Niall gestured at the photo on his desk. “Who do you think gave Birch the ring?”
“I asked you that,” Sam snapped. “And you said a bird did.”
“Aye,” Niall agreed with a chuckle. “Telos.”
“Then where did he get it?”
“My best guess is he slipped it off the right-hand middle finger of a tourist with very poor taste in nail polish,” Niall said just before biting into the bun.
Chapter Twenty-two
“Okay, so here’s the plan,” Birch said, sliding into the passenger side of her mother’s cart. “We tell Niall about Francine and Emily leaving and what we suspect they were doing here in the first place, then you’ll earn your outrageous paycheck and I’ll finally go buy my perfect purse. How’s that for . . . Mom?” Birch said softly when she realized Hazel was clutching the wheel and staring straight ahead, her complexion as pale as snow. “It’s over, Mom. You have nothing to worry about anymore.”
“Can you ever forgive me?” Hazel whispered.
“For what?” Birch said on a gasp.
“For getting us in this mess in the first place by marrying a man I obviously knew nothing about.” She looked over, her eyes swimming with unshed tears. “Four times, Birch; I’ve let four men charm their way into our lives, each one of them as duplicitous as the previous. You’re the expert on women continuing to repeat harmful patterns; why do I keep marrying bastards? Why do I marry at all?”
“Oh, Mom,” Birch said on a sigh, wrapping her in a fierce hug. “You keep getting married because you’re an unwavering optimist.” She leaned away just enough for Hazel to see her smile. “And because when you look at a person—every person—you always see the goodness in them.”
“My optimism nearly got you killed,” Hazel said thickly.
“Only because Rabideu was a master con artist. Your first three husbands might have been two-faced, but there wasn’t any malice in them. They were just looking for a well-funded free ride.” Birch used her thumb to brush a tear that had managed to escape and smiled again. “In fact, if I remember correctly, you took some wonderful trips with His Highness the King of Nowhere.”
“But instead of learning from my mistakes, I keep getting worse. You said yourself I’m a good judge of character, so how did I let Leonard fool me so completely?”
“Because men who make their living taking advantage of women spend years practicing being debonair and charming until even they forget they’re acting. The bastards cruise fund-raisers specifically looking for warm, loving, softhearted women like you.” Birch sighed dramatically, determined to lighten her mother’s mood. “I’m sorry, but I’m afraid the only way you’ll stop being a target is if you turn yourself into a cold, hard-hearted bitch. I know,” she said with an excited gasp. “You can take lessons from your stepmother. Madame Holier Than Thou has her nose stuck so high in the air it’s a wonder she doesn’t trip over her own importance. You spend a couple of weeks with Phoebe, and men will run for their lives the first time you open your mouth. Well, unless they’re like Grampy Avery and shrill, snobbish women turn them on.”
That got rid of those tears, Hazel’s expression horrified as her mouth opened then mutely closed.
“No?” Birch quickly went on, deciding to add a bit of insurance. “Then how about your oldest brother’s latest bride? You could call up Ms. Can’t Hold Her Liquor and ask if she can give you some insider info on spotting the difference between a pro and an ordinary lazy bum looking for a free ride.” She snorted. “Talk about role reversal; I’m pretty sure Charlene targeted Alvin. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised to find out she’s from one of those families of con artists Claude mentioned. Or Uncle Aaron’s wife; you could ask her how to—”
“Birch Callahan, you stop right now,” Hazel said sternly. Birch saw the corner of her mom’s mouth twitch upward as Hazel gripped the steering wheel again, her complexion definitely not pale anymore. “Phoebe is not snobbish, she’s . . . guarded. And you’d buy gin by the case, too, if you lived with Alvin.”
“Your stepmother sent you freaking sneakers for Christmas last year, along with a gift certificate to a local gym.”
Hazel’s mouth twitched again as she reached down and put the cart in reverse, backed out past the SUV with only a glance over her shoulder, then all but shot out the driveway. “That’s because three months prior, I sent Phoebe a beautiful arrangement of goldenrod and milkweed for her Thanksgiving table.” She looked over with a full-blown smile, albeit diabolical. “Do you have any idea how many florists I had to call before I found one willing to send their poor clerk around to vacant city lots looking for goldenrod?” She pulled onto the camp road. “I paid three hundred dollars for weeds, and two hundred dollars to have them hand-delivered to Papa’s country home.”
“Oh, Mama,” Birch said on a laugh as she leaned her head on her mother’s shoulder. “Grand-mémère would be so proud.”
“Where do you think I got the idea? Annette sent the exact same arrangement to my father the first Thanksgiving after she took me to live with her.”
Birch straightened at the sound of a racing engine coming from behind and gave a startled shriek when a large silver SUV pulled around them on the narrow camp road. Hazel slammed on the brakes and jerked the wheel to the right with a shriek of her own when the truck suddenly cut in front of them and skidded to a stop mere inches from their bumper. Doors shot open before Birch had even finished righting herself, and Hazel cried out when a man grabbed hold of her arm and tried dragging her out of the cart as she frantically clung to the steering wheel.
“No! Get away from her!” Birch screamed as she reached under the hem of her shirt and grabbed the bear spray clipped to her waistband. “Mama, lean back!” she shouted, shoving the canister past Hazel and pulling the trigger.
The man immediately let go and covered his face, his strangled shout turning to retching gasps just as Birch’s head suddenly exploded in pain when she was yanked out of the cart by the hair and slammed to the gravel road. Her hand holding the spray was grabbed in a crushing grip. “Drop it,” her assailant growled, his knee pressing into her back and making it impossible for her to catch her breath.
Birch opened her fingers to release the canister at the same time she heard her mother’s pain-laced scream end abruptly. The bruising knee lifted and Birch’s arm was nearly wrenched out of its socket when she was jerked to her feet. But before she could even suck air into her lungs and call out to her mother, a large hand covered her mouth and yanked her head back at the same time an arm of steel pinned her own arms to her sides, completely immobilizing her.
“You make a sound,” a deep and menacing voice snarled beside her head, “and one of your mother’s fingers gets snapped off. Understand?”
Birch couldn’t even move her head to nod as she helplessly watched Hazel kicking at the man carrying her toward the open door on the passenger side of the truck.
“Yvonne, get that damned cart back to the house,” her captor snapped to the woman—who Birch recognized as Francine—rounding the truck. Yvonne/Francine scooted behind the wheel of the cart, backed it away from the SUV while turning to point down the road, then serenely drove toward the shelter. “For chrissakes, Phillip, shrug it off and help your idiot brother,” he went on when Birch saw Hazel change from kicking the man to bracing her feet against the SUV’s door. “And get the hell out of here before someone comes—”
The rest of his command was lost in his grunt when Birch screeched into his hand at the top of her lungs and frantically began twisting and kicking at the realization they were taking her mother but not her! She struggled through the pain of his arm tightening until she thought her ribs might crack, only managing to bite the fleshy pad of his palm. But instead of pulling away the bastard merely ground his hand into her face while also covering her nose, completely blocking off her air.
Birch tasted blood from
her teeth slicing the inside of her mouth when she tried twisting her head to breathe, then screamed into his hand again when she saw Hazel suddenly go limp after getting punched in the head and then roughly stuffed into the backseat. But try as she might, Birch couldn’t escape the bastard’s suffocating grip; her last hysterical thought as her vision started dimming was that the SUV carrying her mother away was idling down the camp road with no more urgency than tourists out sightseeing.
• • •
Birch woke to the sharp pain of having her face slapped, and she kicked at the guy kneeling over her even as she rolled away, only to have her scream cut off when he shoved her face into the moist forest floor and held her down with his knee on her back.
“It’s going to be damn hard to save your mother from a hospital bed,” he said with utter calm. “So, Miss Callahan; are you ready to listen to my instructions, or do you need a few more bruises to prove I’m not fucking around?”
Birch stilled, and the pressure on her back lessened briefly, then lifted away. She slowly turned into a sitting position and looked around as she reached up a trembling hand and wiped dirt from her face. Realizing he’d carried her into the woods out of sight of the road, she glared straight into the expressionless black eyes of the man crouched in front of her. “What do you want me to do?”
“For starters, you don’t speak. You agree with me, you nod. You disagree . . . Trust me, you don’t want to disagree with me. Yes?”
Birch very slowly nodded.
“Then I suggest you listen carefully,” he said, holding up her cell phone, which he must have taken off her waistband when she’d been unconscious. “You call anyone and Hazel immediately dies.” He smashed her phone against a rock with enough force to fold it in half and tossed it into the woods, then reached to a rear pocket of his pants and pulled out another cell phone. “I also suggest you keep this phone very close, as it’s your lifeline to your mother. My number is programmed into it, and I’m the only person you call. I can track your movements, and if you call anyone else, I can monitor how long you talk, who you talk to, and where they are located. Nod if you understand.”
Birch slowly nodded again and started to reach out, but dropped her hand when he turned the phone toward himself, tapped the screen several times, then turned it to show her a timer running down from eight hours. “Seeing those seconds speeding into minutes gives a person a sense of urgency, don’t you think,” he drawled, his sudden grin as cold as his eyes. He tossed the phone at her lap. “When that timer goes off, if I’m not holding what I came here for, Hazel loses a finger. You’ll have to reset the timer yourself, and if you still haven’t given me what I want eight hours later, Hazel loses a second finger. One finger every eight hours until I either leave here a happy man or Hazel bleeds to death.”
Birch picked up the phone and clutched it to her chest so she’d stop seeing the seconds speeding into minutes. “Wh-what do you—”
He moved so fast she had no time to react, her head snapping to the side with the force of his backhanded slap, which he followed by slamming into her and pinning her to the ground. “Let’s hope you get better at following instructions, Miss Callahan. Now, Jacques Rabideu, whom you knew as Leonard Struthers,” he continued calmly, “happened to come into possession of something of mine. And just before I cut out his heart, he kindly mentioned that his ex-wife was holding it for him. You’re going to find it, then call me on the phone I gave you so I can instruct you on how to get it to me. Nod if you understand.”
Understanding only too well, Birch nodded again, and was rewarded by his weight lifting off her. She slowly sat up, once more having to wipe her face, this time her hand coming away bloody from where his slap had cut her cheek.
“I imagine you’re wondering what that something is, no?” He hesitated, waiting for her nod. “You’ll be searching for two privately burned DVDs. One is yellow, the other blue. No labels, but each has a barely perceptible L etched along the center hole. When they left my possession, they were in a case which once held the movie”—his ugly grin returned—“Dances with Wolves.”
Birch flinched when he suddenly stood up, making him softly chuckle as he brushed dirt off his pants. But then his eyes hardened again as he stared down at her. “You call me the moment you find the DVDs, and I will return your mother intact—assuming I hear from you within eight hours. And a word of warning; besides being able to track you by the phone, there are no fewer than two dozen of my family members here with me, also enjoying the beauty of this unique area. You talk to anyone, I’ll know it. You leave the phone at home and go anywhere, I’ll know it. You do anything to even make me uncomfortable, and your mother is going to die a very slow and painful death. Nod if you believe me.”
Birch tilted the phone and looked at the seconds speeding down, then clasped it back to her chest and also stood up. But instead of nodding, she tensed in anticipation of another slap. “There’s a good chance the DVDs are in a storage locker in Montreal. Or even in our house,” she softly rushed on when he didn’t move. “Leo—Rabideu could have hidden them in a wall or something.”
This time the bastard’s grin was almost civil. “Trust me, they’re in neither place. So that means there’s an even better chance you can complete your task before Hazel has to learn how to hold a pencil again.” Birch flinched when he stepped forward, but instead of a slap, he reached for her hand holding the phone and pulled it away from her body at an angle that allowed them both to see the screen. “Which she will have to do if I don’t receive your call within seven hours and fifty-six minutes. The road is two hundred meters that way,” he added, gesturing to his right, then turning away and walking in the opposite direction. “Good luck, Miss Callahan.”
Birch stood staring after him while clutching her lifeline to Hazel against her pounding heart, waiting until he was out of sight before collapsing to her knees.
Sweet mother of God, this couldn’t be happening.
Who in hell was this bastard, anyway?
Not that it mattered; the important question being, what was she going to do?
Well, she should probably not kneel here like an idiot who had all the time in the world. Deciding she could walk and think at the same time, Birch staggered to her feet, then had to grab a nearby tree to keep from falling and took several deep breaths in an attempt to slow her trembling before finally forcing her rubbery legs to move in the direction he’d pointed.
And as she walked, she thought.
Her dad had said there were whole families of con artists operating in Canada, so it was possible this guy did have dozens of family members watching her every move while pretending to be tourists. And that meant there was no way she could risk going to town or be seen talking to anyone—especially Niall. Or her father, or even a neighbor, or . . . Merde, no one could help her, because hell yes she believed the bastard would kill her mom.
But she didn’t believe he’d give Hazel back in exchange for the DVDs. No, the moment she handed them over, both she and her mom were as good as dead.
Birch reached the camp road only a short distance from where they’d been caught, which she realized was a perfect place for an ambush, since it was a heavily wooded section that didn’t have any houses nearby. But she stopped at the edge of the woods and looked in both directions while listening for approaching vehicles, figuring the last thing she needed was for a Whisper Cove resident to stop and ask why she looked like someone had just used her for a punching bag. She took another steadying breath and finally stepped into the road, knowing she was only a few hundred yards from home and could duck into the bushes if she heard an engine approaching.
Realizing she was still clutching the phone to her chest, Birch shoved it in her pocket and started running as fast as her rubbery legs would carry her, even more glad Noreen and Macie and Cassandra were gone. She turned off the road the moment she reached the edge of the shelter property a
nd wove down through the trees of the deep lot, then along the side of the house. She stopped when she reached the porch, peeked around the corner to make sure Niall hadn’t come home or her dad hadn’t decided to visit, then sprinted to the walkway. She grabbed the key she’d hidden behind a planter at the bottom of the steps for her residents, ran up the stairs, unlocked the door and ran inside—then immediately turned and closed the door and locked it.
She staggered to the sink, turned on the faucet, and started splashing water on her face and drinking out of her hands, spitting out blood with a pained hiss that turned into shudders. Birch shut off the water when her shudders turned into gut-wrenching sobs, until she started crying so hard her legs gave out and she turned and slid down the cupboard doors to the floor.
She hugged her knees to her chest and hid her face in her thighs, unable to do more than simply ride out the storm. That is, until she became aware that something was digging into her hip and realized it was the bastard’s phone—the one with all those racing seconds eating up her precious time. Birch stretched out her legs, but left the phone in her pocket as she took several calming breaths until her crying returned to sobs and eventually just the occasional shudder.
“Okay, get a grip,” she scolded herself, her voice seeming overloud in the eerily silent house. Birch sucked in her breath on the realization it shouldn’t be silent. “Mimi,” she rasped, scrambling to her feet and running to the hall. “Mighty Mimi!”
Nothing; no yip, no whining, just . . . silence.
She ran to the door and looked out to see her mother’s cart parked between the other cart and her SUV, and slowly backed away, remembering The Bastard—it was his official name now—had had Francine/Yvonne drive it back to the house, knowing no one would be suspicious of a strange woman driving a shelter cart.
And considering Emily had spent the last few days playing with Mimi like any normal thirteen-year-old, Birch could only surmise that Francine—now officially The Bitch—had used the key to let herself in the house and stolen the dog—who knew Francine as just another resident, not The Bitch—for her daughter.
The Highlander Next Door Page 29
