Touch & Go (Tessa Leoni, #2)(96)

“Fifteen to twenty years,” Tessa murmured.

“Predates Chris Lopez,” Wyatt said.

“Predates most of us,” Ruth commented. “Except…” She wouldn’t meet their eyes anymore. She picked up her glass, swallowed the last of her wine. Her hand was still trembling, the misery once more etched into her face.

A longtime employee. One who’d have access and authority. Also, by virtue of being one of the only females in a predominantly male business, possibly even a close personal friend of the CFO.

Anita Bennett. Denbe Construction’s current COO and Dale Denbe’s former mistress.





Chapter 34


I DOZED OFF, dreaming of a long hot shower. I stood in my own bathroom, custom glass doors steaming up as I let the hot spray cascade down my naked body. Then, lathering up with my favorite shampoo. Watching thick white suds slide down my arm, chasing away the salt-encrusted itch of my own sweat and grime.

In my dream, I could feel my skin sloughing away, like an exoskeleton to be shed. Prison bars, cinder-block walls, hard concrete floors. I watched their remnants dissolve into a faint gray crumble, then wash down the drain.

If I stopped, looked down the drain, I knew I would see Mick’s face. Radar. Z. They were gone, melted like Dorothy’s Wicked Witch and now spiraling down the bowels of Boston’s sewer system where they belonged.

But I didn’t stop. Didn’t want to look. To seek them out would be to resurrect evil. And this was my dream, my shower. Where the soap smelled liked fresh-picked oranges, and I was no longer in my Back Bay town house, but on a beach in Key West, where I would emerge from the bathroom to find my husband waiting in bed, wearing nothing but cool white sheets tangled around his long, lean body.

Oranges. He would feed me oranges. The promise of pleasure.

The taste of my pain.

My shower changed. The water disappeared. Pills sprayed out instead. Hundreds, thousands of long, oblong tablets. Hydrocodone. My precious painkillers, returning to me. Complete with orange-colored bottles, of course.

The promise of pleasure.

The taste of my pain.

I fell to my knees on the hard tile, and let the pills bury me.


I JERKED AWAKE, my eyes momentarily blinded by the overhead lights. I blinked, feeling my heart race in my chest. Justin was standing in front of the cell door. I must have made a noise for he was staring at me.

“You okay?” he asked.

Funny question coming from a man whose face looked like a badly beaten side of beef with one eye still completely swollen shut.

“Ashlyn?” I asked.

“Asleep, top bunk.”

I gave him a look, and Justin double-checked. He nodded, confirming Ashlyn was definitely sleeping. Seemed like lately our daughter had become very good at faking it.

I got up, crossed to the stainless steel sink and attempted to get a sip of water.

“Why is the water pressure so lousy?” I asked, if only to break the silence.

“Big building, demanding many miles of pipes to bring the water from there to here. Installing a more efficient system would cost more money, except, for what?” Justin shrugged. “Inmates got nothing better to do than wait.”

He crossed to me, rubbing the back of my neck, like he used to do once upon a time.

“I dreamed of a shower,” I murmured. “A long hot shower with unlimited soap.”

He smiled. “I smell that bad?”

“No worse than me.”

“It’ll be over soon, Libby. This time, tomorrow, you can be showering all you like.”

I wanted to believe him. Could use the reassurance. And yet…

“Shouldn’t you be sleeping?” I asked. “You know, conserving your strength?”

“Tried. Can’t get used to the narrow bunk. Or maybe it’s the tight walls.”

“You’re not cut out for hard time?”

“Nope. I just build ’em. Me, I’m all about wide-open spaces.”

He was. Cold, rainy, snowy, miserable, it never mattered to Justin. He was always happiest outdoors.

“Has Ashlyn been sleeping?” I asked.

“Like a baby,” he said, then, a second later, the irony of the comment hit him, and he grimaced, stepping back.

I looked away. If it was hard for a mother to realize that her teenage daughter was sexually active, it had to be excruciating for a father. Especially for Justin, who’d placed her in an ivory tower from her first moment of birth. Daddy’s little princess. His perfect girl.

I wondered which was worse, his horror or his hurt.

“Did you know?” he asked now, voice hushed. “I mean, even suspect?”

I shook my head.

“She hasn’t mentioned a boy’s name? Been spending more time out, buying new clothes… I don’t know, doing what teenage girls do when being stupid about a boy?”

“What are you going to do, Justin? Load a shotgun?”

“Maybe!”

“I didn’t know.”

“But—”

“Did you?” I kept my voice even. “You’re her father. Did you suspect anything?”

He scowled, shifted uncomfortably. “Of course not. But I’m the dad. Fathers… We don’t get these things. We can’t look at our daughters that way.”