Touch & Go (Tessa Leoni, #2)(113)

Each word became harder and harder to find. Each question took longer and longer to answer. A tunnel formed in my vision, with the light very far away.

The EMTs came for me, too. They sat me in the back of an ambulance, taking my vitals, fussing over my low blood pressure, the abrasions on the palms of my hands. But I wasn’t seriously hurt. That was the irony. I was detoxing and shocky and traumatized, but strictly speaking, I didn’t suffer from a single incapacitating injury.

The last look on my husband’s face. The grim determination bracketing his mouth as Justin went at Mick head-on. The blade, that huge, serrated blade, sinking into my husband’s chest. He’d said he would keep Ashlyn and me safe, and in so many ways, Justin had always been a man of his word.

My modern-day caveman. Incapable of being faithful to me. But willing to die for me instead.

The EMTs cut me loose with instructions to follow up with my doctor for a full detox regimen. One of the medics already appeared skeptical, as if he’d met too many others like me, and already doubted my success.

I missed Radar. I didn’t have to explain myself to him. He knew all my deepest, darkest secrets and none of them had shocked him.

Ashlyn finally emerged from the back of the ambulance. A medic was offering his hand, but she climbed down on her own. I watched my daughter cross the parking lot toward me, fifteen years old, chin up, shoulders back. She hurt. I could feel her pain radiating from her. But she walked, step by resolute step, her father’s daughter, and that made me ache all over again.

She arrived and the feds pounced. We were ushered into the back of a black sedan, and with an impressive line of law enforcement vehicles in tow, we sped away.


OUR DESTINATION WAS the county sheriff’s department conference room, where we met a whole group of county, state and federal officers who needed to ask us some questions. Because our kidnappers were still out there, a blond FBI agent explained, and time was of the essence, and surely we wanted to help catch these terrible men, let alone recover our loved one’s body.

Justin’s body. I wondered if even now Z and Mick were tossing him into a ditch.

The sheriff’s detective was there, the one who’d first arrived at the prison and brought us blankets. I focused on him, because even though the crisp-talking blond FBI agent—Adams?—was the one who seemed to be running the show, Officer Wyatt had a steady demeanor I needed right now.

I noticed the investigator, Tessa Leoni, was beside him, both of their expressions carefully neutral. I thought she stood closer to him than strictly necessary. And I thought they both held themselves slightly apart from the rest of the room, as if they wanted it understood up front that they were only part of the circus, not the ones running the show.

Ashlyn wanted food. A deputy disappeared, returning shortly with a stack of take-out menus. She shook her head, asked if they had a vending machine. Two Snickers bars, two bags of potato chips and one can of Diet Coke later, my teenager was happy.

I went with coffee. And water. And a trip to the bathroom, where I washed my hands and rinsed my face over and over again.

When I stood up and confronted the face in the mirror, I had to pause, touch my own reflection with a trembling hand, because truly a woman who appeared that gaunt, that exhausted, that old couldn’t be me. The hollows beneath my cheeks. The bruises beneath my eyes. The sheer fatigue etched into each line of my face.

I had failed that woman. I had not taken care of her. And here I was, maybe exactly where I deserved to be.

When I opened the bathroom door, Tessa was standing in the hall, obviously waiting for me. She smiled faintly, as if she knew exactly what I’d just done, the thoughts that had gone through my head.

“It gets better,” she murmured. “Even if it doesn’t feel that way right now, eventually you will feel like something more than a shadow of your former self.”

“How do you know?”

“My husband was killed two years ago. I almost lost my daughter as well. Her name is Sophie, and she’s been very worried about your family. She told me to look for you in cold, dark places, and bring you hot chocolate and chocolate chip cookies.”

I smiled faintly. “I could use some hot chocolate.”

“Does Ashlyn have a boyfriend?”

I shook my head, no longer surprised by any question. “Not that Justin and I knew.”

“The pregnancy was a surprise?”

“We only figured it out when she miscarried in prison. My family…we haven’t been doing so well, even before this happened.”

She seemed to accept that. “The medic person helped her?”

“Yes.”

“You like him. You speak of him with respect.”

I shrugged, feeling, ironically, as if I was betraying Radar’s trust. “He took care of us when we needed him. I respect that.”

“Did you like the other two as well?”

Immediately I shuddered. Not when I thought of Z. Even with the cobra tattoo, there was something commanding about him, an admirable quality of extreme self-control. On the other hand: “Mick, the one with the checkerboard hair, I don’t think he’s sane. He promised to hurt me, but only after hurting Ashlyn first.”

“So if he was in the military,” Tessa said out loud, “maybe not honorably discharged?”

I nodded, understanding now where she was going with this.