“This is Aroostine Higgins. To whom am I speaking?”
The lawyer sounded collected, even. 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 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, forgot his lines. “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 thoughts 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 bird-like, 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 wood-burning 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 zippered 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.
“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 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.
Mrs. Chang shook her head. “He’s not here. He’s my son, back home.”
Franklin had to be in his forties, Joe figured. Surely he could handle himself.
She seemed to read his mind.
“Franklin is what they call a change of life baby. Mr. Chang and I, God rest his soul, th
ought we couldn’t have children. We made our peace with that. But the year I turned forty-five, God graced us with Franklin. He was an unexpected gift. And I’m afraid I raised him too soft. My husband died twenty years ago, when Franklin was thirteen. He’s a bit of … a momma’s boy.”
She ducked her head in shame.
Joe obviously didn’t know this Franklin character from Adam, but he felt compelled to comfort the woman.
“Come on, now. A kid with your DNA? He’s got to have a steel core. Maybe it’s just well hidden.”
She met his eyes with a look of gratitude.
“I hope so, because he’s mixed up in something serious.”
“Why don’t I fix us some soup while you tell me all about it?” He gestured toward the pine table and chairs jammed in the corner of the kitchen area.
She followed him across the room and arranged herself in the hard chair, then launched into her story while he banged around in the kitchen, looking for a ladle and a pot.
“Franklin’s a very bright boy. He’s good with computers. Coding and programming and things. But he’s not good at life.”
Joe turned a dirt-crusted knob on stove and one of the flat circles on its surface glowed to life. He stuck a cheap, lightweight pot on the burner and glanced over his shoulder at her. “No street smarts?”
“Exactly. He’s naive. Like I said, soft.”
A shadow of regret crossed her face, and he hurried to move on.
“What’s he do? Does he have a job?”
She straightened in her chair, her posture suddenly full of maternal pride.
“He’s very important. He works for SystemSource writing their programs.”
He opened a can of chicken stew and dumped it into the small, dented pot. He stirred it and tried to keep her talking.
“What do their programs do?”
She chuckled, a deep belly laugh.
“What don’t they do? I don’t understand the technology at all, but Franklin tells me they can monitor and control almost any computerized system from anywhere in the world. It sounds fantastical to me.”
“What kind of systems?” He tried to keep his face neutral, even though it sounded creepy to him.
“Every kind of system.” She held up the fingers of her good hand and started ticking them off as she recited them. “HVAC systems; security systems; medical equipment; elevators; sprinkler systems; traffic lights; you name it.”
“Wow. That’s something. What happened to your fingers?” He tried to make the segue sound casual. He suspected he already knew.
Her eyes darkened.
“Oh, that man wanted to teach Franklin a lesson. He didn’t do something the man told him to do, so he snapped my fingers.”
Rage swelled in his chest.
“Are you okay?”
She waved away his concern and responded with bravado. “Please. A minor irritation at worst.”
He doubted that. No matter how tough she was, that had to have hurt.
“What didn’t Franklin do? What does the man want him to do?”
She shook her head. “I’m not sure. It all has something to do with that woman lawyer.”
“What woman lawyer?” he asked, freezing in place as he reached for two gray melamine bowls in the cabinet beside the stove. He already knew what she was going to say. He just didn’t know why.
“Aroostine something or other. I’ve overheard him talking to Franklin. He wants her to throw some case.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Aroostine paced in a tight circle. The guy on the phone had said he’d meet her at the ice rink at the National Gallery of Art’s Sculpture Garden. The gallery and the gardens closed at five o’clock, so she loitered around outside the Constitution Avenue entrance to the skating rink and worried that he’d go to the Madison Drive entrance instead.
She pulled the glove from her right hand and swiped her finger across her phone to unlock the display. She redialed the last number she’d called and hurriedly jammed her cold fingers back into the glove.
The sun had set while she’d been on the Metro, and she’d emerged to find the temperature had fallen at least ten degrees. The chill didn’t seem to be deterring the skating masses, though.
Groups of squealing, helmeted kids, some of them pushing chairs or clinging to the rails, circled around the rink. Serious enthusiasts weaved around them in graceful loops. And laughing, pink-cheeked lovers skated by hand in hand.
A memory flashed through her mind: Joe’s hand, firm in his leather gloves, gripping her own mittened hand, as he guided her unsteadily around the frozen lake behind what would later become their house. She was twenty-two and had never ice skated in her life. His footing was sure; his voice amused and encouraging in her ear.
She blinked away tears and focused on listening to the ringing phone. Keep it together.
There was no answer and no option to leave a voicemail. The phone just continued to ring and somehow the sound grew louder. She could hear the ringtone both through her phone’s speaker and over her shoulder.
She turned.
She didn’t know how she expected the man to look. Tough. Enigmatic. Unkind, maybe. She certainly didn’t expect what she found: a pale Asian man, his shoulders stooped and his back hunched as if he were trying to fold into himself and disappear. The man turned off his phone and shoved it into the pocket of his navy peacoat. He turned his collar up against the wind and smoothed his hand through his too-long hair, swiping his bangs out of his eyes and blinking nervously at her.
He was not fat, not thin. But he was soft, out of shape. A sedentary cubical dweller. Maybe a snacker, too.
She pushed down her nerves and smoothed her face into an expectant expression. This was his party.
He stared at her for a moment longer then cleared his throat.
“Uh, hi,” he stammered.
She raised a brow. “Hello.”
Another throat-clearing noise. Then he gestured over his shoulder.
“There’s a cafe. Do you want to get some coffee?”
“Well, I don’t want to ice skate.”
He half-chuckled and swallowed his laugh.
She hadn’t been trying to be funny. She felt awkward meeting strangers—let alone strangers who were involved in her husband’s abduction and were trying to convince her to violate her ethical obligations as an attorney. She’d just blurted out the first response that had popped into her mind.
He made a sweeping motion with his hand, as if to say ‘after you.’
She headed for the entrance to the fenced-in Sculpture Garden and passed between two marble plinths that led into the garden. She was very conscious of the man following right behind her, so close on her heels that she could hear his choppy breathing, fast and shallow.
They entered the cafe and a burst of hot air enveloped her. She found a table near the windows and slung her bag over one of the chairs.
He unbuttoned his coat and blew into his hands.
“So, uh, can I get you a coffee?” he asked.
“I’ll get my own drink. Thanks.”
The awkwardness was excruciating—worse than a first date.
She dug out her wallet and walked up the counter. He jogged along beside her.
“Hey. Hey, look at me.”
She stopped and whirled to face him.
He coughed into his hand then said, “I’m not a bad guy. I swear.”
She stared hard at him. His shy eyes. The dark, deep circles that ringed them. His hunched, cowering posture.
He didn’t look like a bad guy. He looked like a victim. A sudden swell of sympathy rose in her chest.
“I’m not saying you’re a bad guy. I can just buy my own drink. Okay?”
“Okay.”
He dropped her gaze and shuffled ahead.
Great. Sure. Feel sorry for this dude. Why not?
She reached the counter before he did.
“Can I help you?” the eager teenager asked, flashing her a bright whi
te smile, a stark contrast to his dark skin.
“Yes. I’d like a medium hot chocolate.”
“Oh, good choice! Whipped cream?”
“Of course.” She smiled back at him despite her current miserable state. His bounciness was contagious. Before she realized what she was saying she added, “And my friend will have a coffee.”
The kid shifted his gaze to Franklin. “How do you take it, buddy?”
“Uh,”—he blinked in surprise—“black, please.”
“You got it. Just brewed a fresh pot.”
The kids’ fingers flew over the register keys.
Aroostine handed him a ten dollar bill before Franklin could react. She shoved the change into the mug full of tips and was rewarded with another blinding smile.
He hurried off to get their drinks.
“Um, you didn’t have to do that,” Franklin mumbled. “But thanks.”
She leveled him with a serious look.
“You’re welcome. I’m going to assume for this one occasion only that you’re acting in good faith and need my help. So, right now, you aren’t a bad guy. But if you prove me wrong, there won’t be a second chance. I’ll be at the police station before you can blink.”
Dad Higgins always said to assume the best of people but if they showed their true colors, believe them. It was a philosophy that squared with what her grandfather had told her when she was very young. People, like all animals, will reveal themselves if you give them a chance.
This was Franklin’s chance.
________
Joe stared unblinkingly at the man. The man stared back.
Joe waited.
The man spoke first.
“Excuse me? Did you say ‘No’? You refuse to do what I request?” His voice was cold. Emotionless. But Joe could hear the anger churning just beneath the surface.
“You heard me right.”
The muscle in the man’s cheek twitched.
“That is not advisable.”
Joe shrugged and tried to ignore the almost paralyzing fear that gripped him.
“Says you.”
“Mr. Jackman, this is not a game. You will set aside your pride and record the message as instructed.”
“Or what?”
Joe had no intention of being filmed like some kind of hostage in the Middle East begging for his life. The man wanted him to convince Aroostine to tank her case to save him. He wasn’t going to do it. Not because he was proud, but because he knew his wife. She wouldn’t deliberately lose one of her cases, but she would do something dangerous and foolhardy in an attempt to help him.
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