Touch & Go

by Lisa Gardner

  “What do they want?” Ashlyn asked plaintively.

  “Money.”

  I glanced up sharply, a motion that made me wince.

  “Think about it,” he said, as if sensing my doubt. “They’re carrying Tasers, not guns. So their goal is to control, but not harm. They’ve Tased us, drugged us, bound us. Again, all strategies devised to subdue, but not injure.”

  “Until the Mick guy beat the shit out of Mom,” Ashlyn muttered.

  “Young lady,” Justin began, “I don’t want to hear that kind of language—”

  “She’s right,” I interjected, already feeling Ashlyn’s growing hostility. “He beat the shit out of me.”

  Justin scowled at our joint rebellion. “Which their leader, Z, immediately halted by Tasing his own guy, then he sent you for medical treatment. Again, if their intent is to harm, why would Z care if you have a concussion? Why bother having one of his men tend to you, taking up time and resources? For that matter, why feed us? Because he wants us subdued but unharmed, all the better for demanding ransom, where he’ll have to deliver proof of life.”

  “Proof of life?” Ashlyn asked.

  “As part of the ransom demand, Z will have to prove we’re still alive and well. Hence he went after Mick when Mick attacked your mother. It’s not enough to simply ask for money. Z has to prove he really has us, but also, we’re undamaged enough to be worth wanting back; hence your mother can’t be in a coma.”

  “Kidnapping,” Ashlyn murmured. “Ransom. Proof of life.” She tested out each word, as if trying to determine how such phrases had come to apply in her life.

  “The kitchen is well stocked,” I said, my gaze flickering to Justin with unspoken meaning. Such as, there were enough dry goods in this prison to last weeks, let alone days.

  “Ransom cases can take time,” he said evasively. “Especially, given there’s an insurance company involved.”

  Ashlyn and I stared at him blankly. He explained that Denbe Construction carried not only a life insurance policy on him, but kidnapping as well. Corporate insurance 101, he claimed, especially in this day and age when executives traveled to places such as South America and the Middle East, only to disappear in the middle of the night. Except Justin never traveled to any of those places, I thought. But apparently, he still had kidnapping insurance, and by extension, Ashlyn and I did as well.

  Ashlyn perked up. “How much are Mom and I worth?”

  Justin hesitated. “One mil. Each.”

  “Cool!” Our daughter found this exciting. “And you?”

  “Don’t remember…couple mil maybe.”

  Ashlyn rolled her eyes at me. “Why are the men always worth more?”

  “You don’t want to provide too much incentive,” Justin said, tone still deadly serious. “The point of insurance is to cover worst-case scenarios, while not making the insured—say, you or your mother or myself—appear so valuable that you become a target.”

  He looked at me, and once again, wordless communication passed. Such as, while individually our abduction would not earn enough money to significantly compensate a trio of commandos, our family as a whole was worth at least four million, possibly more, if the commandos planned on stretching above the policy limit. For example, perhaps Z figured that if the insurance would kick in four million, then the company, Denbe, ought to be good for at least another two, meaning they’d demand six million for our safe return. That would translate to two million dollars per commando. Incentive, all right.

  Justin was still staring at me, and in his direct blue eyes, I saw the other piece of the puzzle, the real reason he sat so straight and grim: Whoever had come up with this scheme must know about the insurance, must know us. Factor in what Ashlyn had said, that the front door had been locked, the security system armed, and that meant they also had access to our security codes.

  Someone we knew. Someone we trusted. Someone we most likely considered a friend had hired Z’s team, researching our schedules, identifying this mothballed prison from Justin’s work history and planning each step of this operation. Maybe that person got three million, and Z’s team one apiece. Still plenty of incentive.

  To betray a buddy and put his entire family at risk.

  I shivered slightly. I hadn’t felt so violated since…well, since finding another woman’s sexually explicit texts on my husband’s cell phone.

  “They’re professionals,” I murmured.

  He nodded slowly.

  “Military backgrounds,” I added. “I tried, in the infirmary, to ask Radar questions. He was careful with his replies, but he mentioned military barracks. Plus, the way they look, act…”

  Justin wasn’t speaking, but he appeared troubled. “A lot of former military in the trades,” he said at last. An admission of sorts. Maybe the threat didn’t come from his company specifically, but from the construction industry as a whole.

  Ashlyn was studying us, picking up on the unspoken communiqués. “What?”

  “Nothing,” Justin said.

  “Bullshit!”

  “Young lady—”

  “Stop it! Stop it!” She lurched to her feet, temper flaring. “I’m fifteen years old, Dad. I know all my swears. Shit, fuck, damn, bitch. And who are you to tell me how to talk? I’ve been on your job sites, I know how guys speak. What, it’s good enough for you, but too real for me?”

  “Pretty girls don’t need to use ugly words—”

  “Who says I want to be pretty? Maybe I like using ugly words. Maybe someone in this family should finally be honest about how they feel. Maybe Mom should start using the work fuck, instead of running around trying to be so perfect and accommodating. Maybe, if she said the word fuck once and a while, you wouldn’t have found another woman to fuck. There’s a thought.”

  Justin paled. I sat, frozen across from him, staring at my daughter as if she’d just grown two heads.

  Then Justin reached up and slowly, but firmly, pinched our daughter’s lips shut. “I do not want to hear that word from your mouth. Not now. Not ever. You might be fifteen, but I’m still your father and in this family, we have standards.”

  Ashlyn crumbled. From shock, from shame, I couldn’t tell which. She collapsed on the bunk beside me, buried her face against me and wept. I stroked her long wheat-brown hair, wanting to ease the moment, but not knowing where to start.

  “It’s not fair,” Ashlyn moaned. “You did everything to make him happy, and for what? Men are pigs. Men are pigs. Men are pigs!”

  The way she said the words gave me a second jolt. A female didn’t speak with that much vehemence in defense of another woman’s feelings, but in defense of her own.

  I closed my eyes, wondered what his name was, how long it had been going on and when we had all drifted so far from one another. Even nine months ago, I would’ve sworn we were a solid little family. Sure, Justin’s job took its toll…. But I would’ve said that we loved each other, trusted each other, told each other everything.

  A whole family can’t fall apart just like that. Even with infidelity. There had to have been cracks, weaknesses in the foundation. But I hadn’t seen them, or hadn’t wanted to see them. Ashlyn was right about one thing: I did run around trying to be perfect and accommodating. I wanted my husband happy. I wanted my daughter happy. And I hadn’t thought that was such a bad thing.

  Justin still wasn’t speaking. He watched me comfort our daughter and he didn’t appear angry anymore as much as hollow.

  “You shouldn’t have told her so much,” he said finally, to me.

  “I didn’t.”

  “I figured it out for myself,” Ashlyn interjected. “I’m not an idiot, Dad.”

  She pressed her head harder against my shoulder, giving him her back. I continued to stroke her hair.

  “We need to stop fighting,” he tried again.

  Ashlyn sobbed against me.

  “We need…” His voice caught, he soldiered on. “We need to rest. It’s been a long day. But if we just stay calm… They�
��re going to ask for ransom. The company is going to pay it, and then we’ll go home. Tomorrow is Sunday, so it’ll probably take a few more days. But two, three days tops and this will all be over. We’ll be back in our house. Everything will be okay.”

  Ashlyn remained with her head buried against me, so I returned Justin’s look, nodding once so he knew that I had heard him. Then, because I just couldn’t help it, I smiled at my husband sadly.

  Poor Justin. Through sheer force of will he’d quadrupled his father’s company, completed dozens of hundred-million-dollar projects and become one of the foremost names in construction. Of course he thought his word was law, that if he could think it, he could make it so.

  But he was wrong about things. In a few days, this would not be all over. Kidnapping or no kidnapping, ransom or no ransom, it didn’t matter.

  Best I could tell, the total destruction of our family was just beginning.

  Chapter 21

  TEN P.M., the meeting in the conference room broke up. Not to go home. In an investigation with this much ground to cover, sleeping was a luxury reserved for people who didn’t know the Denbes, had never worked with the Denbes and were not currently assigned the task of finding the Denbes.

  In a missing person’s case, the odds of finding the people alive diminished dramatically after the first forty-eight to seventy-two hours. Which was worrisome, because the Denbe family had now been gone for almost exactly twenty-four hours. And as of this moment, the police had no direct contact from the family, no eyewitness accounts of a kidnapping, nor any reported sightings of the family from the general public.

  Tessa texted her daughter good night. She had not heard from Sophie all day, which either meant that Mrs. Ennis was doing a great job of keeping her occupied, or that Sophie was currently plotting her revenge. Tessa placed her odds at fifty-fifty, then told herself to let it go.

  If Sophie was upset, that was a conversation for later.

  Right now, the Denbe family needed her more.

  Tessa joined the blond FBI agent, Nicole, and the burly sergeant, Wyatt Foster. They were interviewing Anita Bennett first, and not only was Bennett Tessa’s paying client, but as COO, the person most in the know about possible corporate scandals.

  Anita led them to her office. An expansive corner suite with light wood-paneled walls, a stunning Boston view and its own leather sofa. Definitely some money in the construction biz.

  Tessa wondered how hard Anita had worked to get this office, a top woman in a predominantly male industry. She had a feeling that for all of the room’s opulence, this was mostly the place where Anita worked, worked and worked some more.

  She took a seat on the chocolate-colored sofa. The blond FBI agent positioned herself in a hardback chair directly in front of Anita’s desk. The North Country detective didn’t sit at all, but leaned casually against the wall. He seemed enamored by the fine wood paneling, running one hand along the grain.

  Decent-size guy, Tessa thought. She’d place him mid-forties, aging well. Not a big talker, but he had a look about him. Deep thinker, she predicted. The kind who knew a lot more than he let on. Worked the good-old-boy routine, then emptied your wallet in poker.

  She made a mental note never to gamble with him, but perhaps buy him a beer. A little collegial warm-up, and he probably had some insights worth hearing.

  Special Agent Nicole Adams started with general background. When had Anita first started in Denbe Construction? Her subsequent rise within the corporation?

  Anita smiled, clasped her hands and placed them on the desk. “Believe it or not, I’ve been with Denbe thirty-five years. I started fresh out of school. Which gives me the dubious distinction of being the company’s longest-serving employee. Not counting Justin, I suppose, though he was just a teenager back then.”

  “So you worked for Justin’s father?” Tessa spoke up.

  “That’s right. I was Dale’s secretary. Business was much smaller then. Operated out of an old warehouse in Waltham. But construction is construction. One of those businesses where the more things change, the more they stay the same.”

  “You went from secretary to COO?” Special Agent Adams quizzed. “That’s quite a career trajectory.”

  “Well, you know, thirty-five years later…” Anita’s smile was more wistful now. The good old days. “Dale was a hard-ass. No doubt about that. Much of Justin’s management style still comes from his father—be the first on site and the last to leave. Demand the most from your employees, but also treat them with respect. Dale was famous for free-beer Fridays. The guys would wrap up for the week, then hang out in the warehouse kicking back with six-packs. You can’t do that sort of thing anymore, of course, the liability alone would kill us. But free-beer Fridays wasn’t just about rewarding the crew; it was about bonding. Making the employees also feel like part of the family. Justin has continued that tradition in his own style. He and Libby are famous for dinner parties with the crew, Sunday afternoon cookouts. Speaking as a key member of Justin’s management team, I’ve never felt that I work for him, as much as I work with him to continue the great tradition of this company.”

  “Great family,” Special Agent Adams repeated evenly. “Great company. Great family company.”

  Anita beamed, nodding shortly.

  Special Agent Adams leaned forward and stated coolly, “Please stop wasting our time.”

  The COO startled. Tessa felt her own eyes widen, while against the wall, she watched the sheriff’s detective quickly suppress a grin.

  “We are not shareholders. We are not with the Better Business Bureau, nor are we prospective clients. We are here to locate and assist Justin, Libby and Ashlyn Denbe. To be even more frank, we have roughly twenty-four hours to get that job done, or chances are, you won’t see any of them alive again. Do you understand?”

  Slowly, the COO nodded.

  “Now, to do our job,” Special Agent Adams explained briskly, “we require information. Better yet, we need unvarnished truths. To start with, you went from secretary to COO. How do you account for that level of success, especially as a woman succeeding in a predominantly male industry?”

  Anita’s lips thinned. She answered the question in the same brusque tone the FBI agent had used to ask it.

  “By working twice as hard as everyone else, of course. Look, Justin’s father was hardly an enlightened male. Dale liked to have a pretty receptionist, and thirty-five years ago, I fit that bill quite nicely. But I was also smart. It didn’t take me long to see that Dale needed help with more than answering phones. He was terrible with paperwork, notorious for losing contracts and a train wreck at account management. I started with arranging his calendar, then took over organizing the entire office. While I was at it, I also started making phone calls, finding vendors who could supply us with cheaper office supplies, then better health insurance, then better workman’s comp. Dale might have been a chauvinist pig, but even he recognized that he was saving tens of thousands of dollars a year. As I said honestly before, Dale was always one to treat his employees with respect. I proved my value, and he promoted me accordingly. By the time he died, I was already running the admin side of things. As Justin grew the company, so did the complexity of our operations. I moved into chief of operations accordingly.”

  “Tell us about Justin. When did he take over the company?”

  “He was twenty-seven when Dale died—”

  “How did his father die?”

  “Heart attack. Dropped dead in the office. Dale was a work-hard, play-hard kind of guy, with the play-hard side of the equation including copious amounts of red meat and hard alcohol.”

  “Women?” Tessa spoke up from the couch.

  The COO flicked her a glance. For a second, Tessa thought she’d refuse to answer, but then: “Given that Dale himself hardly kept it a secret,” Anita said tightly, “yes, he maintained a pretty active social life outside his marriage.”

  “How’d Justin’s mom take it?” Tessa asked curiously.
r />   “Drank a lot. Martinis mostly. Then would come to the office and scream at Dale over the latest discovery. At which point, he’d promise her a new car, or a fur coat, or a trip to the Bahamas to patch things up.”

  “You seem to know a lot about the couple’s marriage,” Special Agent Adams observed.

  Anita smiled again but was not amused. “Like I said, Dale hardly kept things a secret. I suppose also, it’s the nature of a family-run business. The employees get to know the family, almost as well as the business.”

  “Is Justin like his father?” Tessa again.

  “Yes and no. Dale groomed Justin. From the time the boy could walk, he was the designated heir to Denbe Construction. Other sixteen-year-olds went to the beach. The summer I started with Dale, he’d just shipped his son off to work eighty-hour weeks with a drywalling firm. Dale believed firmly in hands-on education. And learning the trades inside and out. The more you know, he’d say, the less they can rip you off.”

  “Justin didn’t mind?” Special Agent Adams.

  “Best any of us could tell, he loved it. So, yes, from that perspective, Justin is very much like his father. He’s a hands-on boss. Extremely dedicated and hardworking, which in turn inspires the loyalty of that bunch of reprobates that pass as his crew.”

  Anita uttered the term reprobates with a touch of affection. So apparently, they had inspired her respect in return.

  “So he maintained his father’s work ethic.” Wyatt finally spoke up, pushing away from the wall. “That’s how he’s like his father?”

  “Yes.”

  “And the ways he isn’t?”

  Again, that faint hesitation. Tessa was noticing a trend: Denbe employees seemed very comfortable talking about the business, say, Chris Lopez explaining the business model, or Anita talking about the company’s history. But those same insiders suddenly clammed up tight when it came to talking about their boss’s personal life. Loyalty? Fear? Or an almost cult-like need to never violate the code of the inner sanctum?

  “Justin’s parents hardly had a happy marriage,” Anita said at last. “Then, when Dale died and Mary learned that he’d left the entire company to Justin, well, she didn’t take that very well. In fact, she’s never spoken to Justin since.”