Personal or professional, that’s what this case would boil down to in the end.
Had the Denbes’ abduction been motivated by vengeance? Maybe a business rival who’d felt personally slighted when Denbe Construction had been awarded a significant building contract? Or perhaps related to Justin’s affair. The jilted ex-lover, having lost her man to his family, striking back? Or, the most sinister and interesting theory, that Justin had staged the abduction of his whole family as an elaborate ruse to disguise the murder of his estranged wife. Because given the threat divorce would pose to his personal wealth, not to mention the family business, Justin would clearly be the prime suspect if anything happened to Libby. Unless, of course, the whole family was attacked, and he and his daughter miraculously happened to be the sole survivors…
Except, why now? Six months later, when the Denbes seemed to have survived the immediate aftermath of Justin’s betrayal? Libby was definitely trying to save her marriage, according to her hair stylist. Maybe not succeeding yet, given her fragile emotional state, but still trying.
Tessa shook her head. For the Denbes’ sake, she hoped this was a professionally motivated crime. Because a team of kidnappers looking for a ransom payout had incentive to keep the Denbes as comfortable as possible. Whereas the people the Denbes thought they knew and held most dear…
Tessa couldn’t help herself: She flashed back two years ago, to her kitchen, the look on her husband’s face. The shock of the exploding Sig Sauer. The feel of the white, white snow against her frozen fingertips. Her daughter’s empty bedroom.
It wasn’t that strangers couldn’t hurt you. It was simply that the people you loved could do it so much better.
Just ask Libby Denbe.
Chapter 16
THE CRAZY BLUE-EYED COMMANDO wanted Ashlyn to step out of the cell first.
“No,” Justin said.
Ashlyn was awake, sitting up on the lower bunk. Her bleary gaze shot from her father to the steel door to her father again. I had my body positioned in front of her, as if by blocking her from view, I could keep the man from remembering she was there.
“Girl steps up,” Mick repeated. “Girl presents wrists through the slot. I secure girl’s hands, she exits cell. Those are the instructions.”
“No,” Justin said. His shoulders were set, his hands fisted by his side. “I’ll go first. Then my daughter. Then my wife.”
Mick raised his black Taser till it was visible through the narrow strip of window.
“Girl steps up,” he repeated, and this time there was a load of menace behind each word.
I gazed from my husband to the commando, still feeling confused, then I got it. The scenario Justin was trying to avoid: If Ashlyn exited the cell, Mick could simply slam the door shut behind her. Trapping us inside the cell. Leaving Ashlyn alone and vulnerable on the other side of it.
I stepped forward, standing beside Justin with our shoulders touching. I wanted to feel brave, resolute. My stomach was cramping. I could feel fresh beads of sweat across my forehead, and I dug my nails into my palms, calling upon the pain to ground me.
Mick lowered a metal plate, opening the slot in the middle of the cell door. His eyes were flat, his face expressionless as he lined up the Taser in the opening, aiming for Justin’s torso.
“The girl—” Mick started harshly.
“Fuck you!” Justin bellowed back.
“I’ll go.”
Both men paused, blinked, looked at Ashlyn, who’d risen from the lower bunk.
“Stop it.” She wasn’t talking to Mick; she was talking to her father. “What are you gonna do, Dad? Protect me? Pretend everything’s all right? Nothing bad’s ever gonna happen to your precious little princess? Kind of late for that, don’t you think?”
The bitterness in her voice caught me off guard. I looked down, embarrassed for my daughter, hurting for my husband, who I knew had to be shocked by such an outburst.
“Ashlyn…”
“Stop it. Just stop it. You should’ve left us, you know. Moved in with your new girlfriend, built a new life. We could’ve handled that. But, no, you have to hang around the house, pretending you still love us, pretending you still care. You made a mistake, but now you’re sorry. If we’d just give you a second chance, boo hoo hoo. You’re the one who’s trying to have his cake and eat it, too.”
Ashlyn pushed past her father, thrusting her hands through the open slot. Justin made no move to stop her, just stared at her back, openly stunned.
On the other side of the cell door, Mick laughed.
“Feisty one!” he declared, reaching for a zip tie.
“Fuck you,” our daughter told him, and my eyes widened for a second time. I’d never heard Ashlyn use such language. And I definitely hadn’t known…hadn’t even begun to suspect that she’d resented the past few months so much.
Mick laughed again.
Our family needed to hold together. Instead, barely an hour into prison life, we were tearing apart.
The commando secured Ashlyn’s wrists. There was a short buzzing sound, then the door swung open. Mick stood in the opening, Taser pointed at Justin’s chest.
I should rush him, I thought. He was so focused on Justin, I could run forward, throw all hundred and ten pounds of my body at the commando’s massive two-hundred-pound frame. If I hit him around the knees, he’d go down. Then Justin would charge forward and then…
Then there would be six more electronically controlled doors between us and freedom. We would’ve exchanged our cell for the prison dayroom. And we would’ve pissed off three armed men, one of them sporting a fang-baring cobra tattoo.
I shuddered. Another buzz. The heavy steel door closed and our daughter stood on the other side, next to the psycho commando. She didn’t look scared. She just stared at her father as if she’d never hated him so much.
“I am such an asshole,” Justin whispered.
I didn’t argue. I stepped up and presented my wrists through the slot.
MICK LINED US UP IN FRONT OF HIM. Still no sign of the other two commandos, so it was up to him to shepherd three bound prisoners out of the dayroom into the corridors of the abandoned prison. He didn’t seem nervous about his prospects. More like tense. He had the Taser held at his waist, pointing forward. The first time one of us flinched, he’d pull the trigger.
The moment we started walking, I knew I’d be the first one down. My legs shook uncontrollably, each step requiring more effort than the one before. It felt as if the atmosphere had taken on weight, until just getting my knee off the ground, my foot in the air, demanded a tremendous amount of energy. I was like a character in slow motion, barely churning my leg up, forward, down.
I stumbled, swaying right.
Mick didn’t pull the trigger, but caught my arm, shoved me forward.
I noticed that Justin and Ashlyn were now several steps ahead, a gap opening up in our group. They didn’t look back to check on me.
We arrived at the sally port. The first set of doors buzzed open, Big Brother always watching. Mick ushered us forward. When we were assembled inside the small portal, the first door rolled closed behind us; then, after a moment’s pause, a second door rolled open ahead of us.
Justin was looking up and to the right. I followed his gaze until I spotted a small electronic eye protruding from the corner. I wondered whether we should wave, or whether that would be childish.
We exited the sally port into a towering white corridor. At least two stories tall, with huge steel girders forming intersecting Vs above us. Keeping with the prison theme of soullessness, the floor was poured gray cement, the walls painted stark white and the windows, high above us, dark eerie panes of glass. Periodically, cement staircases protruded from the right side of the wall, leading to second-floor doorways.
“We’re behind the cell blocks,” Justin murmured. He looked at Mick, his gaze still challenging. “This is the exit hallway in case of fire. Hey, man. Tell us where we’re going. I’ll lead us there.”
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“Walk,” Mick ordered.
Justin and Ashlyn took the lead again. And I fell immediately behind once more, still trying to force my limbs to fight gravity. Arm swinging slowly forward. Knee raising slightly, trying to cycle ahead. The lights were bright. Bouncing off every hard white surface. While my head ached and my stomach cramped and I wanted to curl up in a ball in a cool dark place. I would cover my face with my hands. I would succumb, sinking down, down, down into a darkness without end.
“Move.”
Mick’s hand on my arm, shoving me forward. I stumbled, he tried to correct, I stumbled again.
Dimly, I was aware of Justin and Ashlyn, well ahead now. Justin had his arm around our daughter’s shoulders. His head was low. He was speaking in her ear.
I was the distraction, I realized. Mick had to tend to me. And while he and I tussled with my weak, uncoordinated limbs, Justin could lead our daughter out of here. He knew where he was, behind the cell blocks, he’d said, with three locked doors already behind us…
I tripped, almost went down. Mick grabbed my upper arm, dragging me upright and twisting me around till we stood mere inches apart, chest to chest, face to face. I stared into his crazy blue eyes, framed by his even crazier blond-and-black checkerboard hair.
“Walk, goddammit! You move, you perform, you work, or I’ll blow out your fucking brains myself.”
I wished I had my husband’s courage. I would’ve settled for my daughter’s bitterness. Instead, I smiled up at the crazy commando, watching his eyes widen in surprise.
His left hand, bruising my arm. His right hand, with the Taser, dangling forgotten by his side.
“Shhh,” I whispered at him.
“What the—”
“Shhh.”
Then, faster than I knew I could move, definitely faster than he thought I could move, I grabbed the Taser with my bound hands, twisted it between us and pulled the trigger.
It’s true what they say: The bigger they are, the harder they fall.
I would’ve liked to enjoy the moment more, except from up ahead, my daughter started to scream.
Z had materialized in the corridor. Big Brother always watching.
He had a Taser, too, except his was pointed at Justin, who was now on the ground, entire body jerking crazily. Ashlyn stood beside her father, her face clearly beseeching.
“Whatever you can do,” Z stated clearly from the other end of the hallway, “I can do better.”
At which point, he popped a cartridge out of the end of the Taser, turned deftly and dry fired into my daughter’s exposed forearm.
Ashlyn no longer screamed. Now she more like shrieked.
Her skin, blistering. I knew, because I bore the same burn mark on my upper thigh.
I released my Taser. It dropped to the ground. I stepped away from Mick’s convulsing form, putting space between myself and Z’s fallen comrade.
Much more slowly, Z lifted the Taser from my daughter’s pale skin. He stood, twenty feet away from me, holding up the Taser like a gunslinger, and I half expected him to purse his lips and blow the smoke from the end of the barrel.
Ashlyn was crying. She danced on her toes, bound hands dangling before her, as if that would help ease the pain. Justin had stopped twitching on the floor, but he didn’t immediately rise to his feet. My husband had been hit how many times in the past twenty-four hours? How many unfried brain cells could he have left?
“The background report did not indicate you would be a problem,” Z said, still looking at me. “Interesting.”
I wanted to jut out my chin at him. Yell at him for harming my child, torturing my husband. But the heaviness was back, an internal lethargy that would sink me yet. I tried to plant my feet, found myself swaying instead.
“Ashlyn…,” I might have whispered.
Except, suddenly, with an ear-splitting roar, Mick leapt to his feet, fists clenched, face enraged. In exactly half a second, his gaze found me, locked on target, and he charged.
I collapsed, trampled like a dandelion before a rampaging bull. He was bellowing, Ashlyn was screaming, and I could hear another voice, maybe Z, calling out something, but mostly I was trying to curl up, to tuck my head into my bound arms as Mick grabbed my hair, lifted my head and shoulders half off the floor, then slammed me back down onto the concrete.
Cracking. Maybe a rib. More likely my skull.
More screaming. More yelling, and then a strange sizzle and burn until I realized that Mick was off me, once more on the floor, once more convulsing wildly, except this time it was his own guy who stood above him, Z and his creepy cobra-tattooed head, pulling the trigger.
“Get. Yourself. Fucking. Under. Control.” Z released the trigger. Mick groaned audibly. “Do you hear me?”
“Y-y-yes.”
“Yes what?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I can’t hear you.”
“Yes, sir! Yes sir, yes sir, yes sir!”
“Fucking right. Up. Get your sorry ass to the control room. I’ll take things from here.”
Mick got up, staggered for a second, then marched down the corridor.
The moment he was halfway down the hall, Ashlyn rushed forward, dropping to her knees beside me.
“Mom, are you all right? Mom? Please?”
I felt her long hair against my cheek. Her own fingers, trying to push my lighter strands back so she could better see me.
“I just…need a minute.”
Z didn’t talk. He stood. After a few minutes, I was able to sit up, Ashlyn helping support me. Somewhere along the way, Justin had managed the same, his back propped against a wall, his legs splayed in front of him.
Our first attempt at rebellion. My ribs ached, my head ached, my leg burned. Ashlyn’s forearm sported a square of blistered flesh. Justin had yet to make it to his feet. The Denbe family had tried to take on the evil commandos, and the evil commandos had won.
As if reading my mind, Z looked down at me. “If you ever try that again,” he said firmly, “your daughter will pay the consequences. Whatever pain and damage you inflict, she will bear the cost twice over. Do you understand me?”
Slowly, aware of my pounding skull, I nodded.
“It’s okay, Mom,” Ashlyn said, and once again I was startled by the vehemence in her tone. “I don’t care. I hate you,” she spit out at Z, as if that should bother him. “I hate you, I hate you, I hate you!”
“Forget the money,” Justin spoke up behind us. “I will see you fucking killed for this. One day, sooner or later, you’re gonna take a bullet to the brain, and I’ll be the son of a bitch who put it there.”
Z merely snorted.
“Please,” he said, indicating for us to rise. “Mick has already picked out your graves, and Radar would kill his own mother if the price was right. Around here, I’m the best friend you got. On your feet. You still got chores to do.”
Chapter 17
TESSA CALLED ANITA BENNETT to arrange a meeting with the chief of operations at Denbe Construction. At this stage of the game, Tessa figured it was time to get a better sense of the core group of company officers who’d be called upon to handle the ransom demand, if/when it should occur.
As long as she was visiting Denbe’s worldwide headquarters, Tessa also decided to make a quick detour to the travel agency, located in the main lobby of the steel-and-chrome high-rise office building. Kate, Christy, Katie, the hairdresser had thought.
Sure enough, front desk, facing the double-wide glass doors, sat a fresh-faced brunette whose brass desk plate identified her as Kathryn Chapman. A younger Katie Holmes, Tessa thought, which was scary, as Katie Holmes was young enough.
Tessa would estimate the girl’s age at twenty, twenty-one. With perfect skin, warm brown eyes, and a positively beaming smile.
Tessa glanced at her watch. Fifteen minutes before she was due at Anita Bennett’s twelfth-floor office. She approached.
“Can I help you?” Kathryn Chapman greeted her.
“I
hope so. I’m here on behalf of Denbe Construction. I understand your firm handles their travel plans.”
“Absolutely. Are you a new employee?”
“You could say that. My first assignment is to track down the big boss, Justin Denbe. Do you happen to know where he’s traveling? Because he doesn’t seem to be at home this weekend.”
At the mention of Justin’s name, the girl’s smile didn’t falter. Some of the luster left her, though. She turned to the monitor on her desk, tapped her keyboard. “Let me see. And your name?”
“Tessa Leoni.”
“My name is Kate. Pleased to meet you, Tessa. When you have a moment, we have a basic travel worksheet for you to fill out. Covers your legal name, date of birth, frequent flier numbers, seating preferences, that sort of thing. Once we have all that info on file, we can better assist you with your travel arrangements.”
“Good to know.”
Kate turned back, frowning slightly. “I don’t show Mr. Denbe traveling this weekend. Perhaps he’s on a personal trip.”
“You only assist with his business travel?”
“We’re a corporate agency.”
“Huh. And you assist everyone at Denbe? I mean, I should just call you, instead of, say, Expedia.com?”
“I don’t know if Denbe has a specific policy, but, yes, we handle the majority of the travel arrangements. With no disrespect to Expedia, it’s nice to have a number to call should something go wrong, and we’re happy to be that number.”
“Can I use you for personal travel, too, or only business?”
“Many of Denbe’s employees use us for both.”
“But not Justin? You think maybe he made his own plans this weekend?”
“I… I don’t know.”
“You always the one who helps him? Or maybe someone else?”
“There aren’t assigned agents, if that’s what you mean. We all take turns helping everyone.”
The girl was withdrawing. Not deliberately rude, not yet. But her smile had dialed down a few notches. Inside her sharp navy blue blazer, her shoulders were starting to round, her body hunch.