Snatched

by Pamela Burford

  Judith pulled her hand away. She shook her head, staring at the ground. But no words came.

  Will rubbed her back, his palm moving in lazy circles over the cable-knit pullover she’d obviously borrowed from Fergus. The sweater ended near her knees; her fingertips poked out of the rolled-up sleeves. “One thing that has me stumped, though,” he said. “Why did it take him twenty-five years to come looking for the money?”

  “He was in prison. Attica.”

  Will had considered this possibility. “For . . . ?”

  “Murder,” she said. “Unrelated to the kidnapping.”

  “Jesus.”

  She turned to face him, her arms banded around herself once more. Her voice quavered. “I had no idea what he was capable of, Will. I want you to know that.”

  “I do know that, Jude. Isn’t that what I just said?”

  “No, but—”

  “Hal Lynch’s actions had nothing to do with you,” Will said. “You didn’t know it was him. He acted on his own. Don’t—”

  “He didn’t act on his own.” Her anguished face was inches from his. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you. It’s not . . . it’s not that simple.”

  Will’s overtaxed brain struggled to incorporate this new information even as he told himself it wasn’t what it sounded like. It couldn’t be.

  “I was a different person then. You know that.” Judith’s eyes swam with tears. “I had no idea what I was setting into motion. If I’d known . . .” She shook her head miserably. “Please believe that, Will. If I’d known how it would be for you—”

  Will shot to his feet. He took three long strides from his sister, then stopped in his tracks and returned to stand over her. “What did he make you do?”

  “He didn’t make me do it. We . . . we planned it together—his cover as a security guard, the place in the woods where he took you . . .” She was shaking hard. “I drove the van.”

  Will’s head swung from side to side in denial, as if of its own volition, as if unable to absorb this spectacular blow after a day of unwelcome surprises.

  Judith looked up at him, her face streaked with tears. “I’m sorry, Will. I’m so, so sorry.” She reached for him. He backed away.

  “Why?” Will barely recognized his own gruff voice.

  “Money.”

  Of course. What else could it be? It was the reason she’d married Don Drinkwater, after all. All those years positioning herself as the country-club wife and civic volunteer, the coiffed church lady in pearls and sensible pumps. Just one more performance Will had readily fallen for.

  “How could you do it, Jude?” he asked. “Your own brother. Half brother. I know you hated me back then, but—”

  “I didn’t hate you, Will.” Judith pulled herself to her feet, clinging to the jungle gym for support. “I was confused.”

  “Not too confused to plan and execute a felony.”

  “Will—”

  “Do the others know?”

  “Just Fergus,” she said. “And Wesley figured it out on his own. But he didn’t tell the police. I think maybe because I cleaned up my act after the kidnapping. And because it’s, well, it’s been so long and it would tear our family apart.”

  “You didn’t need any help to do that.” Will’s tone was flat. He ignored his sister’s quiet sob. “Leave my home, Judith. I don’t ever want to see you again.”

  “Will, please—” She reached for him. He seized her wrists, holding her at arm’s length.

  “Don’t call or e-mail me,” he said. “If I find out you’ve contacted Tom, I’ll turn you in to the police myself.”

  “Listen to me.” Judith wrenched herself from his grasp. “Just listen for a minute, Will. I know how this must seem to you—Will!” she called as he turned his back and stalked to the house. “Let me explain—please.”

  On the back doorstep he shoved past Fergus, who tried to speak to him, to halt his progress. His friend and former shrink wanted to talk sense to him, no doubt, wanted to help him put things in perspective: the perspective of the woman Fergus was currently balling. No, thanks. His anger felt good, it felt cleansing. After twenty-five years he had a face to put to his misery—two faces.

  Will charged through the kitchen, ignoring Wesley and the others as he headed for his bedside phone. He felt a visceral need to hear Lucy’s voice, to talk to her about his arrest, about Lynch and Judith and the rest of it. The urge to connect with this woman was bone-deep—and alarming, because it wasn’t just about sex.

  In that instant he knew he wouldn’t call her. Not tonight. He was simply too fried, too liable to blurt out something he’d regret. Maybe tomorrow, when he was rested, more in command of himself.

  “I’m going to bed,” Will said over his shoulder. “Wake me if you hear from the cops. Or Lynch.”

  Chapter 29

  “WHAT’RE YOU PUTTING in there?” Hal hopped off the center island in Lucy’s kitchen, reached her in two long strides, and snatched the bottle of Frank’s Hot Sauce out of her hand. She watched him read the label and sniff the contents. And all the while that big gun of his remained trained on the star atop the Christmas tree crudely fabric-painted onto her bib apron. A gift from John when he was eight.

  He slammed the bottle onto the counter. “Hurry up. I’m starving.”

  She shook sauce onto the mound of ground sirloin in a mixing bowl and reached for the pepper mill. “It wouldn’t take so long if I didn’t have to stop every few seconds so you could make sure I’m not poisoning you. As if I keep bottles of strychnine on hand just for situations like this.” She had to speak up to make herself heard over the countertop radio, tuned to one of the local news stations. “Here, have another brownie.” She’d made dessert before starting in on dinner; Hal had already scarfed down four triple-chocolate brownies.

  “You gonna take that shit from her?” Mick demanded, his diction marinated in Gran Centenario Añejo tequila recently liberated from Frank’s liquor cabinet. He sat on the granite floor tiles, legs splayed, back propped against the dishwasher, a bag of frozen mango chunks tucked against his balls. His lip was split and swollen. Livid bruises bloomed on his jaw and under one eye. And—surprise, surprise—fresh blood snaked from his nostrils.

  Mick had jumped Lucy the instant they’d arrived at her house four hours earlier. If he’d thought she would wilt in the presence of a handgun, he must have forgotten how he’d first come by that busted schnoz. And if he’d thought his father would back him up, or join in raping her, he must have underestimated how distraught and distracted Hal was.

  Lucy was prepared for Mick’s attack; he certainly hadn’t been coy about his intentions. Recalling what a mewling crybaby he was, she went for the nose first, following this attention-getter with a good, old-fashioned knee to the cojones. Pop pop pop, her fists found a variety of tender targets in rapid succession as Mick shrieked at Hal to get the crazy bitch off him.

  Instead Hal told Mick to shut the hell up so he could hear the news. He prowled around the house peering around closed drapes and blinds, tuning TVs and radios to various stations, pacing between the sets, getting more worked up by the minute. He ordered time out for Mick and Lucy, separating them like sparring kindergartners. “I can’t think with all this noise,” he griped. “I’ve got to think.”

  So Lucy had sat where Hal told her to sit, and spent the idle hours wrapping her brain around her predicament. The shooting in Grove Street Park was getting less and less airplay. The victim had survived, the shooter was in custody—the alleged shooter—and there had been no new developments since the arrest.

  Will was no criminal. She’d known it for sure after listening to Hal fuss and mutter to himself. Hal had shot that PI in the park, no doubt with the very weapon that now seemed grafted onto his hand.

  The grim truth was, no one would be coming to Lucy’s rescue, not even her hapless almost-ex in his stupid camo and night-vision goggles. No one even knew she needed rescuing. Will was behind bars, and it was case clo
sed as far as the police were concerned. Lucy had no one to rely on but herself.

  When, after a couple of hours of butt-numbing immobility, she announced a need for the little girls’ room, Hal went in first to remove anything she might fashion into a weapon. After an exhaustive search, all he found worth confiscating was a couple of disposable shavers. “Well, so much for scraping you to death,” she told him. “It’s on to Plan B—giving you a dry-cleaning bag to play with.”

  Alone in the bathroom, Lucy had done her own quick perusal, pausing at the can of style-and-scrunch spray. Hadn’t she read a mystery novel in which the would-be victim foiled her attacker by getting him in the eyes with hairspray? Somehow she couldn’t picture Hal standing still for a literal shellacking without sticking that big gun in her face and pulling the trigger.

  Then she’d opened the medicine chest and forgotten all about hair-care products.

  Now, as Lucy stood in her kitchen shaping the last half-pound hamburger under the watchful eye of her captor, she turned on the happy-hostess charm. “Are you sure you won’t have some wine, Hal? Frank has a fabulous Cab in there.” She nodded toward the built-in wine cellar. “He bought a case. There’s only one bottle left. Someone ought to drink it up before he remembers and comes back for it.”

  “Stop trying to get me buzzed.” Hal removed and discarded a pair of colored contact lenses, leaving his eyes their natural color, a striking silver-gray. “It’s not going to work.”

  “You can get buzzed on one little glass of wine? Lucky you.” Lucy lifted the basket of French fries out of the deep fryer and fired up the indoor grill. “So, Mick, how’re your mangoes doing?”

  “What the fuck do you mean by that?” He’d grown roots, sitting there against the dishwasher with his tequila and his frozen fruit, glowering all the while at Lucy.

  “I just mean, those chunks must be thawed by now.” As the burgers sizzled, Lucy started tearing up a head of lettuce. “You might want to swap them out for a fresh bag. I’ve got some ground nuts in the freezer.”

  “Shut up and cook.” Hal was surfing stations on the radio, becoming increasingly agitated at the dearth of information. “When the hell are they going to let him go?”

  “Who?” Mick asked groggily.

  “It’s been, what, six hours, seven.” Hal switched the little under-cabinet TV to the local Long Island channel. “By now they’ve got to know the ballistics are wrong. Will and that PI, they’ll be backing each other up, telling the cops how it went down. They’ll let Will go and start broadcasting our descriptions, looking for us.”

  “Looking for you.” Mick bestirred himself to gesticulate with his tequila bottle. “I didn’t shoot anyone.”

  “Why’s it taking so long?” Hal said. “I can’t do a thing till he’s out. Can’t contact him, can’t tell him where to leave the money. Plus, he’s going to need time to get that much cash together. What’s that?” he demanded as Lucy whisked salad dressing.

  She sighed. “Extra-virgin olive oil. Roasted peanut oil. White balsamic—”

  “All right, all right. Just do it.” He grabbed another brownie and started pacing. “Half my life, they took. I will not go back. Never.”

  He’d declared it repeatedly during the past few hours, and Lucy believed him. Hal Lynch would do anything to avoid returning to prison, and that, more than anything else, scared the crap out of her. It meant he had nothing to lose.

  The front doorbell chimed. Lucy jumped.

  Hal asked, “Who’s that?” Mick, oblivious, was absorbed with extracting the last few drops from the bottle.

  She shook her head. “I’m not expecting anyone.”

  He hauled her through the dining room and foyer, and peered through the peephole in the front door. He shoved her face at the peephole and whispered, “Who is it?”

  “My husband. I don’t know who the other one is.” The man who stood with Frank under the porch light was a head taller and heavily muscled. He sported curly dark hair, a prominent brow ridge, and an impeccably tailored dark suit and tie.

  This scary-looking gentleman had to be one of Anne Marie’s brothers or brothers-in-law. Frank’s post-bigamy lifestyle, as ordained by the two Mrs. Narbys, included a constant chaperone in the form of one of Anne Marie’s numerous menfolk.

  The chaperone nudged Frank, who stabbed the doorbell again.

  “Don’t answer,” Hal whispered. “They’ll go away.”

  “Frank has a key,” she said.

  They heard it then, the snick of the deadbolt. “Get rid of them,” Hal ordered as he and his gun slipped behind the floor-length dining-room drapes.

  The door swung open and Frank’s expression went from put-upon to surly. “You are home. Can’t be bothered to answer the door?”

  The big man nudged him. “Be nice, Frank.”

  “I didn’t hear the bell. I was . . .” Lucy indicated her apron. “I was in the middle of cooking.”

  “At this time of night?” Frank sauntered through the foyer into the greatroom as if he still lived there.

  The big man followed him, smiling politely. “It smells delicious.”

  “Thank you.”

  He nudged Frank again, harder. “Introduce us, Frank. Where are your manners?”

  Frank sighed. “Murray Saperstein, Lucy Narby. Lucy Narby, Murray Saperstein. There.”

  “I’m real pleased to meet you, Mrs. Narby.” The hand Murray extended was the size of a grizzly’s paw. “I’ve heard so much about you, I feel like we’re family. Well, we are family in a way, am I right?”

  “I guess so. It’s, uh, nice to meet you, too, Mr. Sap—”

  “It’s Murray, come on.” He pumped her hand. “Can I call you Lucy?”

  “Well, of course. Listen. Frank.” Lucy’s heart was a jackhammer. “It’s not a good time.”

  “Not a good time how? I told you I was coming.”

  “No, you didn’t—”

  “I left a message on your machine this afternoon,” Frank said.

  “Oh. I . . . well, I didn’t get a chance to listen to my messages.” She wiped her damp palms on her apron.

  Murray’s sharp gaze swept the room. “Everything all right here, Lucy?”

  “Yes. Of—Of course it is.” She considered shaking her head no, but then Frank would no doubt open his big yap and say all the wrong things. So she gritted out a smile and added, “I’m in the middle of something, I’m afraid. Some other time, okay?”

  “What,” Frank sneered, “you got someone here?”

  “No, I mean . . . I mean yes, I, well, I do have someone here. Sorry.” Another shaky smile. “This is kind of awkward.”

  “Not at all.” Murray waved away her embarrassment. “You got every right. I mean, you and Frank here are practically divorced, am I right?”

  They both responded without hesitation. Yes, they said. Yes, practically divorced.

  “Well then,” Murray said, “we’ll get outta your way, Lucy. We just came by to give you this.” He produced an envelope from his breast pocket. “It’s your copy of the power of attorney, all signed and legal.”

  Lucy and Anne Marie, as part of their fiscal reorganization plan, had demanded Frank execute a durable power of attorney, granting his wife Anne Marie and soon-to-be-ex Lucy absolute control over all his assets, real property, future income: the whole ball of wax. Desperate to avoid prosecution for bigamy, Frank had capitulated.

  The envelope in her hand gave her an idea. There was a notepad and pen on the little mail table in the foyer. It would take no time at all to scrawl CALL COPS or even a simple 911 and slip the note to Murray. She’d taken a single step toward the table when Mick staggered in from the kitchen. He stopped dead at the sight of Frank’s brother-in-law.

  “Holy shit. For real?” Mick’s puffy eyes widened. “The Murminator. It’s the fuckin’ Murminator!” He looked around the room. “Hey, Hal—”

  “Mick!” Lucy dropped the envelope and lunged for him. “I’d like you to meet my ex-husba
nd, Frank. Frank, this is my friend Mick.”

  Frank gave the beat-up, bedraggled young man the once-over. “This is him?” he asked, with a snicker. “This is the best you can do?”

  “Huh?” Mick squinted at Frank, then at Lucy. “What’s he mean, the best—”

  She silenced him with a quick kiss. An air kiss, really, as she couldn’t bring herself to make contact with Mick’s swollen, blood-smeared, tequila-reeking mouth. She slipped her arm around his waist. Mick caught on fast—too fast, grabbing her rump and testing it for ripeness.

  “You never said you knew the Murminator, babe.” Mick’s grubby fingers traced a southerly route down the back center seam of her jeans. It took all Lucy’s self-control not to knee him in the balls again.

  “We just met,” Murray explained. “How’d you get that shiner, Mick? Looks like you went a couple rounds with some big ape like me.”

  “He fell down the stairs,” Lucy blurted. “Listen, I don’t want to seem inhospitable, but our dinner’s getting cold—”

  “Yeah, but you aren’t, are you, babe?” Mick was all hands. He half-leaned on Lucy, his voice slurred. “Your old lady, Frank, I’m telling ya, she’s gotta have it all the time. Was she always this horny? Babe, I tell her, you’re gonna wear it out.” He grabbed his crotch for effect, and winced for real.

  Murray managed to keep his expression neutral. Color flooded Frank’s face as if a switch had been flipped. “You’ve got a big mouth, son,” he said.

  “Come on, Frank.” Murray placed a giant hand on his charge’s shoulder. “It’s time we left.” He sent Lucy a silent query, asking if she really was okay. She tried to summon another smile as she nodded yes, but it refused to form.

  “Hey, stick around,” Mick said. “We got plenty of food. And then after, we can all do her. Lucy won’t mind.” He slipped his hand up her side, only to be thwarted before he could grab a breast. “She told me she’s always wanted to pull a train, isn’t that right, babe? After tonight, you can cross that one off your list.” He traced a big X in the air.