by Dale Mayer
“Was there anybody to help you?”
She looked at him and shook her head. “No,” she said. “That’s why I ran to a different country. And I drove, making sure that Max wouldn’t find me by checking the airlines.”
“And that’s why you went to a safe-deposit box right away, correct?”
“I didn’t even stay in California, just long enough to get a safe-deposit box there, then I drove on to Oregon.”
“Interesting.”
“I didn’t want him to even know where I was,” she murmured.
“Well, that was good thinking,” he said, “but we’ll have to backtrack your steps. We’ll have to arrange to pick up your car, then the contents of your box, and we’ll have to make sure that your father is okay.”
“My father comes first,” she said vehemently. “He’s an old man, and he sure doesn’t deserve this.”
“I get that,” Killian said gently. “We’re sending men to his house right now.”
She stared at him. “Like right now-right now or like in four hours?”
“They’re nearby and already on the way.” He held up his phone and said, “Remember? I have a team behind me.”
“Yes, but Dad’s in the States, in a completely different country.”
“It doesn’t matter. A phone call crosses all countries,” he reminded her. “We have people we can count on to help, pretty much everywhere.”
“Yes, of course.” She just sat here, stunned at the turn of events.
“Would your husband have done this?”
Bitter and angry, she nodded. “It would probably be the first thing he did. And I didn’t even think of that.”
“And you won’t worry about it now either,” he said. “So he might ask your father about where something like that insurance of yours would be kept, and, if Max did, what would your father say?”
“He wouldn’t know because it would be beyond him to even think about what I would do.”
“Sure, but, if your father is asked, what will he say?”
“I don’t know,” she said quietly. “Probably a safe-deposit box,” she added, wincing.
“Well, you didn’t leave it some place that Max would easily find though, right?”
“No,” she said, “I chose a bank in Redding, California.”
“And what banks do you normally use?”
She named two different US banks.
“So, he would check those, and he would check on your route?”
“Maybe, but he wouldn’t know where I’d been,” she said. “He wouldn’t have any idea where I’d been.”
“Unless …” He stopped and asked, “How do you think he found you out on … You ended up on a transport truck on a ferry, right?”
“Right.”
“So …” he said, studying her. “Any idea if you had a tracking device on you?”
She stared at him. “No, of course not. Why would I?” Just the thought of it made her sick. “He’s …” And she stopped, then said, “No, no, he wouldn’t do that.”
“A man who beats you up? A man who sells arms illegally? Do you really think he’ll give a shit about a tracking device?”
“Well, what would it even look like?’
“It could be a tiny microdot,” he said. “It would have been injected under your skin, with or without your knowledge. Although you would have had some swelling, localized at the injection site. Could have had some redness, maybe a little discomfort.”
She stared at him in shock, a growing awareness inside her head. She slapped her hand to the back of her neck and said, “Check here, please.”
Immediately both men bounced up and came around to the side of the bed, where she was. Her back was turned to them, and Killian asked, “Why would you assume here?”
“It wasn’t long after I was married that he told me how I got a spider bite on the back of my neck. It really bothered me for a couple days, and then it went away, and I had no reason not to believe him.”
At that Killian pulled her hair gently up and away and felt under the skin. “Well, definitely something hard is there. What did you think that was?”
She used her fingertips and explored the area. “I don’t really feel it even now,” she said apologetically.
He rearranged her fingers to come down at another angle, and there she felt it.
“Oh my God,” she cried out. “So he knows where we are right now?”
“Well, it’s hard to say how much range the tracker has, but he might have tracked you to California at least.”
“Jesus,” she said, burying her face in her hands. It was just too much and so overwhelming. She thought she’d gotten away from him. Even though she hadn’t intended on taking the material, she had. Obviously what she had taken had enraged Max, and he was willing to do almost anything to get it back. “What have I done?” she whispered to herself. “What have I done to my father?”
“Nothing,” Killian said. “This is not your fault.”
“Of course it is,” she said bitterly. “If I hadn’t taken that material, that bastard wouldn’t have cared what happened, and my father would be still safe.”
“We don’t know for sure that your dad’s not safe,” he said. “Let’s not panic before we know.”
She stared at him. “How about we panic in a minute then, is that better?” she cried out. She bounced to her feet and immediately grabbed for the headboard. Tipping her head down, she cried out, “Get it out. Get it out!”
He looked at her and then at Hatch.
Hatch sighed and said, “I can cut it out. But I have nothing to minimize the pain.”
She glared at him. “Do I look like I need anything more to minimize the pain? I already have painkillers for my leg,” she said. “Get that thing out of my neck.”
“We will. We will. Sit for now.” Killian knew Stacey was beyond angry, and the coffee was a great relief when the knock on the door came. He opened it up and exchanged the old trolley for the new one. Sending a tip with the waiter, he closed the door again, then pushed the trolley to the table and looked at her.
“Do you want to come over here, or do you want to stay there?”
She turned her head to the side, and he saw evidence of the tears having been wiped away, but her eyes were still red. “I’ll stay here,” she whispered.
He poured her a cup of coffee and brought it over and said, “Here. This will help fortify you.”
“Finding out my father’s okay will fortify me,” she said. “Nothing else.”
“And I get that. But you still have to keep up your strength,” he said. “We can’t get you back to your father until you heal, so you need to eat.”
She glared at him. “I’m not hungry.”
“Your choice,” he said. “We can do it the easy way or the hard way.”
“What’s the hard way?”
“I’ll turn it into a shake, and you’ll drink it.”
She glared at him. “You’ll shove it down my throat too?”
“You’ll drink it,” he said, “because you want to go see your father.”
At that, he saw her resistance begin to crumble. It was a faint effort on her part, but he understood the need to fight back, to fight anything right now, when the real target of her rage and anguish wasn’t in front of her.
He laced his fingers with hers and said, “Look. I’m sorry about your father. But we’re on it. The men are already approaching the house, even as we speak.”
Immediately her gaze flew up to his. “Do you mean that?”
“Yes,” he said. “It’s just a matter of what they’ll find. If he’s not alone, they can’t take a chance of this escalating into a shooting.”
“Of course not,” she whispered. “Dear God.”
“Stand firm,” he warned. “This is not a job for the lighthearted.”
“Since when is there a choice?” she said.
“There’s always a choice, and, in your case,” he said, “you haven’t been sh
y of doing what you need to do. Don’t give up on us now.”
She snorted. “I’m not giving up.”
“Agreed,” he said. “So let’s keep you fortified, keep you healing, and keep waiting for news.”
“It’s so damn hard,” she cried out.
He nodded. “It is, indeed. But it’s what you need to do.” He returned to the trolley, lifting the lids on the trays. “We have a selection of food here,” he said. “What would you like?”
“What is there?” she asked, but he was encouraged by the brighter tone in her voice.
“We have sausage, ham, and bacon in this one, with scrambled eggs here, and … hash browns.” He lifted the little dome and said, “And plenty of toast.”
“Okay. I’ll have some scrambled eggs, a couple sausages, a piece of bacon,” she said, “and a little bit of hash browns.”
He quickly served her up some food, grabbed a knife and fork, and carried it to her. Realizing that she would still struggle with eating in bed, he brought over one of the cushions from the couch and propped it under her plate, so it could rest a little bit higher. “See how that works.”
“It’ll be fine,” she said. “I’m not in any rush to eat, so I can take my time.”
“Remember that,” he murmured. “It will take however long it takes. We can’t speed up some things, like your healing.”
“I know, but just thinking of my father dealing with that fucker is enough to make me sick.”
“Got it,” he murmured. “The fact is, you protected him all these years, and you can’t anymore. So somewhere along the line your father has to understand just who this man Max is. And accept that the man your father thought Max was never really existed.”
“It will break Dad’s heart,” she said. “He always prided himself on being a good judge of character.”
“Chameleons exist in human form sometimes,” Hatch said from the table. “He’s not the first to be fooled, and he’ll need to cut himself some slack over that too.”
“Easier said than done,” she said.
“True, and your father sounds like a man determined to be upstanding and proper and to do what’s right at all times. It’s always a shock for a man like that to find out the rest of the world really doesn’t give a shit about morality.”
“I don’t understand how they even function,” she said. “To have that level of disparity between that piece-of-shit Max and what the rest of the world stands for and believes in? I just … I really don’t get it. It’s like Max was always living with a mask on.”
“And that’s exactly what he was doing,” Killian said. “He wore a mask to hide who he really was. But it’s more than a mask. He is a master at manipulation, at disguising his true self behind a completely different persona.”
“It sucks that I didn’t see through it,” she said.
“Why would you?” he added. “Think about it. I mean, you’re not perfect, and people don’t generally go around looking for the worst in people. You couldn’t have known what Max was really like. He’s a pro. He made sure you had no obvious way to know that this man was somebody to avoid. You did the best you could.”
“Somehow that always sounds hollow. I hear that phrase over and over again, and it sounds like a cop-out.”
“I don’t think it’s a cop-out. I think it’s a matter of taking it a little bit easier on yourself, giving yourself some grace, so that you can survive from one day to the next. Also, the way I see it, I’d rather be taken in occasionally by a con man, like Max, even if it makes me feel completely stupid. To me, it reminds me that I’m not totally cynical about the world out there, no matter how many bad examples I find. That my heart and head and values remain in the right place. That I don’t automatically label everybody to be another Max. That I’ll never abandon my ethics, even when the criminals seem to get away with everything.” He tilted his head at her. “And I believe you know that in your heart too.”
She gave him a short nod. “Maybe,” she conceded.
“Stop being so hard on yourself. It doesn’t help anybody.”
“No, but it makes me feel better in a way,” she said, with a laugh.
“Maybe, but it’s also hard on everybody else.”
“Are we not to expect more of ourselves then?” she asked. “Do you think I don’t feel guilty, that I don’t hate myself for having gotten completely suckered into Max’s story, into whatever that smooth … charm of his was? It’s just a con, I guess. I didn’t even see it coming. Then, even when I realized it and woke up finally—after being punched in the face—I still didn’t really see the depth of it.”
“They ease you into it, or you’d bolt too fast.” Killian shook his head, grimacing. “I’m convinced the con men out there use our sense of fair play against us, for we give them a benefit of a doubt from the get-go. When we find out we’ve been lied to, that loss of innocence is so painful, when our hopes and dreams crash into Max and others like him in the real world.”
“It took me a little bit to understand that he meant to hurt me. Not only that he meant it but that he’d do it again, and, the longer I stayed there, the more he would beat me because he felt he could.”
“Not just because he felt he could but he knew he could,” Killian said. “These manipulative bullies have done this before, picking on someone smaller—like women, like children, like animals—and have never been stopped.”
“Max was training you to take it, so that you would be his punching bag, and he would always have that outlet,” Hatch said. “Men like that are … They know how to work it. They know what makes you afraid, and fear rules everything. Once you’re terrified, he’s got that much more power over you—escalating from the physical force to an emotional or psychological force—and he can do anything he wants.”
“It’s hard to accept though,” she said quietly. “I always thought I’d be the last person to be an abused wife.”
“I think every abused wife says that,” Killian said quietly. “Again, don’t be so hard on yourself. Guys like him, he had a lot of experience with this before you came along.” He stopped, looked at her, and said, “That’s a good point. Any idea if he was married before?”
She nodded. “Yes, he was.”
“Name?”
“Mary is all I know,” she said. “I don’t know a whole lot about her or how long they were married even.” She frowned at that. “Why don’t I know that?”
“I don’t know. Did he openly tell you about her?”
“No,” she said. “He just let it slip one time.”
“What? That he had an ex-wife?”
“No. Something about I’d better smarten up, that at least his first wife had finally learned. Although he said something about it took her too long, or it was too late or something like that.” She frowned. “Honestly I can’t remember. At the time I think I was just too damn terrified, as another blow was coming my way.”
“What are the chances that he beat her too?” Killian asked.
She stared at him. “Well, considering what he did to me, I’d say the odds are very good.”
“Right. So the question is, where is she now?”
With a nod from Killian, Hatch texted Jerricho that information to open an investigation into the first wife’s disappearance. Not to mention organizing a raid on the Chelton Street warehouse to see what Max was storing there. As they sat there eating, she reminisced a little bit. “It’s hard to look back on the supposed good things in my marriage,” she said, “because now I suspect that every trip we took was business-oriented.”
“Where did you go?”
“To Switzerland three times,” she said. “Cayman Islands, twice.”
Killian stared at her.
She nodded. “Not too bright, was I?”
“You were woefully in love,” he said. “There’s a big difference.”
“And I still don’t know for sure what he was doing there.”
“Did he have meetings?”
&
nbsp; “Yes,” she said. “I was introduced as his wife to a couple people, but it’s not like I would ever recognize them again.”
“You might be surprised,” he said. “I wish you recognized the second kidnapper, so we could knock him off our list.”
“Wouldn’t that be nice,” she said bitterly. “Just imagine living the way he did, always looking at somebody as an opportunity to humiliate and to plunder and to make money off of.”
“Predators,” Hatch said quietly from the far side. “Remember? They’re always out there. They’re always looking to make a buck.”
“It sucks,” she said.
“Absolutely. It doesn’t change the fact that they exist, and they won’t go away anytime soon.”
Killian looked over at him. “Any luck on gathering more intel?”
“I have a lot of searches going. He’s not popping up in any other countries, and facial recognition isn’t giving us anything that’s even close.”
“Are you talking about my ex?”
Killian shook his head. “Not that we aren’t searching for Max as well. No, this is the squirrelly guy I ran into earlier. We’re running ID checks based on the vague description of that one man who I put a tracker on, who’s no longer in the tracking area,” he said. “I saw him just before the meet to get you, so I managed to slip a tracker in his pocket because he was acting suspiciously. Then he was in the exchange area after you got away. Again, pretty suspicious, but his face was mostly covered, so I couldn’t give a very good description.”
Just then his phone rang. He answered it in a terse tone. “That’s good news, indeed,” he said, his gaze flying to Stacey. He got up and walked over, holding out his phone, putting it on speaker. “Your father wants to speak with you.”
“Dad?” she asked.
His voice was raspy as he whispered, “Stacey.”
“Dad, are you okay?”
“I’m so sorry,” he whispered. “I’m so sorry.”
“What are you sorry for, Dad? What’s the matter? Are you okay?”
“For not believing you,” he said. “I didn’t realize how evil he was.”
“I know,” she said. “I didn’t believe it either. But he is.”
