Critical Vulnerability (An Aroostine Higgins Novel Book 1)

by Melissa F. Miller

  “Why am I here? That is my concern.” Joe let a hint of steel edge his words.

  The man raised a brow and seemed to consider his answer.

  “All you need to know is that your wife needs to make the right decision.”

  “My wife?”

  The mention of Aroostine stunned him, sending a wave of shock through his body.

  “Yes, your wife. The lawyer. You do remember you have a wife, yes? I know you were quite eager to forget about her with the whore. But as I understand it, your divorce is not final. Aroostine Higgins is your wife. And she’s still in love with you. That’s lucky for you. It may save your life.”

  The rest of the man’s words barely registered as Aroostine’s name ran in a loop in Joe’s mind: Aroostine, Aroostine, Aroostine.

  He realized the man was waiting for him to say something. He cleared his throat and found his voice.

  “Is she in trouble?”

  The man smiled. “Your wife? No, Mr. Jackman, she’s not the one in trouble. You are. Now, come. It’s time for you to meet Mrs. Chang.”

  He covered Joe with the shotgun and reached behind him to open the door to the other room.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Aroostine splashed her face with water and patted it dry with one of the rough, unbleached paper towels from the dispenser. Then she gripped the edge of the vanity and stared at herself in the mirror. It would be obvious to anyone who so much as glanced at her that something was very wrong. Her face was pale, her pupils were dilated, and tension seeped from every pore.

  Keep it together.

  She exhaled and let go of the vanity. She dug around in her purse and found an old lipstick. She uncapped it and twisted the tube until the deep red nub of makeup rose above the rim. It had been banging around in her purse for ages, a freebie from the Clinique counter. Not her color. It would do.

  She lined her lips then filled them in. Folded and kissed the paper towel to blot them, just like her mother had taught her. Then she employed another of one Mom Higgins’s tricks: she rubbed her ring finger over the lipstick and dotted each of her cheeks red. Then used her fingertips to blend the color into her skin—instant vitality.

  She examined the result. Progress. She no longer looked like a corpse.

  She tossed the paper towel and gathered her resolve. It seemed clear to her that she had to continue to act as though everything was fine. At least until she could come up with a plan.

  To do what? She had no idea.

  But for now, her focus was on keeping her emotions in check.

  She flashed her reflection an insincere smile and chucked the lipstick back into her bag.

  Time to call her mother-in-law.

  She pushed open the restroom door and strode resolutely down the hallway, extending her long legs and walking at a rapid clip, head upright, eyes ahead.

  Her hands began to shake once she was back inside the safety of her office. She pushed the door closed and fumbled with her cell phone.

  Dottie Jackman answered on the second ring.

  Aroostine could picture her, sitting at the metal table in her kitchen, folding laundry, her attention fixated on the early evening news. She’d probably sighed deeply at the interruption by the ringing phone, but there was no hint of irritation in her voice.

  “Jackman residence.”

  “Hi, Dottie. It’s Aroostine.”

  She walked behind her desk and looked out the window down into the gray, cold Anacostia River snaking through the city, cutting off the have-nots from the influence, power, and money that pervaded their hometown.

  “Aroostine! It’s been ages!”

  Dottie’s extreme pleasure at hearing from her daughter-in-law answered one question. Joe hadn’t mentioned the divorce to his parents. Well, she certainly wasn’t going to break the news. Not now.

  “How are you? And Chuck?”

  She forced the niceties out through gritted teeth to keep from screaming that Joe had been abducted and was in danger and it was all her fault.

  “Oh, you know Chuck. It’s all of twenty degrees out, but he’s out there in his workshop, tinkering away. Like father, like son.”

  “Speaking of Joe—”

  “Yes?”

  “I’ve been trying to get a hold of him, but I haven’t been able to. Do you think you could pop over to his place and check on him? It’s flu season, you know.”

  She knew Dottie knew. The woman was obsessed with influenza. She started talking about the coming year’s predicted strain in September and didn’t stop diagnosing everyone she encountered as a flu victim until sometime in April. Dottie would burst a blood vessel if Aroostine ever told her about the region’s near-miss with H17N10.

  “Don’t I know it. Mary Elizabeth Murray was sneezing in the checkout line at the Shopping Kart last week. I’m thinking about getting some of those little paper masks to wear when I do my grocery shopping like they do in Asia. You should consider it, too, riding that subway system down there with all those people.”

  Dottie’s voice grew breathless as her imagination geared up. Time to bring her back around.

  “That’s a great idea. Listen, about Joe, can you check on him?”

  “Oh, honey, Joe’s not sick. He’s out of town.”

  “Where’d he go?”

  “Well, that I don’t know. But Chuck drove by and noticed Joe’s truck at the Hole in the Wall early this morning. Now, you know, Joe’s not one to go drinking in the day. Not like his great-uncle Pete. Lord, that man had a nip with his breakfast and just kept—”

  “Joe was at the bar?”

  Interrupting someone who was speaking was one of her biggest peeves. She thought it was rude beyond all imagination. But Joe had told her early in their relationship that knowing when to interrupt his mother wasn’t a matter of being impolite, it was a matter of self-preservation. She’d resisted as long as she could, but after she’d been seated next to Dottie at a birthday party and had clocked one story about a chicken that laid eggs with double yolks at twenty-three minutes, forty seconds, she’d decided that a well-timed interruption here and there was an acceptable vice.

  “No, no. The bartender told Chuck that he’d been in the night before, but he’d left with a . . . friend,” Dottie explained.

  She could tell from Dottie’s hesitation that the friend had been of the female variety, but she didn’t comment.

  “So, he left his truck there and went out of town? That doesn’t make any sense.”

  “Well, honey, I get the sense it was a sudden trip. Chuck went by the house to check on him. He wasn’t there, but Rufus just went nuts when he saw Chuck. Poor fella was out of water and starving for food.”

  “Now, you know, Joe wouldn’t go out of town without making arrangements for Rufus.”

  “Don’t you worry about your dog, honey. We brought him back here. He’s just fine. All curled up at my feet, snoring so loud I can barely hear what the weather guy is saying.” Dottie chuckled.

  “Oh, that’s nice of you. Thanks, Dottie. I still don’t understand how you know Joe’s out of town. Did you call him?”

  “Well, no. Turns out he left his cell phone at the house. Chuck noticed it on the charger. We were thinking maybe Joe decided to surprise you with a visit,” Dottie offered, her voice tentative.

  Aroostine was about to point out that Joe couldn’t very well walk to DC, so leaving his car at the bar more or less ruled out an impromptu trip. The closest public transportation to Walnut Bottom was the bus depot fifty miles away. And she knew for an absolute fact that he wouldn’t just leave Rufus behind.

  Then it dawned on her. Dottie thought Joe was having an affair. She probably thought he’d left the bar with some floozy and had gone back to her place. Her mother-in-law was trying to spare her feelings about her husband’s sleepover.

  She fe
lt her cheeks flush. But if Dottie wanted to pretend, she’d play along.

  “Oh, maybe. That would be a nice surprise. It’s been a while since I’ve seen him.”

  While she matched Dottie’s pabulum with her own, her mind raced ahead: Joe had left the bar with a woman. Who was she? How was she involved in his kidnapping? Who could she get to help her find out?

  Dottie babbled on about how much Joe and the rest of the Jackmans missed her and how they looked forward to her “temporary assignment” ending so she could come home. Left unsaid was the hope that her return would put an end to Joe’s excursions with female friends.

  She “hmmed” and “uh-huhed” her way through the rest of the conversation, only half-listening while she weighed her options. Calling the authorities was out until she had a better sense of who she was dealing with. She considered reaching out to Sasha—she had unofficial connections to agencies that didn’t even officially exist—but she decided to keep that particular card in her pocket unless and until she needed to play it. For now, she’d handle this situation on her own.

  She said her goodbyes to her mother-in-law and ended the call. Then she pulled up the text and stared hard at the picture of Joe while she braced herself for what would come next.

  She punched in the cell phone number that had sent the text. Then she held her breath and listened to the ringing phone.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Franklin blinked at the number flashing on the prepaid phone’s display. The lawyer was calling him.

  He wheeled around, panicky at the thought of talking to her.

  Calm down.

  He breathed out and reminded himself that he did know what to do. The man had given him a script to follow. He pawed through the papers on his kitchen table. He’d written it in his notebook.

  Where was the notebook?

  He had to hurry up and answer before she gave up and ended the call. But, he couldn’t ad-lib. He had to find that notebook. He patted his pockets and felt the small rectangular lump in the breast pocket of his flannel shirt.

  Relief flooded his body. He flipped open the notebook and thumbed to the page he wanted, then cleared his throat and answered the call.

  “Hello.” His voice cracked.

  “This is Aroostine Higgins. To whom am I speaking?”

  The lawyer sounded collected. Calm, somehow.

  “Uh”—he consulted the notebook—“that’s not your concern?”

  There was a pause.

  “Are you asking me or telling me? Because if that’s a question, I’m pretty sure the identity of the person who’s holding my husband hostage in an effort to interfere with a federal prosecution is my concern.”

  He grimaced. This wasn’t going well. The man was going to be angry. Sweat beaded his brow, and he searched the notes, desperate to get this call on track.

  “If you want to see your husband alive again, you know what you need to do.”

  “Actually, I don’t know anything. That’s why I’m calling you. What’s this about?”

  The man had told him to ignore her questions and stick to the words he’d dictated, so Franklin plowed ahead.

  “Find a way to dismiss the charges against Craig Womback and Martin Sheely before the trial starts on Monday or your husband will suffer the consequences.”

  “What if I don’t care?”

  Franklin blinked and, in his surprise, deviated from his script. “You don’t care if he kills your husband?”

  “Actually, if you’d done your research, you’d know Joe and I are estranged.”

  He knew from listening to the phone message she’d left for her husband that she was bluffing, but her voice betrayed no trace of the lie. He skimmed the page for his next line, but she spoke again before he could find his spot.

  “Who’s he?”

  “He?”

  “You asked whether I didn’t care if he killed Joe. So, that tells me you aren’t the decision maker, which raises two questions. Who is he? And who are you?”

  The room began to spin. His tongue was thick and heavy in his mouth. Idiot. Now he’d done it. The man was going to kill his mother because he’d screwed up. Sweat dripped into Franklin’s eyes.

  “Please,” he blurted, all thought of his lines driven from his mind by desperate fear, “help me. He has my mother, too. He’s going to kill her.”

  He was overcome by a combination of horror at what he’d said and relief at having finally said the words aloud. He began to sob softly.

  He could feel the shock in the silence on the other end of the phone.

  After a moment, she spoke.

  “If what you say is true, I’ll do everything I can to get your mother and my husband back, but you’re going to have to tell me what’s going on.”

  He considered what would happen to his mother, to her husband, and to him if she was wrong.

  The man would kill them all.

  And then Franklin surprised himself.

  He sniffled, wiped the tears from his damp cheeks, and found his voice.

  “I will,” he promised.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Mrs. Chang was in her late seventies or early eighties, Joe guessed. She looked frail and birdlike, with thin, hunched shoulders and close-cropped gray hair. Two of her fingers were wrapped and taped together with white athletic tape. She hugged her arms around herself, pulling her light cardigan tight against her body, and huddled near the woodburning stove in the corner of the room.

  But she was uncowed.

  When the man entered the room she raised her eyes and pierced him with a defiant, blazing gaze. Joe hurried to stand next to her, following the line the man traced with the shotgun.

  The man’s overly solicitous inquiries into how she was feeling and whether she was hungry went unanswered.

  Joe didn’t know who the old lady was, but he already liked her.

  The man didn’t react to her bold posture. Instead, he turned to Joe.

  “She’s not much of a conversationalist. But then I doubt you and the whore had a lot of scintillating discussions, either. Are you hungry?”

  “Yes,” Joe said immediately.

  First, because it was true. Second, because he hoped it meant the man would go to a store to get food, giving him a chance to speak to the woman alone. As it turned out, the man had no intentions of staying.

  “There are cans of soup in the cabinet. After I leave, make some for your new girlfriend too, and be sure she eats it. She needs to stay healthy.” The man nodded to the far corner of the main room, which held a sink, a stove, and a small refrigerator. All circa 1960, by the looks of them.

  Joe glanced at the kitchen area and then turned his attention back to the man, who was pulling on a black leather coat and supple driving gloves.

  “You’re leaving us here?”

  “I have things to do. Don’t bother trying to break the window or the door. She can tell you it’s futile. And, if you do manage to get outside, there’s nowhere to go. You’re eighty-seven miles from a major highway as the crow flies.”

  The man zipped the jacket to his chin, then leveled the gun at his two captives in a fluid motion.

  “Step back into the bedroom and close the door. If you come back out before I leave, I’m shooting you. Both of you. Now go.”

  The old woman glared at the man but obeyed the order. Joe trailed her into the room he’d just come from.

  “Pull the door shut,” she said in a soft voice. “He won’t leave until you do.”

  Joe did as she instructed. A moment later, he heard the distant sound of metal thudding against wood.

  The woman nodded at the sound.

  “He padlocks it when he leaves. The window is padlocked, too, but it hardly matters. Too small to get through.”

  Her voice was gentle and sad.

&n
bsp; “So, um, now what?”

  “We can go back out to the front room and eat. When he comes back—probably not until tomorrow, he’ll bang the butt of his shotgun on the front door and holler. We’re supposed to come back here until he gets inside.”

  “Let me guess—or else he’ll shoot us?”

  “No flies on you. Well, come on. You said you’re hungry; we might as well eat.”

  She opened the door and headed back into the main space.

  “How long have you been here?”

  She thought for a long moment, her eyes pinned to the ceiling as she tried to remember.

  “This is the tenth day.”

  Joe whistled through his teeth.

  “You’re a tough old bird, aren’t you?”

  He hoped she wouldn’t be offended.

  She seemed to take it as a compliment, judging by the way her eyes crinkled.

  “I’ve seen worse than that idiot.”

  He cocked his head, an invitation for her to go on.

  “You ever hear of the Nanking Massacre?”

  He had. “In December of 1937, the Japanese captured the Chinese capital of Nanking, beginning a six-week siege that resulted in the rape and murder of about three hundred thousand citizens.”

  She nodded her approval. “That’s the one. Are you some kind of military history buff?”

  “Something like that. My dad is. I watched a lot of the History Channel growing up.”

  “Well, I was two. My entire family was wiped out. Someone—I suppose I’ll never know who—put me on a boat to San Francisco. And here I am. I survived that, I’ll survive this.”

  His imagination didn’t extend far enough to encompass being orphaned in a strange country at the age of two. Aroostine popped into his mind. Her background may have been less horrific, but it wasn’t altogether different from the old lady’s.

  “I bet you will.” He meant it.

  “I’m more worried about Franklin.”

  Franklin? Joe swung his head around the small space. There was no way there was a third, unseen person in the tiny cabin.