you want?” Doug asked.

  “I’m just calling to make sure you understand your position.”

  Again, Doug just waited silently.

  “After all, if we’d wanted to hide her, or kill her, or do anything to her, we could have. You understand?”

  “No,” Doug said.

  “You have sisters, a mother, a business partner,” the voice sneered. “You seem to like that prosecutor who keeps standing up for you.”

  “So?” He wasn’t surprised. He’d been expecting this since they’d found Alice.

  “Don’t you want to know why we’re doing this?”

  To his ever loving surprise, Doug found that his first gut reaction to that question was no. He didn’t care. It only mattered in the sense that the more he knew, the faster he could end this. Then again, he had all the time in the world. He had his whole life to devote to this one thing—protecting his.

  He made a bored sound. “Not really.”

  That surprised the guy; he could tell by the quick inhale. “We could end them all right now,” the voice said. The threat was like a wash of black over his soul. They would win or they would lose. Doug’s path was set. Behaving like they expected him to wasn’t going to get him anywhere.