Touch & Go

by Lisa Gardner

  They were shouting, wielding clubs. The largest went straight after Justin, knocking him to the floor and beating him with a stick. Bam, bam, bam. Then the second was on Ashlyn, who was asleep on the lower bunk. A rabid beetle pouncing on her with the mattress, smothering her down.

  I heard muffled screams, then I toppled off the top bunk, rolling onto the back of the beetle from hell. I whacked instinctively at his shoulders, except everything I smacked was padded or plated. My fists were useless. My daughter screamed and I hit and none of it made a difference.

  Justin shouting from the floor: “I’ll go, I’ll go. Just leave them alone. Leave my family the fuck alone!”

  That quickly, Ashlyn’s attacker straightened, removing the mattress from her body, brushing me off his back. I fell hard, catching myself at the last second with my hands, because my head had already suffered enough.

  Justin, already dragged to his feet, lurched to standing near the open cell door. Blood on the corner of his mouth, hands manacled before him.

  His attacker grabbed his cuffed wrists and dragged him away.

  Our attacker had his shield once again positioned against his body. He eased backward toward the open door. At the last moment, he flipped up his faceplate.

  Mick smiled, blew us a kiss. Most fun he’d had in ages, you could see it on his face. Couldn’t wait to do it again.

  Then he stepped out, the steel door clanged shut and Ashlyn and I were alone.

  WE DIDN’T CRY. By mutual consent, we curled up on the top bunk, out of immediate reach of smothering beetles. From this vantage point, I could see out the narrow window to a dark, dark sky. Still middle of the night, not even the next day, and yet it already felt like we’d been in this hellhole forever.

  My daughter lay on her side, with her back to me. I put my arm around her waist, my face against the top of her hair.

  When she was little, Ashlyn used to creep into our room. Never say a word. I’d simply open my eyes and find her standing next to my side of the bed, a pale little ghost. I would lift the covers and she’d crawl in next to me, our secret as Justin didn’t approve of such things.

  I never minded, though. Even then, I knew these moments wouldn’t last forever. That the first five years of my daughter’s life, for all of the exhausting sleeplessness, were one of the only times she would truly belong to me. First, she’d learn to crawl, then walk, then run away on her own.

  So I liked to hold her close, smell the baby shampoo scent of her hair. Feel her like a hot little furnace, nuzzled up next to me.

  My girl wasn’t little anymore. At fifteen, she stood at nearly my height. And yet her rib cage still felt so slight. She was growing like a colt, all skinny arms and legs. Given Justin’s size, she would probably top my head next year. It was one of those things, I guessed. She’d always be my little girl and yet, she never would be again.

  My body started to shake, my stomach cramping. I willed the tremors away, but they didn’t listen.

  “Mom?” my daughter asked. Her voice was soft, subdued.

  I brushed back her long wheat-brown hair, and for the first time in a long time, my own weakness shamed me. I never should’ve taken that first pill. I never should’ve let something as stupid and pathetic as my husband’s affair become an excuse to fall apart. Maybe my marriage was done. But I still had motherhood. How had I forgotten about that?

  “My concussion,” I mumbled, a vague enough excuse.

  My daughter wasn’t fooled. She rolled over, staring at me. She had my eyes, everyone always said that. Not gold, not green. Somewhere in between. She was beautiful and smart, and growing up too fast. I touched her cheek, and for once, she didn’t flinch.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. My brow was starting to sweat. I could feel the beads of moisture, except in my hazy state, they felt less like water, more like blood.

  “You need your pills,” she said.

  “How did…” I wasn’t sure I wanted to know.

  “I’ve been going through your purse,” my daughter stated matter-of-factly. “And your cell phone. Dad’s, too. Both of you, you didn’t just stop speaking to each other. You stopped speaking to me.”

  I didn’t say anything, just searched her gaze, tried to find myself in my teenager’s unflinching stare. “We love you. That will never change.”

  “I know.”

  “Sometimes, parents have to be people, too.”

  “I don’t want people,” she said. “I want my mom and dad.”

  She rolled back over. Then my time was up. One side effect of taking an opiate: severe constipation. Meaning once you go off that drug, your body has some catching up to do.

  I made it to the toilet just in time.

  The diarrhea was violent and smelly and awful. I would’ve cried, except between the chronic vomiting, sweating and now this, my body didn’t have any moisture left.

  Ashlyn remained on the top bunk, did her best to give me privacy. Not that it really mattered anymore.

  I was being broken down, I thought, clutching my cramping stomach. Devolving from human to animal. From a respectable wife and mother who once knew her place in the world, to a woman who might as well collapse in a gutter.

  Then, the worst of the diarrhea was over. All that remained was shaking and sweating and aching and the deepest, darkest despair.

  I made it off the toilet. Curled up on the floor.

  And waited for the world to end.

  LATER, Ashlyn told me that Radar came. He had a jug of water, a pile of towels and a bunch of pills. An antidiarrheal, some acetaminophen, an antihistamine. It took both Radar and Ashlyn to get the pills down my throat.

  Then Radar was gone, and Ashlyn was left with the task of dampening towels and wiping my face. She couldn’t figure out how to move me to the bunk, so she sat with me on the floor.

  At one point, I remember opening my eyes, watching her watch me.

  “You’re going to be okay,” she murmured. Then, “I don’t feel sorry for you, Mom. It’s the least you deserve.”

  Except later, I heard her crying, hushed, wracking sobs and I tried to touch her face, tried to tell her she was right and I was wrong, but I couldn’t move my arms. I was underwater again, sinking down, down, down, watching my daughter drift away from me.

  “I hate you,” my daughter was saying. “I fucking hate both of you. You cannot leave me like this. You can’t leave me.”

  And I didn’t blame her. In fact, I wanted to tell her I understood. I hated my father, too, because he hadn’t wanted to wear a helmet. And I hated my mother, who even when we couldn’t afford dinner, always had a fresh pack of cigarettes. Why were parents so weak, so fallible? Why couldn’t my own parents have seen how much I loved them, needed them beside me?

  They died, leaving behind the kind of void that is never filled, a relentless ache that follows an abandoned child throughout her entire life. And I stood alone, a pillar of brittle strength until the day I met Justin. Wonderful, gorgeous, larger-than-life Justin. Who swept me off my feet and made me feel beautiful and loved and desired beyond all reason. And now we were living happily ever after, the king and queen of Camelot.

  I think I might have started giggling. Maybe I laughed until I cried, because the next thing I knew, my daughter was once again in focus and this time Ashlyn’s face was frightened, and she kept saying, “Please Mom, please Mom, please Mom,” and that shamed me all over again.

  I was supposed to take care of my daughter, not the other way around. I was supposed to keep her safe.

  Radar reappeared. He did not look at me. He did not speak to my daughter.

  He had another handful of pills.

  These ones got the job done. My aches and pains disappeared. The dark void whittled down, down, down. My panting, shivering and sweating stopped.

  My body stilled.

  I slept.

  After a bit, my daughter curled up on the floor beside me. This time with her arm around my waist, her face pressed against my hair.
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  She slept, too.

  For a moment.

  THE CELL DOOR EXPLODED OPEN. The first armored beetle rushed in, screaming and yelling and wielding his mattress, jerking us once again from slumber to full alertness.

  The beetle whacked us with his mattress. Yelled at us to get up, up, up.

  On the floor, my daughter’s arm tightened around my waist. I wrapped my fingers around her hand and held on tight.

  Don’t let her go don’t let her go don’t let her go. She is mine they cannot have her.

  More screaming, more yelling, more whacking.

  Mick, finally releasing his shield, grabbing Ashlyn’s shoulders, trying to physically yank her up off the floor. Me, gripping tighter. Him, pulling, pulling, pulling, so relentlessly, freakishly strong.

  Our hands parted, Ashlyn’s fingers slipping through mine.

  Mick lifted her away from me.

  I staggered to my feet and kicked him in the balls.

  More protective padding, but maybe not foolproof. Mick fell back, released Ashlyn, considered me instead. This time, I kicked his knee, then rained feeble, kitten-like blows at his kidney. I had virtually no strength, could barely stand, but I didn’t pause. I just kicked and hit and hit and kicked, until he finally fumbled for his mattress shield and Ashlyn bolted away, up onto the top bunk, where she formed a crouch, as if preparing to launch at him.

  Suddenly, a fresh set of hands, huge, ungodly strong, lifted me off the floor and held me in midair. Ashlyn’s eyes went wide in her face.

  Z stating quietly, his voice an inch from my ear: “Mick, you are a fucking waste of human DNA. Stop dicking around and get the job done.”

  Mick didn’t reach for Ashlyn, but huffed out of the cell.

  Z set me back down, his hands still holding me firmly in place. His next command was directed at my daughter: “You. Sit.”

  She sat.

  Then Mick returned, except this time he wasn’t alone. He shoved Justin before him, my husband stumbling toward the nearest bunk, grabbing for the metal frame to support himself.

  Z released my shoulders, and as quickly as they’d come, both men disappeared.

  Justin looked up, his formerly handsome face now beaten nearly beyond recognition.

  “Libby,” he whispered. “Libby. I was wrong. We have…to get…out of here.”

  Then, my husband collapsed into a bloody heap upon the floor.

  Chapter 23

  WYATT COULDN’T SLEEP. He didn’t mind sleep. Had nothing against it. But tonight, after a long investigative day tackling a high-stakes case, his brain wouldn’t shut up. He lay in the moderately priced hotel Kevin had found using the modern miracle of their vehicle’s built-in navigation system, and his brain was running a mile a minute.

  His current 2:00 A.M. musing: Why a whole family?

  So far, most theories of the case had to do with financial gain. After all, Justin Denbe was a wealthy man, heading an even bigger dollar corporation. A guy like that gets Tasered and abducted from his elite Boston brownstone, money was the first thing that sprang to mind.

  According to his company, he carried an insurance policy making him worth a cool two mil—hard to argue with that. And looking at the company itself—going through a difficult industry transition, maybe some infighting among the management team—you could see where a key player might perceive gain if Justin didn’t show up for a bit. Hell, maybe a good old-fashioned kidnapping would sour Justin on the whole business. He’d step aside permanently, allowing either the old guard, or the new blood, to take over the reins and move the business triumphantly into the full glory of design, build, operate.

  Whatever.

  Wyatt wasn’t into businesses. He was into people. Case like this, no matter where you started, would never end up being about P and Ls. It would be about people, what made them tick, and what made some of them tick differently.

  Which brought him back to his first thought: Best they could tell, there were a couple of lucrative reasons for kidnapping Justin Denbe, but why his whole family?

  Kidnapping three was tricky. For one thing, you immediately added coconspirators in crime, and if there was a coconspirator out there who could keep a secret, a prison official hadn’t met him yet. Second, the logistics increased exponentially. Transportation—now you had multiple perpetrators and multiple victims. Hell, getting from point A to point B was no longer neat and discreet, but involved a regular party boat. Might as well rent a stretch limo and call it a day.

  Then, lodging. Where do you put that many people? Granted, this is where northern New Hampshire made sense, especially this time of year. Some of the campgrounds involved decent-size seasonal lodges. They’d be a bitch to heat, and uncomfortable as hell, as they weren’t meant for winter occupancy, but they’d definitely provide a private, inconspicuous way to house a bunch of hostages.

  Of course, now you gotta feed a whole party as well. And sure, you can stock these lodges; that’s what happened in the summer months. But it still involved effort. Trips to the grocery store, which as an experienced shopper himself, Wyatt knew were nearly impossible to get right the first time. You always forgot something on the list. Or, something unexpected came up—say a rich Boston wife suddenly going through opiate withdrawal and now requiring aspirin and Imodium and all sorts of TLC.

  Work, work, work.

  Risk, risk, risk.

  If these guys were truly professionals, why expose themselves to the hazards of grabbing an entire family? Especially if the most financial gain could be made by simply kidnapping Justin himself?

  Wyatt didn’t like it.

  Two A.M. to three A.M. to four A.M.

  Why take the entire family? Why not just kidnap Justin Denbe?

  And thirty hours later, where the hell was the ransom demand?

  WYATT ROLLED OUT OF BED AT SIX. He showered, which made him feel moderately human, then shaved, which definitely made him feel better, and finally changed into a fresh uniform he kept packed in a duffel bag, because in his line of work, an initial call out had been known to involve several days away from home.

  Too early to call the North Country yet. If his people had real news, either from the hotline or direct public contact or from the campground searches, they would’ve let him know, regardless of the hour. His cell phone had no messages, same with his voice mail, which led him to believe they were still in the all-pain, no-gain phase of their investigation. Fair enough.

  HE HEADED DOWNSTAIRS to retrieve a fax from the Boston PD, and found Kevin already in the lobby, holding two large cups of Dunkin’ Donuts coffee.

  “Good man,” Wyatt said, grabbing the thick bundle of papers, then accepting the offered coffee. He looked around. The lobby was deserted.

  “They provide a continental breakfast,” Kevin commented. “Can you believe it doesn’t open till seven thirty on a Sunday?”

  Wyatt grunted, took a sip. He liked Dunkin’ Donuts regular. Nearly white with cream and heavy with sugar. Good stuff.

  “Sleep?” Kevin asked.

  “Who needs it? You?”

  “I watched pay-per-view. But not porn. I know they make this big deal about none of the movie titles showing up on the hotel bill, but that just makes everyone look like they’ve been viewing porn.”

  “Good to know.”

  “You don’t talk much in the morning.”

  “And you talk entirely too much.”

  The men headed for a small table in the common room. No one around, so they didn’t have to worry about prying eyes or keen hearing.

  “Game plan for the day?” Kevin asked.

  “Stick around. Unless we get a development from up north, only real crime scene is here, not to mention all the players are in the city as well. Tricky, trying to profile an entire family. The number of interviews, background reports… We need more manpower. ’Course, we don’t have it to give.”

  “FBI will start throwing more bodies at it, especially now that the family’s beyond the twenty-
four-hour mark,” Kevin said. “Won’t have a choice. It’s been, what, a day and a half, and we have no leads, not even a ransom demand.”

  “FBI’s gonna set up a command center. I’m guessing they’ll bring in a mobile unit, park it in front of the Denbes’ town house. They’ll be thinking seriously about preparing for contact from the kidnappers, wiring the house, tapping the landlines, all that stuff. I bet they keep the Denbes’ mobile phones as well. Just in case a call comes through them.”

  “Can you text a ransom demand?” Kevin mused. “Especially on the teenager’s cell. There’s something suitably ironic about that.”

  “Hell, if you can sext, why not ransom text? Textortion? Sounds good to me.”

  Kevin took a sip of his own coffee. “So what do you think of Tessa Leoni? You got to interview with her last night.”

  Wyatt shrugged. “She asked good questions. Can’t get a vibe on her relationship with Denbe Construction, though. On the one hand, they’re her client, on the other hand, it seemed to be her first time meeting any of them.”

  “First,” Kevin confirmed. “Looked it up last night. Denbe has had Northledge on retainer for the past seven years, but it doesn’t appear to be a major account. Northledge probably provides routine background checks on prospective employees, that sort of thing, which is handled lower on the Northledge food chain than Tessa Leoni. Her boss saves her for more strategic situations.”

  “This would be a situation needing some strategy,” Wyatt concurred, but he was frowning. “She seems kind of young to be the investigative big guns.”

  “Twenty-nine. Served four years as a Massachusetts state police trooper. Two years at Northledge.”

  “Twenty-nine? Shit, that’s barely out of investigative diapers.”

  “She seems to be able to make it work,” Kevin said. “Her last employee review was positively glowing.”

  “How can you know that? Seriously? From surfing the Internet in the middle of the night?”