While Justice Sleeps(108)
FORTY-FOUR
The phone fell from Avery’s nerveless fingers. What have I done? A single, devastating answer reverberated through her taut body. She’d protected everyone except the woman who gave her life. Because of her, Rita would die unless she killed the man she’d just fought to save.
She stared blindly at the carpet and marveled that her knees held her upright still. As if waiting for the cue, they gave way beneath her. Blackness encroached as she went down hard, her limp body doing nothing to stop the fall.
“Jared!” Ling caught and half dragged a trembling Avery to the sofa. Her light brown skin had gone chalky. Ling shifted to track her friend’s pulse. Way too fast, just like the stuttering breaths coming from lungs that sounded desperate for air. Plucking up Avery’s hand, Ling found the skin clammy, and the fingers moved restively in her hold. Ling diagnosed the basic symptoms of shock in a woman whose stoicism was rivaled by no one she’d ever known.
Jared knelt beside her, brushing her forehead with his fingers. “Who was on the phone, Avery?”
“He’s got her.” The admission escaped on a strangled whisper. She shuddered once, her throat a desert choked with sand. “He said they’ll kill her.”
He braced a hand at her shoulder, as much for stability as comfort. The fragments of the call came together. “Someone has taken your mother?”
“He said he had Rita. She was crying.” Avery could hear the crack of his hand against Rita’s cheek, and her eyes squeezed closed as she remembered the horror. “He hit her when she told me not to do it.”
Ling caught Jared’s look. “Not to do what, Avery?”
“Kill your father.” Didn’t I tell them already? The thought was distant, remote. Murder Justice Wynn to save Rita. Her entire body had gone numb, but not her mind. Her thoughts spun like a crazed pinwheel, retracing every step, every decision. Every mistake.
Why hadn’t she seen this coming and demanded more protection for Rita? When the FBI had failed to find her, she’d thought nothing of it. Nothing of her missing mother while she hunted for killers and protected a dead man.
“My fault. This is my fault.”
“Avery, focus.”
All Avery could hear were internal accusations, loud and damning. She’d sent her mother away the last time. Outside her apartment, when all Rita wanted was money. She’d sent her away and let them take her.
“Avery.” Jared framed her face to hold her attention. “You’re whispering. I can’t understand you. What exactly did they say to you?”
“They want me to kill him.” Stricken, she gripped his wrist in a vise. “If I don’t take Justice Wynn off life support by five p.m. tomorrow, they’ll kill her. Vance will kill my mother.”
Jared’s curse punctured the air as he sprang up from the sofa. A couple of strides carried him to the door. “Stay with her,” he told Ling. “I’ll call Agent Lee.”
“No!” Avery lunged from the couch, her eyes wild. “No FBI.”
“You can’t be serious.” Ling stood as well. “I know you’re terrified, Avery, but this isn’t the time for us to go it alone.”
“This is my mother’s life, Ling!”
The quiet, bald statement had Jared lifting his hand from the doorknob. “And my father’s. What are you going to do?”
Avery headed for the window that overlooked the cars streaming by on the interstate. Somewhere out there, beyond the twists of asphalt, men were holding her mother for a life’s ransom. Again, Rita’s sobs ripped through her, and she laid her forehead against the cool glass. “I don’t know.”
“We’ll get her back, Avery,” Jared said.
She lifted her gaze to meet Jared’s. Fresh guilt twisted. His father for her mother. “How?”
“I don’t know yet.”
Her brain swirled with recrimination and fear, doubling and redoubling on itself. She was missing something. She, who had made her way by always being able to outthink the others. Didn’t matter who. But now, when her mother’s life was at stake, she couldn’t hold a steady thought. Rita would die because of it. But Rita couldn’t die. She wouldn’t lose them both—Rita and Justice Wynn. Save them.
Then, suddenly, the solution dawned on her. She took another breath, this one steadying and determined. “I do know.” Her lips drew down into a flat, menacing line. Justice Wynn had picked her for a reason: because she was more than book-smart; she had street smarts. And she didn’t scare easy. Shoving aside the panic that still threatened to strangle her, Avery murmured, “I’ve got the documents. Leverage.”
Jared rejected the idea. “Even if you return the documents, there’s nothing to stop you from implicating Stokes later. They need my father off the bench so Stokes can name his replacement. Hold the Court hostage until he gets the votes he needs.”
“Which is why I know that killing Justice Wynn won’t get my mother back.” She spoke the truth aloud, acknowledging what had already occurred to Jared. “If they know I have proof, their only recourse is to finish all of us.”
Noah spoke for the first time: “The Chief as much as admitted that the Court wouldn’t move without you taking action. The president and Vance are desperate. They’ve got no choice but to come after us.”