Beneath Bone Lake

by Colleen Thompson

  Ruby studied his face. “You mean you’re not taking his advice about running?”

  He shook his head and ground out, “Not on your damned life.”

  The tension in her shoulders eased, and she sighed. “I hope you don’t come to regret it.”

  He could have said more. How he’d felt more alive in the past two days than he had the last two years. How quickly the idea of exacting righteous vengeance for Elysse’s death and Ruby’s suffering had taken root. How, despite the horrific circumstances, he felt content here, doing the kind of work he should be doing, after wasting his talents, even his life, for far too long. How turning tail and selling out to a slippery mercenary like Sybil tempted him not for a moment.

  But he held his peace, partly out of an instinct for self-preservation and partly because he realized he still hadn’t talked to Ruby about Misty. As succinctly as he could, he went ahead and shared what Paulie had told him, though he was careful not to mention Hammett’s preoccupation with his own reputation.

  Worry lines creased Ruby’s forehead. “Crystal mentioned the same thing, said she even asked Misty about it point-blank. Misty denied it, got pretty upset. Too upset, if you ask me. It really makes me wonder—”

  Ruby’s phone rang, and she all but dove to reach it on the Hoosier’s pull-out countertop. Picking up, she said, “Crystal? Is it really you?”

  Ruby relaxed, her body language revealing that she’d half expected it would be the man claiming to have her family. Which would make sense, if Hobson Best knew technology as well as he did terror.

  But new tension coiled in her voice as she asked, “What did you hear about my sister? Tell me.” While listening, she paced, moving from the kitchen back into the tiny living room.

  “Who?” asked Ruby. “Tell her I need to know now.” After a long pause, she added, “Come on, Crystal. I don’t have the patience to play these kinds of games. Fine, I’ll meet you there in about forty minutes. Please don’t go anywhere until I—good, and thank you. Thanks for calling me.”

  Lowering the phone, she frowned. “Crystal’s been digging around some, talked with a running buddy of hers who ran into an old friend who…I really don’t know how they’re all connected, except this woman, this friend of a friend, is in her thirties but still parties heavy-duty, sleeps with the kind of men who leave marks….” Ruby turned away from Sam to look out through a window streaked with dirt and rivulets of water. “And she says she was out one night not long ago with Misty. Says my sister was hanging on some wasted dude’s arm, if you can believe that.”

  “When?”

  “Maybe a week ago.”

  “Do you buy it?”

  Ruby blew out a breath and shook her head. “I’m not sure anymore. I want to believe she and Zoe aren’t with Best, but considering what was going on at my house in my absence…I need to check this out. Crystal says the friend dropped off this chick at Paulie’s, and she’s pretty messed up. She won’t talk to law enforcement, swears she’ll take off if Crystal tries to force the issue. But she wants to talk to me.”

  “To you? Do you know her?”

  “Crystal was all freaked out ‘cause Paulie’s giving her a hard time. I couldn’t get a name out of her to save my life. Right now Crystal’s plying this person with coffee to try to get her sober. But she can’t keep her in Paulie’s office long, so I’d better get there fast.”

  “You all right to drive?” he asked. “You still look pretty beat.”

  “I’m doing better; I’ll be fine. I’ll go and talk to her. At least I’ll be doing something more productive than sitting around watching you work on the computer. Just call me if there’s anything I can help you with.”

  “Before you leave, do me one favor.” He thought of the soft warmth of her lips, the way she’d felt to the touch. The way it would feel if the two of them were other people and the circumstances different.

  Her throat moved as she swallowed, looking at him so intently that he had to glance away, over to the Hoosier cabinet, where she had left the bread out. Lying beneath the spot, Java tried to look innocently disinterested in her proximity to human food, but the drool gave her away.

  “What is it?” Ruby asked him.

  “I want you to have a sandwich. Before my dog helps herself to it.”

  Ruby’s nose wrinkled as she pulled a set of car keys from the pocket of her still-damp jeans. “She can have it. I’m sure as heck not hungry.”

  “Java’s got her own food, but you need to eat something,” he insisted. “I know damned well you haven’t had anything since this morning.”

  She looked annoyed. “So now you’re, what? My mother?”

  “Like it or not, I’m your partner in this,” he said, going for the peanut butter and a knife. “And I’m not sticking my neck out for some woman who doesn’t have the sense to take care of herself. So humor me, Ruby.”

  “Fine,” she said, and grabbed the jelly, then helped him slap several sandwiches together. Once they’d finished, she wrapped one in a napkin and said, “I can eat and drive at the same time. And, just for the record, I thought you were only sticking your neck out for your own sake.”

  He grimaced, hating having his own words thrown back into his face. But Ruby’s smile snipped the thread of his annoyance.

  “Whatever your reasons,” she said quietly as she looked at him, “I want you to know that I’m grateful—truly thankful—to have you on my side. And if you help me get my family back, I swear to you, I mean to spend a lifetime paying off that debt.”

  He wanted to tell her that seeing her family safe and whole would be plenty of reward for him, that seeing himself exonerated was all he wanted personally.

  Yet he hesitated for some reason, remembering a time when he had dared to ask for more from life. Remembering those first, fantastic days with Elysse, before everything had gone wrong.

  And in that moment, Ruby said good-bye and slipped outside, without even allowing him a chance to tell her to be careful. Without even allowing him a chance to consider the fact that he should be the one throwing himself at her feet to thank her.

  C HAPTER NINETEEN

  For your hands are defiled with blood, and your fingers with iniquity; your lips have spoken lies, your tongue hath muttered perverseness.

  —The Holy Bible (King James Version),

  Isaiah 59:3

  Less than a mile down the road, Ruby’s cell phone rang again. One glance at the caller ID had her pulling over.

  DeserTek, the screen read, a name that sucked the air out of her lungs. She could scarcely believe they would have the balls to phone her directly. Unless their bribes and connections made them feel immune to prosecution.

  Fighting to keep the quaver from her voice, she braced herself for another conversation with the devil. “This is Ruby Monroe.”

  “This is Graham Michael Worth calling from the Dallas office.” The voice was officious, even pompous, but not at all alarming. “You may remember meeting me when Jeremy Bray brought you for your initial interview—”

  “I remember.” Ruby pictured the man whose lumpish, graying looks had stood out in such contrast to Elysse’s stepbrother’s meticulously toned torso and dark buzz cut. Had the midlevel personnel recruiter been left out of the loop about her family’s abduction? Surely, Worth wasn’t about to repeat the ridiculous offer she’d already turned down in Iraq. As she resumed driving, she asked, “What can I do for you?”

  “This is a bit awkward,” he began. “But I’ve been asked to remind you, in the strongest terms, of the confidentiality agreement you signed as a condition of your employment. I need to emphasize that our attorneys are prepared to litigate any breaches to the fullest extent of—”

  “You’re threatening me with lawyers?” Why bother when they already had her family? With Zoe’s and Misty’s lives on the line, some nebulous threat of a lawsuit couldn’t mean less to her. She guessed he really had been left out of the loop about her family’s abduction. But then, it wasn
’t the sort of thing the guilty put out on an inner-office memorandum.

  “It’s come to our attention that you have taken DeserTek property in an attempt to sell trade secrets to our competitors, who would happily use the information to cut us out of the running for—”

  “You’ve got this all wrong,” she said, more confused than ever. He thought she was after money, taking those files from the country?

  “Fortunately,” the corporate mouthpiece went on, “the stolen files have been recovered.”

  Ruby’s heart lurched. “Recovered? You mean that was your guy at the airport? He was the one who…”

  She let the question trail off, wondering why DeserTek would take her family if they’d already stolen the backpack and found the flash drive in it. Then why on earth was Best, a hired gun, demanding the drive’s return? Unable to make sense of Worth’s words, she was terrified to say more. Better first to figure out what he was after rather than to risk saying the wrong thing.

  Just keep it together, Ruby. For your family’s sake.

  “As I was saying, the files have been recovered. Because DeserTek would prefer to avoid any unpleasant associations in the public eye, we are prepared to forgive this clear-cut case of corporate espionage—”

  “You’re kidding,” Ruby protested. “I drove buses for you, Mr. Worth. Bus drivers don’t do ‘corporate espionage.’ ”

  “Considering that the files were found among your personal possessions, that would be a difficult point of view for you to defend. As well as an incredibly expensive one, should we be compelled to move forward on the civil suit we’re preparing.”

  Ruby’s head was spinning. This made no sense whatsoever. If DeserTek really had the files, who else would be willing to use kidnapping to control them? Or was the company’s internal communication to blame, with one department completely unaware of what another one was doing? A third possibility began to gel in her mind, the idea that they were after something other than the flash drive, something that she hadn’t considered.

  Though she wanted desperately to demand that he tell what he knew about her family, she forced herself to couch her question carefully. “What is it you want? Whatever it is, I’m listening.”

  “We expect you to abide by the terms of your contract. Meaning that no copied DeserTek trade secrets will turn up elsewhere and you will speak to no one attempting to extract privileged information for the purpose of damaging the company’s position.”

  “Trade secrets,” she decided, must be code for Carrie Ann’s list of dead employees. What Worth wanted, Ruby surmised, was a guarantee that she had no intention of appearing before the congressional committee or the media, no inclination to tell tales of a photogenic young redhead out of Oklahoma who’d been all too conveniently decapitated by “insurgents.” God forbid a few dead peons should interfere with DeserTek sinking its teeth into the juicy new contract it was drooling after.

  She could almost hear Sam asking her, “If you can’t stand against systematic murder, then what can you stand against?” Could almost see the disappointment dawning in his eyes.

  “And if I give you my word?” Ruby asked, willing to promise anything, surrender any ideal, for the chance Worth would assure her that her family would be released unharmed.

  “In exchange for your word,” Worth said, his voice hardening with each word, “we’re prepared to halt plans to file a six-point-three-million-dollar lawsuit that will bury you in debt and possibly go on for decades. Considering that you’re a single parent—I believe I read that in your file—I’m certain you wouldn’t wish to put your family through such an ordeal.”

  Ruby frowned, wondering whether this, too, was corporate-speak from a man who knew better than to mention a kidnapping over the telephone. Or whether he truly didn’t have a clue about the abduction. With the strain splintering her patience, she burst out, “Listen, you son of a bitch, I have spoken to no one—not a soul—about this and I never had the desire, the time, or the equipment to copy or e-mail anything. You have it all in your hands. Every damned thing you want. All I’m after is my family’s safety, their security. Right this fucking minute, do you hear me? Or so help me—”

  She blew out a breath, thinking, Way to keep it together, Ruby.

  There was a long pause before the manager said carefully, “I agree, family security is important. Which is why, in recognition of your exemplary service to DeserTek, we are prepared, in exchange for your signature on another nondisclosure agreement, to offer you a onetime bonus of fifty thousand dollars.”

  The idea of the offer—the insult of another bribe after everything she’d gone through—sent yet another hot wash of fury cascading through her system. It was one thing to be blackmailed, quite another to allow this son of a bitch to imagine for a second she’d embroiled herself in this fiasco over money.

  “Fifty grand,” she snapped. “Do you honestly think for a second that makes up for any of this? My family—the people who mean most to me in this world—and my freaking house, which just happened to blow up the night I came back into town and—”

  “Y-your house?” Worth stammered, sounding genuinely shocked. “Something happened—and what about your family, Mrs. Monroe? What’s going on out there?”

  “Bad luck, right? Or maybe you like to think I’ve earned bad karma, what with interfering with your—”

  “Mrs. Monroe, surely you are not implying—a company the size of DeserTek would never stoop to—believe me,” he said dryly, “all the teeth we need are in the mouths of our attorneys.”

  A long pause followed as Ruby wondered what chance a widowed nursing student from East Texas stood against the DeserTeks of this world, with their rabid packs of lawyers and their total disregard for any rule but profit. Well connected as they were, they could murder, steal, abduct, engage in bribery and the cruelest torture, and then assign some well-paid functionary to lie about it all. And no one dared to stop them, not even the U.S. Congress. What had she been thinking to let Carrie Ann give her that flash drive in the first place, much less to attempt to smuggle it out of the country?

  “Overnight the form to me at the Dogwood post office, general delivery,” she said as she pulled into the parking lot of Hammett’s. “Or bring it here yourself. I’ll sign anything you want. I just need this to be over, with my family safe at my side.”

  Ruby hung up, wishing she could believe her nightmare would soon end but unable to bring herself to trust anything that Worth had told her. Until she had her family back, she had to check out every possibility, track down each bit of information—and prepare as best she could to deal with Hobson Best.

  As she strode down the hall that led to Paulie’s office, Ruby heard Hammett’s booming bass voice and saw his back turned to her just outside the door.

  “I’ve got a business to run, Crystal, and the last thing I need is you holding some damned junkie prisoner back here. Let her leave if that’s what she wants, and get your ass back out to work.”

  “But Ruby needs to—”

  “Ruby needs to stand out of the way and let Wofford and her people handle this. I’m tired of having my business disrupted, tired of having all these outsiders poking around. Do you know the kind of trouble they could cause me?”

  “Hey, Paulie.” As he turned toward her voice, Ruby glowered at the huge man and said flatly, “I’m really sorry that my family’s disappearance is proving such a fucking inconvenience for you.”

  He jerked back as if she’d struck a blow, his round face blanching. “I’m sorry, Ruby. Really sorry. I didn’t mean for you to hear that.”

  “Probably not,” she snapped, “since if it got around, that kind of insensitivity might be bad for business.”

  “Don’t be like that,” he pleaded, looking nothing like the intimidating tyrant he could be at times. “You know Anna and I both—we adore Misty and your daughter. We’ve been on our knees praying the authorities will find them.”

  Ruby reminded herself that for all
his bluster, he’d allowed Sam the use of his personal cabin. That he had been a good, if flawed, boss to her sister for a lot of years and that everyone, including her, needed forgiveness now and then. “I’m sorry I chewed your head off,” she said, her voice softening. “Just let me borrow your office for a little bit. Please, Paulie.”

  As he nodded, Crystal darted a nervous glance toward the door behind her, where they heard something fall.

  “Listen, Ruby,” she said, “Jackie’s getting cold feet. She’s climbing the walls in there.”

  “Who is? Do I know this person?”

  Crystal shrugged. “She said something about remembering you from school, but I can’t imagine that’s right. For one thing, Jackie looks too old.”

  “Jackie…” Ruby rifled through her memory, trying to place the name. “You aren’t talking about Jackie Hogan?”

  “I’m pretty sure that’s right.”

  Ruby probably wouldn’t have recalled the name if it hadn’t been for the rumor that Jackie, then a senior, had hooked up with a twenty-four-year-old drug dealer who sometimes beat her up. Strange that Jackie would remember Ruby, who’d been two years younger and too busy tending to her mother and her younger sister to have a social life.

  “Trash, that’s all she’s ever been,” Paulie grumbled. “Worked here when she was sixteen till I fired her ass for stealing from the register.”

  Ruby shook her head, confused. “Let me talk to her.”

  “Only person ought to question her is Wofford,” Paulie said. “For all we know, she’s heard about Misty and decided she could scam some money out of you for drugs.”

  “I didn’t want the sheriff because I was afraid that Jackie would take off,” Crystal said uncertainly, “but maybe Paulie’s right.”

  “Now that I’m here, it can’t hurt to talk to her,” said Ruby, fingering the side of her purse for reassurance.

  From inside the office came the sound of glass shattering.