by Lisa Gardner
Talking about Justin Denbe hurt her. And she was just a kid, not wise yet in all the ways to hide that kind of pain.
“Maybe he swept his wife away on some romantic getaway weekend,” Tessa said. “Office rumor mill said Friday night was date night. Sweet, if you ask me, after all these years.”
“Would you like the traveler’s profile now?” Kathryn asked softly.
“Kathryn… Kate?”
“Yes?”
“Justin Denbe has gone missing. So have his wife and child.”
The girl looked up sharply. “What?”
“I am with Denbe Construction. As corporate security. The family disappeared last night. We’re trying to find them.”
“I don’t understand.”
“How long have you known Mr. Denbe?”
“Just, you know, since I started here. Nine months.”
“I’m told you and Justin were pretty close.”
The girl blushed, looked down at her desk. “You were misinformed,” she said quietly.
“Kate. Now is not the time. This isn’t about reputations, or job security, or the state of Justin’s marriage. This is about finding a family while they’re still alive.”
The girl didn’t speak right away. She seemed to be conducting an in-depth examination of her dull gray keyboard. Then, “Can we step outside?”
“Sure.”
Kate rose to standing, walking around her desk toward the double-glass doors. She was about Tessa’s height of five-six, but with a lithe build that had all the right curves. Male clients probably flocked to Kathryn Chapman. It didn’t surprise Tessa that Justin had been part of the pack, nor that he’d emerged victorious. The consummate alpha male.
Jerk, she thought, but it made her sad now. Because in many ways, Justin Denbe sounded like just the kind of strong, successful guy a woman like her hoped to find one day. And look where that had gotten his own wife.
Turned out, Kate was a smoker. They exited the back of the building, to the last refuge smokers had left: a five-foot patch of real estate next to the Dumpsters. The girl lit up; Tessa let the silence work its magic.
“I didn’t mean to get involved with him,” the girl said abruptly. “I’m not a home wrecker, you know. But, I mean, have you met him?”
Tessa shook her head.
“He’s good-looking. Even for an older man, and, and… I guess I got a thing for older men. Daddy issues and all that, right?” Kate’s lips twisted. She took another drag of her cigarette. “There was this snafu with his plane tickets, so Justin came down to work it out in person. I looked up, and…there he was. Tall, broad shoulders, wearing construction boots, for God’s sake. When was the last time you saw a guy in an office building in downtown Boston wearing honest-to-God work boots? I just… I wanted him from first sight.
“But, I mean, I never woulda,” the girl interjected hastily. “He was a client, and it was just business, and I saw his wedding band, not to mention part of the ticket snafu was he wanted to return on Thursday night so he could have a three-day weekend with his family. Then, he got to talking about his wife and daughter. He gushed, you know. Actually beamed with pride… It was so clear he loved them so much. I couldn’t help thinking…” She sounded wistful. “I just thought, God, why can’t I meet a guy like that?”
Tessa didn’t say anything. Kate looked up at her.
“Are you married?” the girl asked.
“No.”
“You ever go to the clubs? You know, go out drinking and dancing, hoping to meet a cute guy?”
“Can’t say it’s come up.”
“Don’t bother. The clubs, the bars…they’re filled with assholes. Petty, self-centered drunks who won’t remember your name in the morning. Trust me on this one.”
“Okay.”
“Justin…he was different from all that. A nice guy. When I spoke, he listened. He even looked into my eyes, you know, instead of staring at my chest the whole time.”
“And yet…?”
“Lunch,” Kate whispered. “It started one day at lunch. I was heading out of the building, and there he was. And he just kind of said, want to do lunch? And I said yes. It sounded so innocent. But I knew. I just looked at him, and I knew. But I wanted him. I even told myself I deserved him. I needed him more than his wife and kid.”
“Where’d you go?”
“The Four Seasons.” She blushed. “He, ah, went right up to the front desk, got a room key, and up we went. Room service, he said. We’d order room service. But we never did.”
“Sounds like a pro,” Tessa stated dryly.
“No! I mean, he said…he said I was his first. He’d never cheated on his wife before, wasn’t that kind of guy. But there was something about me…”
“You were special.”
“Exactly.”
Tessa stared at the girl, gaze hard. After another moment, Kate flushed again, looked away.
“Yeah, there were probably others,” the girl said, tapping her cigarette. “Stupid thing is, I expect that kind of bullshit in the bar scene. You know they’re feeding you lines, you got your guard up, your armor on. Then, I came to work, sat at my own desk…and, yeah, he totally reeled me in, hook, line and sinker. I believed every word he said. Because I wanted it to be special, something other than the slutty travel agent stealing away with the big boss guy for lunchtime quickies.”
The girl’s voice broke off bitterly. She gave up on her cigarette, her arms wrapped tightly around her waist, that whole armor thing, except it was too late.
“How long did it go on?”
“Not long. Maybe four, five months.”
“Ended?”
“His wife found out. We’d started texting. I mean, he traveled a lot. Four, five days a week. Then his family… It wasn’t easy to get together. I imagine his wife felt like she got the leftovers of his attention once his work commitment was done. But I was one rung even below that. I got the leftovers of the leftovers. The whole…affair… It wasn’t what I thought it would be.”
“He ever fly you out to meet him?”
“Maybe, um, a couple of times.”
“Define couple.”
“Five or six times. In the beginning.”
“Definitely you were one rung above leftovers, then.”
Kate flushed, looked away. “Only the first month. When everything was new.”
“So the relationship starts to cool. You see him less. Text him more.”
“He didn’t like me texting. He worried about his wife. ‘That’s how they all get caught,’ he’d say. But toward the end…” The girl looked up, her face suddenly set. “I wanted him to get caught! I wanted the whole thing exposed. Because I thought”—she swallowed hard, eyes welling—“I thought, stupid, stupid me, that he’d choose me. That his wife would find out, kick his sorry ass out the door, and he’d come running to me. To me!”
Tessa waited a beat, let the girl calm down. “But that’s not how it played out.”
“He dumped me. Called me up, said he’d made a terrible mistake, he loved his wife and it was over. Don’t contact him again. And that was that. I waited. Thought maybe, after a few days, he’d call or text. Or even just show up downstairs. But nothing. His secretary took over his travel plans. That was it. I loved him, you know. I was stupid and naive and…and I loved him. I thought, maybe, he loved me, too.”
“You ever visit his house?”
The girl shook her head.
“Ever meet his wife?”
“No. Just saw her once or twice, in the lobby. I thought she was beautiful. She had on this real artsy skirt and form-fitting turquoise top. She looked like she took care of herself, you know. People said she was nice. I didn’t… I didn’t ask too many questions.”
“What did Justin say about her?”
“He didn’t. Our time was our time. He wanted to keep it that way.”
“And you never asked him questions? Like why he was having lunch with you, instead of her?”
&nb
sp; The girl had the good grace to flush again. “He just said they’d been married for a long time. She was a good mother, he respected her—”
“Seriously?”
“But, um, you know, then he’d seen me. And there was something magical—”
“Ah, please.” Tessa bit her lip, belatedly trying to call back her own interjection. Always better to let the subject talk.
But Kate was nodding right along. “I know. I look back at it now, and I was so unbelievably stupid. I knew, I think I always knew. But he was just so attractive, and he had this way… He made me feel special. As long as I didn’t think about it too much, of course. But for those moments, when we were together…”
“He gave you gifts?”
“A bracelet. From Tiffany’s. I keep thinking I’ll give it back, but I haven’t, um, seen him.”
“Did his wife know? About the bracelet?”
“I don’t know.”
“She ever find you?”
Kate shook her head. “I wondered if she might try. If she’d call, or worse, come to the office. I tried to think of what I might say… I don’t know, what do you say?”
“She came. She saw you. She thought you were very young. And given Justin’s skills, you never stood a chance.”
The girl wilted. Why not, Tessa figured. Imagining yourself as hated by the ex-wife was one thing; discovering you were actually pitied, instead…
“Are they really missing?” Kate asked.
“Yes.”
“I don’t know anything about that. I mean, I haven’t even seen Justin for weeks and I never spoke to his wife. I guess I figured they were working things out. I mean, when Justin ended it with me, he ended it. Just like that. He loved his wife, and he wasn’t coming back.”
“And you let him go?” Tessa pressed. “No notes slipped under his windshield wiper, calls to his private line, visits to his job sites?”
“Oh, I called. Third time, he even answered. Told me very firmly…like, like a father, that I was not to bother him again. That his decision was made and his family came first, and he knew he’d been selfish, and now he needed to work on the irreparable harm he’d caused to his loving wife, blah, blah, blah.”
The girl broke off suddenly, flushing as if she understood how callous she sounded. She added, heatedly, “He said if I was struggling this much with the end of our relationship, maybe it would be better if I sought a new place of employment. Well, I got that message loud and clear. He was threatening to get me fired! I haven’t finished college yet. You know how many jobs I can’t get out there? I need this one. Trust me, I got the message just fine. I let him go and that was it.”
Tessa studied the young travel agent. She seemed sincere enough. And yet, the girl’s recollections seemed to rely a lot on simply knowing things. She’d known Justin had wanted her. She’d known he was trying to get her fired. Made Tessa wonder just how much she should trust the knowings of a twenty-one-year-old girl. Especially one who was apparently learning many of life’s lessons the hard way.
“One last question,” Tessa said. “Justin never spoke of his family when you were together, but how about work? Any construction jobs he was worried about, either current or in the pipeline?”
Kate shook her head. “We didn’t have much time together, remember? Let’s just say we didn’t waste it talking.”
“You know you’re better off without him.”
“That’s what I keep telling myself.” The girl dropped her cigarette, ground it out with her foot. “If you don’t mind, I should head back. Like I said, I need this job.”
Tessa nodded, glanced at her watch. They’d been talking longer than she’d expected. Kate’s absence would be noted, not to mention that Tessa was now five minutes late for her first Denbe Construction meeting.
She grabbed the handle of the office building’s back door, about to reenter, when it came to her: the oldest trick in the book, the lie of omission.
She turned around, studied the young travel agent carefully. “Hey, Kate, you said you never met Justin’s wife. But what about his daughter?”
Chapter 18
THE PRISON’S KITCHEN WAS HUGE, a commercial space filled with stacked ovens, bakery-quality mixers and endless miles of stainless steel counters. The kind of kitchen meant to serve hundreds of people in an overcrowded cafeteria. It was fully stocked with pots, pans, bakeware, mixing utensils, measuring cups, etc., though it appeared Z and his crew had replaced the knives with plastic utensils.
Our first test, the team leader informed us. If we wanted to eat, we would cook. Enough for all six of us. Z cut the zip ties binding our wrists, allowing the three of us to stand together, unrestrained, for the first time since this ordeal had begun. While the knives had been removed, the kitchen still held cast-iron skillets, graters, peelers, rolling pins. Plenty of options for violence, if we felt motivated enough.
Z stated this directly, standing loosely before us, his back to a rolling, stainless steel island. He had the Taser stuck in a leather holster around his waist. Other objects protruded in discreet black leather pouches attached to his belt. I had a feeling we didn’t want to know what was in those other pouches.
I noticed that when Z spoke, his dark green snake tattoo seemed to undulate around his head, the scales moving sinuously beneath the too bright overhead lights. As if the cobra were advancing. As if the cobra would come for us next.
Mick would simply kill us. Z, on the other hand, would hurt us in ways that would make us wish we were dead.
Z finished his friendly reminder that should we choose to cause trouble, our punishment would be immediate and include but not be limited to a loss of food privileges for the remainder of our incarceration.
He said it just like that. The remainder of our incarceration. As if we were somehow serving hard time, maybe life without parole.
I felt like giggling, but I didn’t.
The commandos had procured supplies. Not much in the way of fresh produce—again, because we were serving a life sentence?—but an impressive array of canned foods, bagged lentils, and dry goods. Enough to fill several long shelves in the twelve-foot-by-twelve-foot walk-in pantry. I tried not to think about how much food was present, how long this supply could conceivably last and what that might say about our kidnappers’ plans, as I worked my way through the pantry, trying to assemble enough ingredients for a credible dinner.
For our first night of gourmet prison dining, I went with pasta with tomato sauce. We had plenty of cans of crushed tomatoes, olive oil, dried herbs, and garlic cloves. I added a jar of olives, a jar of pearl onions, then canned carrots and baby corn to the stack on the stainless steel island. Without fresh produce, we were reduced to a diet of processed vegetables, terrible in taste, nearly deadly in sodium content. Not much I could do about salt levels, but incorporating items such as carrots and corn into a marinara sauce would help supplement the nutritional content without totally sacrificing edibility. The olives and onions would assist with flavor, creating a sauce that might not win any awards in the North End but would be medal-worthy inside a state institution.
Z seemed intrigued that I would know such things. I didn’t feel like telling him about my life with my mother in the projects. That not only could I cook out of cans, but I could clean a toilet with Coke and remove grout stains with bleach and baking soda.
Justin was put to work preparing two pounds of pasta. My husband could cook. Very well, in fact, if there was a grill involved and some choice-cut fillets. But for now, he tended spaghetti while Ashlyn and I assembled the sauce. My daughter went to work opening cans, then diced up mushy carrots and slippery onions with a plastic knife. I used a second plastic knife on the olives. At least with canned vegetables, a sharp-edged blade was hardly necessary.
For a while, none of us spoke. We worked, and working felt nice. To have a purpose again, a focus and direction. Ashlyn’s stomach growled as the scent of boiling noodles filled the air. Twenty hours without food? I trie
d to do the math, but my brain wouldn’t go there. So I chopped more, stirred together, played with herbs, started the simmering process. Cooking was something I’d been doing my entire life. Motions that could be performed on autopilot.
The problem started when Justin asked me for a spoon.
He wanted to test the cooked noodles. Could I pass him a spoon?
I stared at him, standing in front of a saucepan of stewed tomatoes, and for the life of me, I couldn’t remember…a spoon, a spoon, a spoon?
“Libby,” he said.
I stared at him, more and more curiously.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa. Burner’s too hot.” He reached in front of me, turned the dial down. That made sense to me. The dial controlled the fire, the fire controlled heat, and I didn’t want my sauce to burn.
But then Justin ruined the moment, by asking me again for a spoon. I turned to him in near exasperation.
“I don’t have a sfpoof,” I heard myself say.
“A what?”
“A sfpoof.”
That didn’t sound right. I frowned. Ashlyn was staring at me. Z, too. My head hurt. I put a hand to my forehead, and realized I was now swaying on my feet.
Z approached me.
“Tell me your name,” he ordered.
“Kathryn Chapman,” I said tiredly.
My husband paled, though I wasn’t sure why.
“Mom?”
Z touched me. I flinched, couldn’t help myself. That cobra, those fangs, those gleaming scales…
My back hit the hot-burning, bubbling sauce.
“Libby!”
Justin jerked me to the side, away from the stove. Then Z placed his fingers around my eyeball and steadily pulled my eyelids open.
I think I whimpered. Someone did.
“How hard did that fucker hit you?” Z murmured. “Count to ten.”
I stared at him blankly, trying to disappear into my husband, who stood beside me solidly now, arm around my shoulders for support. I wished I could turn in to him. When we were first dating, I’d loved to tuck my body into him, the feeling of his hard planes against my softer build. Two pieces of a puzzle that clicked into place. He had made me feel safe then, and I could use a feeling of safety right about now.
