Touch & Go (Tessa Leoni, #2)(91)

The promise of nine million dollars making him giddy? Or simply the joy of the final countdown? In twenty-four hours or less, this would all be over. We’d be gone, one way or another. Picked up by the police, or…killed by our captors? Maybe Mick wasn’t as excited about the possible payout as he was the opportunity to finally exact his revenge. I couldn’t picture Radar shooting us down in cold blood. But Mick, he would do it with gusto.

While Z would keep it quiet and quick. Nothing personal. All business.

I missed Radar. For one thing, my nausea was returning, not to mention a general sense of gloom and doom. Withdrawal symptoms, creeping up on me as insidiously as any black-clad commando. I needed a pill. Wanted a pill?

My beautiful orange prescription bottle. Two, three, four hydrocodone tablets. That lovely feeling of melting. The world slipping sideways, till no hard edges existed anymore. Don’t worry. Don’t overthink. Just go with the flow.

Fuck the methadone. I wanted real drugs.

We arrived at the commercial-grade kitchen. Mick spread his arm expansively.

“Liked the cinnamon buns,” he said. “Now go work some magic.”

I walked through the refrigeration unit and dry storage, trying to muster some enthusiasm, but mostly thinking I’d like to poison the whole lot of them. Undercooked hamburger? Improperly handled chicken? People got sick off meals all the time. Surely I could think of something.

Of course, we ate the same food. Meaning what would I gain in the end? Six people down with a GI bug? If our captors were incapacitated at all, most likely they’d leave us in our cell to rot. Maybe even postpone the ransom exchange. Earn us another night in this hellhole while they recovered.

No. No food poisoning. Comfort food. An iron-rich, carbo-loading, strength-building meal to fortify my own family, so that tomorrow, come game time, we’d be as ready as we could be.

I wanted hamburger, but couldn’t find it in the refrigerator. Funny, because I could’ve sworn I’d seen some this morning, when I’d grabbed the bacon for breakfast. Of course, they must’ve fed themselves lunch. Maybe they grilled up burgers?

I settled for cans of stew meat from the dry storage, then returned for a block of cheese, only to discover it was also gone. Sliced up to toss on their burgers?

My head ached. The stark overhead lights, bouncing off all the stainless steel, hurt my eyes. But I forced myself to contemplate both the walk-in pantry and the massive refrigeration unit. Both were definitely sparser. In fact, if I conjured up that very first meal of pasta and sauce, what I’d inventoried then versus now… Z and his team were either eating up a storm or…cleaning out.

Our captors were covering their tracks. Preparing for the end.

“Hello?” Mick called out, voice already threatening. I forced myself to return to work.

I set up Ashlyn with two cans of spinach. She promptly wrinkled her nose. I added canned corn, a jar of onions and canned carrots.

Mick gazed at me doubtfully. “That ain’t cinnamon rolls.”

“Quiche?” I asked him.

“Gesundheit,” he said.

“Shepherd’s pie it is.”

I put Justin in charge of making mashed potatoes from a box mix, while I dumped the stew meat into a skillet with olive oil and the drained pearl onions. It looked like dog food and smelled about as good. I reminded myself of the cold Hormel raviolis my mother and I used to eat from cans all those years ago. Of our elderly neighbor who did eat canned cat food because it was cheaper than tuna and she had to save as much money as she could in order to buy more vodka.

After Ashlyn had drained the vegetables, I had her add them to the stew meat. In the pantry, I found garlic powder and Worcestershire sauce. I added both liberally, while Ashlyn and Mick continued to wrinkle their noses.

Next I found a lasagna pan. Vegetables and stew meat on the bottom. Instant mashed potatoes, dotted with butter, spread on top. The pan went into the oven and I set about making rolls while Justin did the dishes and Ashlyn set the table.

“Seriously?” Mick asked me.

“Seriously what?”

“That…food.”

I shrugged. “Fresh hamburger and potatoes would be better, but you work with what you got.”

“That’s disgusting.”

“Don’t eat it.”

“Hey, I’ve lived on MREs. I can eat that slop.”

“Then don’t complain.”

“What is this, housewife warfare?”

“Sure. Now, be nice, or next time, I’ll dust you.”

Mick laughed. Which might have made me feel better, except his eyes were too bright and the laugh too long and in the end, Ashlyn moved closer to her father while I switched to the other side of the prep table to roll out the dough.

Compared with the morning’s cinnamon roll fest, my makeshift shepherd’s pie was greeted with considerably less enthusiasm. But as Mick had said, soldiers were used to low standards.

Mick filled half his plate with a look that said he’d eat it all just to spite me. Z inspected the layers with a scientist’s cool-eyed study, then shrugged and dug in. A plate was set aside for Radar, then my family had their turn. Justin took easily as much as Mick. Ashlyn sighed heavily and delicately scooped out just enough to feed a bird.

“Spinach.” She shuddered.

“Iron,” I corrected my daughter, who’d started her day with massive blood loss.