Love You More (Tessa Leoni, #1)(100)

The older woman appeared confused. “Surely you don’t have questions for Tina right now,” she said softly. “At least give my daughter a day or two—”

“She called us, ma’am,” D.D. said.

“What?”

“We’re here because she asked us to come,” D.D. reiterated. “If you could just let her know Sergeant Detective D. D. Warren is here, we don’t mind waiting outside.”

Actually, she and Bobby preferred outside. Whatever Tina had for them was the kind of thing best not shown in front of witnesses.

Minutes passed. Just when D.D. was beginning to think that Tina had changed her mind, the woman appeared. Her face was haggard, her eyes red-rimmed from weeping. She wore a fluffy pink bathrobe, the top clutched closed with one hand. In the other, she held a plain white catalog-sized envelope.

“Do you know who killed my husband?” she asked.

“No, ma’am.”

Tina Lyons thrust the envelope toward D.D. “That’s all I want to know. I mean it. That’s all I want to know. Find that out, and we’ll speak again.”

She retreated back to the tenuous comfort of her family and friends, leaving D.D. and Bobby on the front stoop.

“She knows something,” Bobby said.

“She suspects,” D.D. corrected quietly. “She doesn’t want to know. I believe that was the whole point of her statement.”

D.D. clutched the envelope with gloved hands. She looked around the snowy driveway. After midnight in a quiet residential area, the sidewalk studded with streetlights, and yet pools of darkness loomed everywhere.

She felt suddenly conspicuous and overexposed.

“Let’s go,” she muttered to Bobby.

They moved carefully down the street toward their parked car. D.D. carried the envelope in her gloved hands. Bobby carried his gun.


Ten minutes later, they’d conducted basic evasive maneuvers around a maze of Allston-Brighton streets. Bobby was content no one had followed them. D.D. was dying to know the contents of the envelope.

They found a convenience store buzzing with college students, not deterred by either the weather or the late hour. The cluster of vehicles made their Crown Vic less conspicuous, while the students provided plenty of eyewitnesses to deter ambush.

Satisfied, D.D. exchanged her winter gloves for a latex pair, then worked the flap of the envelope, easing it carefully open in order to preserve evidence.

Inside, she found a dozen five-by-seven color photos. The first eleven appeared to be of Shane Lyons’s family. Here was Tina at the grocery store. There was Tina walking into a building holding a yoga mat. Here was Tina picking up the boys from school. There were the boys, playing on the school playground.

It didn’t take a rocket scientist to get the message. Someone had been stalking Shane’s family and that person wanted him to know about it.

Then D.D. came to the last photo. She sucked in her breath, while beside her, Bobby swore.

Sophie Leoni.

They were staring at Sophie Leoni, or rather, she was staring directly at the camera, clutching a doll with one mangled blue button eye. Sophie’s lips were pressed together, the way a child might do when trying hard not to cry. But she had her chin up. Her blue gaze seemed to be trying for defiance, though there were streaks of dirt and tears on her cheeks and her pretty brown hair now looked like a rat’s nest.

The photo was cropped close, providing only the hint of wood paneling in the background. Maybe a closet or other small room. A windowless dark room, D.D. thought. That’s where someone would imprison a child.

Her hand started to tremble.

D.D. flipped over the photo, looking for other clues.

She found a message scrawled in black marker: Don’t Let This Be Your Kid, Too.

D.D. flipped the photo back over, took one more look at Sophie’s heart-shaped face, and her hands now shook so badly she had to set the photo on her lap.

“Someone really did kidnap her. Someone really did …” Then her next jumbled thought. “And it’s been more than three f*cking days! What are our odds of finding her after three f*cking days!”

She whacked the dash. The blow stung her hand and didn’t do a thing to dampen her rage.

She whirled on her partner. “What the f*ck is going on here, Bobby? Who the f*ck kidnaps one police officer’s child, while threatening the family of a second officer? I mean, who the hell does that?”

Bobby didn’t answer right away. His hands were clutching the steering wheel, and all his knuckles had turned white.

“What did Tina say when she called?” he demanded suddenly. “What were Shane’s instructions to her?”

“If something happened to him, she was to give this envelope to me.”

“Why you, D.D.? With all due respect, you’re a Boston cop. If Shane needed help, wouldn’t he turn to his own friends in uniform, his supposed brothers in blue?”

D.D. stared at him. She remembered the first day of the case, the way the state police had closed ranks, even against her, a city cop. Then her eyes widened.

“You don’t think …” she began.

“Not that many criminals have the cajones to threaten one, let alone two, state troopers. But another cop would.”

“Why?”

“How much is missing from the troopers’ union?”