Touch & Go (Tessa Leoni, #2)(61)

They died, leaving behind the kind of void that is never filled, a relentless ache that follows an abandoned child throughout her entire life. And I stood alone, a pillar of brittle strength until the day I met Justin. Wonderful, gorgeous, larger-than-life Justin. Who swept me off my feet and made me feel beautiful and loved and desired beyond all reason. And now we were living happily ever after, the king and queen of Camelot.

I think I might have started giggling. Maybe I laughed until I cried, because the next thing I knew, my daughter was once again in focus and this time Ashlyn’s face was frightened, and she kept saying, “Please Mom, please Mom, please Mom,” and that shamed me all over again.

I was supposed to take care of my daughter, not the other way around. I was supposed to keep her safe.

Radar reappeared. He did not look at me. He did not speak to my daughter.

He had another handful of pills.

These ones got the job done. My aches and pains disappeared. The dark void whittled down, down, down. My panting, shivering and sweating stopped.

My body stilled.

I slept.

After a bit, my daughter curled up on the floor beside me. This time with her arm around my waist, her face pressed against my hair.

She slept, too.

For a moment.


THE CELL DOOR EXPLODED OPEN. The first armored beetle rushed in, screaming and yelling and wielding his mattress, jerking us once again from slumber to full alertness.

The beetle whacked us with his mattress. Yelled at us to get up, up, up.

On the floor, my daughter’s arm tightened around my waist. I wrapped my fingers around her hand and held on tight.

Don’t let her go don’t let her go don’t let her go. She is mine they cannot have her.

More screaming, more yelling, more whacking.

Mick, finally releasing his shield, grabbing Ashlyn’s shoulders, trying to physically yank her up off the floor. Me, gripping tighter. Him, pulling, pulling, pulling, so relentlessly, freakishly strong.

Our hands parted, Ashlyn’s fingers slipping through mine.

Mick lifted her away from me.

I staggered to my feet and kicked him in the balls.

More protective padding, but maybe not foolproof. Mick fell back, released Ashlyn, considered me instead. This time, I kicked his knee, then rained feeble, kitten-like blows at his kidney. I had virtually no strength, could barely stand, but I didn’t pause. I just kicked and hit and hit and kicked, until he finally fumbled for his mattress shield and Ashlyn bolted away, up onto the top bunk, where she formed a crouch, as if preparing to launch at him.

Suddenly, a fresh set of hands, huge, ungodly strong, lifted me off the floor and held me in midair. Ashlyn’s eyes went wide in her face.

Z stating quietly, his voice an inch from my ear: “Mick, you are a f*cking waste of human DNA. Stop dicking around and get the job done.”

Mick didn’t reach for Ashlyn, but huffed out of the cell.

Z set me back down, his hands still holding me firmly in place. His next command was directed at my daughter: “You. Sit.”

She sat.

Then Mick returned, except this time he wasn’t alone. He shoved Justin before him, my husband stumbling toward the nearest bunk, grabbing for the metal frame to support himself.

Z released my shoulders, and as quickly as they’d come, both men disappeared.

Justin looked up, his formerly handsome face now beaten nearly beyond recognition.

“Libby,” he whispered. “Libby. I was wrong. We have…to get…out of here.”

Then, my husband collapsed into a bloody heap upon the floor.





Chapter 23


WYATT COULDN’T SLEEP. He didn’t mind sleep. Had nothing against it. But tonight, after a long investigative day tackling a high-stakes case, his brain wouldn’t shut up. He lay in the moderately priced hotel Kevin had found using the modern miracle of their vehicle’s built-in navigation system, and his brain was running a mile a minute.

His current 2:00 A.M. musing: Why a whole family?

So far, most theories of the case had to do with financial gain. After all, Justin Denbe was a wealthy man, heading an even bigger dollar corporation. A guy like that gets Tasered and abducted from his elite Boston brownstone, money was the first thing that sprang to mind.

According to his company, he carried an insurance policy making him worth a cool two mil—hard to argue with that. And looking at the company itself—going through a difficult industry transition, maybe some infighting among the management team—you could see where a key player might perceive gain if Justin didn’t show up for a bit. Hell, maybe a good old-fashioned kidnapping would sour Justin on the whole business. He’d step aside permanently, allowing either the old guard, or the new blood, to take over the reins and move the business triumphantly into the full glory of design, build, operate.

Whatever.

Wyatt wasn’t into businesses. He was into people. Case like this, no matter where you started, would never end up being about P and Ls. It would be about people, what made them tick, and what made some of them tick differently.

Which brought him back to his first thought: Best they could tell, there were a couple of lucrative reasons for kidnapping Justin Denbe, but why his whole family?

Kidnapping three was tricky. For one thing, you immediately added coconspirators in crime, and if there was a coconspirator out there who could keep a secret, a prison official hadn’t met him yet. Second, the logistics increased exponentially. Transportation—now you had multiple perpetrators and multiple victims. Hell, getting from point A to point B was no longer neat and discreet, but involved a regular party boat. Might as well rent a stretch limo and call it a day.