Lethal Ransom

by Laurie Alice Eakes

  Kristen felt an odd urge to ask Gina if her husband came home to dinner when he said he would, unlike her brother.

  “Are you going to introduce me to your guest?” Gina asked.

  “This is Kristen Lang.” Nick stepped back so Kristen could precede him into the house.

  The door opened directly into a living room with lovely hardwood floors and big windows sheltered from view of buildings too close by draping greenery inside and out. An archway led into a small dining room and kitchen beyond, where a man was rounding the corner from a hallway, leaning on a cane, though he was probably the same age as Gina.

  Nick’s brother-in-law, the former cop. Kristen guessed all she needed to know. Wounded on the job. Left for security analysis work.

  She offered him a smile.

  “I’m old-fashioned enough to ask if we can call you Kristen?” he asked, returning her smile.

  Despite lines of pain on his face, he appeared as welcoming as his wife.

  Tears pricked Kristen’s eyes for the show of kindness from these strangers. She swallowed twice before she could speak. “Please do.”

  “I should have asked if it’s all right.” Nick rubbed his chin with his knuckles. “I just associate Lang with your mother.”

  The knowledge shouldn’t have bothered her, but it did. Once more, her powerful mother overshadowed her.

  Her powerful mother who may have been forced to scream. Her powerful father who hadn’t answered his phone when she’d called.

  She should call him again. She now knew his number by heart, she had made sure of it once she had her phone in her hands again. She wanted to be able to call her father even if Nick or anyone else held her phone again.

  “Let me show you to a room and then you can have something to eat, and rest.” Gina touched Kristen’s arm. “Do you have anything to wear other than that dress?”

  Kristen shook her head. “I haven’t been home. I live in the western suburbs.”

  “And there are now marshals there,” Nick added. “And at her mother’s house.”

  Kristen startled, though she knew she should have figured this out. Law enforcement would be waiting to see if anyone tried to reach them.

  “You’re taller than I am, but I can find you something that’ll work.”

  In no time, Gina found sweatpants and a T-shirt and left Kristen to wash and change.

  Self-conscious among these strangers, Kristen made herself more presentable, then moved to the end of the hallway and stood at the opening to the kitchen. Gina was setting the table. Her husband was already seated there with an iPad propped beside a mug in front of him. Nick was nowhere to be seen.

  “Come in, Kristen,” Gina said without looking up. “I have lasagna heating and here’s a salad.”

  Kristen wanted to say she wasn’t hungry. Her stomach was knotted like a pretzel. But she needed to eat. If she had to run, she should have fuel.

  She moved toward the table. “Where’s Nick?”

  “Securing the perimeter.” Sean glanced from his iPad. “It’ll make our tenants angry to have to use their key cards on the gate, but we need to keep you safe.”

  “We have cameras all around the property,” Gina added. “This is mostly a safe neighborhood, but one never knows nowadays.” She pulled a roasting dish from the oven.

  Despite her knotted stomach, Kristen’s mouth watered at the aroma of garlic and melted cheese.

  “Tell Nick to get in here,” Gina told her husband.

  Sean tapped the screen of his tablet. “He’s on the porch talking on the phone.”

  “Phone?” Kristen pushed away from the table and hobbled to the door as fast as her feet allowed. She started to yank open the door, then wondered if Nick would stop talking if she did, so she leaned against the panel instead and tried to hear the conversation on the other side.

  “Yes, of course I have her phone.” He sounded impatient. “No, I won’t let her—”

  A passing motorcycle drowned his words.

  “Let me know if anything comes in on the judge’s phone, of course.” The next remark was clear. “I’ll tell her tomorrow.”

  Kristen yanked open the door. “You’ll tell me what tomorrow?”

  Nick grimaced and slipped the phone into his pocket. “I’m hoping it’ll be a moot point tomorrow. Now let’s eat.”

  “You don’t trust me?” Kristen persisted.

  Nick said nothing.

  “I’m useless to you if you don’t trust me.”

  “It’s my job to be cautious.” Nick’s voice was soft, almost tender, his words as good as an answer confirming her suspicions.

  Kristen bowed her head. “I’m a disappointment to my parents.”

  The confession slipped out, something she would never have admitted to a stranger under normal circumstances.

  “I doubt—”

  “Stop.” Kristen held up a staying hand. “I don’t want platitudes about how you’re sure that’s not true.”

  “Are you two coming before this food gets cold and the cheese dries to dust?” Gina called from the dining room.

  Kristen slipped past Nick and headed for a meal she believed she didn’t want. But when she sat before the plate of lasagna, a crisp salad and crusty bread, she discovered she was hungry. While conversation flowed between Nick, his sister and brother-in-law, light banter over baseball scores and an anecdote about one of their nephews, Kristen kept silent, listened and ate. Then, halfway through the meal, she wondered if her mother was getting fed anything, and Kristen’s appetite fled. With care, she set her fork on the side of her plate and dropped her hands to her lap.

  “Have enough?” Gina asked.

  Kristen nodded.

  “Then feel free to go to your room,” Gina said.

  Everyone wished Kristen good-night. She stumbled down the hallway, readied herself for bed and slid between the sheets. She took the time to pray for Mom’s safety, then began to wonder how she would learn what the kidnappers wanted. How would she get her phone back from Nick? They had called her on it twice now. They might call her on it again. They wanted her.

  Why? Why? Why?

  She needed her client records. All of them, not just the ones she had been working on so they were on her computer. Along mundane lines, she needed clothes to wear that fit. She needed to be on her own and not watched every minute.

  She needed sleep, but it eluded her beyond short intervals. She drifted off, then a memory, a dream, perhaps a sound from outside, jerked her awake to lie listening to the hiss of the cooled air through the vent overhead and a distant siren.

  At last, with the waking of birds and increase of street noise, she gave up trying to sleep. She made herself as presentable as she could and slipped down the hall to the kitchen. Sean sat at the dining table, again with an iPad and cup of coffee in front of him. He smiled at her and indicated the coffee carafe beside him and mugs on the kitchen counter. Kristen grabbed a mug and started for the carafe. Sean swiped the screen of the tablet, but not before Kristen read the blazing headlines on the news app.

  “Federal Judge Kidnapped”

  “Daughter’s Involvement Suspected”

  * * *

  Nick saw Kristen sway as he entered the kitchen. In a bound, he grasped her shoulders. “Are you okay?”

  “Okay? Of course I’m not okay.” She jabbed her finger toward Sean’s iPad and the glaring headline. “What’s that mean? How can I be a suspect in my own mother’s kidnapping?”

  “I don’t know. No one bothered to tell me...anything...” He trailed off as his phone rang.

  He pulled it from his pocket. Callahan. His boss didn’t wait for Nick to say hello before he began talking.

  “If you haven’t seen the morning news, don’t turn it on. I don’t want her to see—”

  “Too late, sir.” Rea
lizing he still rested one hand on Kristen’s shoulder, Nick backed away. “What’s going on?”

  “We don’t know. We had nothing to do with this.” Callahan sounded tired and frustrated, rather like Nick felt. “But whoever planted this with journalists is no petty criminal. We’re dealing with people with power.”

  “Why would they want people to think I’m a suspect?” Kristen demanded, apparently able to hear Callahan through the phone.

  “We don’t know,” Callahan answered. “But I think it’s all the more reason why she needs to be someplace safer than your sister’s house. These people have a plan they’re not letting us in on.”

  “And you’re not going to leave me out of it when they do,” Kristen said, drowning out Callahan’s next words.

  Nick held up his free hand and slipped into Sean’s home office, where he could close the door. “We can’t force her to go, sir.”

  “We can go along with the suspect angle and lock her up.”

  “You can only hold her for twenty-four hours unless you can arrest her, and there’s no cause for her to be under arrest.”

  Callahan growled.

  “Let’s stick with the current plan, sir. I have her phone. If anyone calls, I’ll give it to her to answer and monitor the call.”

  “I’m counting on you not to fail, Sandoval.” Callahan was back to sounding weary.

  Nick said goodbye and returned to the dining room to find Kristen seated at the table, her chin resting in her hands and a cup of untouched coffee before her. Her eyes, such a beautiful blue, appeared a little glassy, as though she stared into the distance beyond the greenery and brick wall outside the windows. Sean and his tablet were gone, but singing inside the master bathroom suggested Gina was awake and ready to join them.

  “May I have some of this coffee?” Nick picked up the carafe to see if it held anything.

  Kristen shrugged, then removed her elbows from the table and sat up. “My mother would be appalled to see me with my elbows on the table.”

  “You’re not eating, so we’ll let it slip.” Nick offered her a smile.

  She didn’t respond.

  “But you’re about to eat,” Nick continued. “Gina’s awake, and her life is centered around feeding people.”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “I mean literally. She’s a professional chef.”

  Kristen’s eyes flicked to the rather small kitchen, and one eyebrow arched.

  “They like living in the city close to work, so this is the sacrifice she makes.”

  “A gnat-sized kitchen.” Gina blew into the kitchen on a cloud of steam, her hair curling from the band holding it in a ponytail. “But I still make the best omelet you’ll ever eat. What do you want in it? And don’t tell me you’re not hungry.”

  “I am,” Nick said.

  “May I have my phone?” Kristen held out her hand. “I need to try my father again.”

  Nick pulled her phone from his pocket, ready for the fight. “What’s his number. I’ll put it in for you.”

  “I can’t make my own phone calls?” Kristen narrowed her eyes, intensifying their blue.

  “I’m afraid not.”

  “Because I’m a suspect?”

  “Not to our knowledge, and we should know if you were since you’re in our custody.”

  She flinched visibly at that word.

  “Protection,” Nick corrected himself. “Someone fed that information to the media, and we don’t know who or why.”

  “To make me less sympathetic.” She rose and began to pace between the front door and the dining room archway. “I’ve seen this with victims before. The other party tries to assassinate their character to make whatever happened to them appear less horrendous.”

  “I’ve never even asked. Are you a lawyer too?”

  “On the contrary. I’m a social worker, a victims’ advocate to be precise. I know what happens to those harmed by crimes and how too many others treat them. You know—the spouse who’s abused is accused of neglecting her husband or being a terrible mother. The college girl who’s assaulted has loose morals. My mother is kidnapped and saves me from the same fate, and I’m accused of being involved so I am a terrible person who doesn’t deserve to have anyone care about what happens to me if these men get to me.”

  Nick gazed at her in awe. Despite her borrowed and ill-fitting clothes, her hair pulled up in a messy ponytail, she looked rather magnificent striding about his sister’s house. The longer she talked, the straighter her shoulders grew, emphasizing her graceful height. Her strides lengthened. Her eyes shone like Lake Michigan in full sunlight.

  He had thought her pretty the day before. At that moment, to him, she was possibly the most beautiful woman he had ever seen.

  Which scared him more than any criminal ever had.

  If Gina hadn’t entered the room at that moment carrying plates filled with omelets and fresh fruit, Nick might have run for the nearest hills, something not easy to find in the flat Midwest.

  “Orange juice and fresh coffee coming up.” Gina set the plates on the table. “Eat. They’re avocado, bacon and cheese.”

  “They look amazing.” Kristen slid onto her chair and picked up a fork.

  “You’d better eat,” Nick told her. “Gina might force-feed you otherwise.”

  “I’d better eat if I—” She stopped talking and speared a strawberry.

  Nick waited for her to finish her sentence, while he dug into his own breakfast. She never did continue, but ate with mechanical precision like someone fueling a machine rather than enjoying every tasty bite.

  Fueling a machine. A machine that might have to run at any moment.

  “Don’t do it, Kristen,” Nick said.

  “Don’t do what?” Her face was too innocent, too bland.

  Nick frowned. “Don’t even think about running away.”

  “I can’t. You won’t let me take my phone and then I won’t know where they took my mom.”

  Too quick, too pat an answer.

  She was up to something. Or she was thinking about doing something. He rubbed the back of his neck as though he truly possessed hairs there that could stand like a dog’s hackles. He needed to watch her every move. As much as possible, he wouldn’t allow her to be alone, and he wouldn’t let her phone out of his sight.

  As though she sensed his distrust, Kristen rose, her plate in hand. “I’ll take your dishes too. Gina shouldn’t have to clean up as well as cook.”

  “I never clean up,” Gina called from the kitchen.

  Nick rose and entered the room with Kristen. His sister stood at the counter chopping fresh herbs. “The fallback of all working women—a slow cooker.” Gina flashed them a smile. “This should be ready by six o’clock. I’ll be home by ten.”

  “Just tell me what else needs to be done,” Kristen said. “I’m not restaurant kitchen caliber, but I’m a pretty good cook anyway.”

  The women began rattling off ingredients and instructions. Nick slid onto a stool at the breakfast bar and listened and watched. He wasn’t a bad chef himself, thanks to his mom and sister, but Kristen seemed to relax under Gina’s warmth and care, unlike how she was with him—distant and tense.

  Gina left Kristen caramelizing onions and slipped into Sean’s office.

  Nick rose. “What can I do to help?”

  “Tuck those herbs under the skin of the chicken?” Kristen flicked a glance to the sliced chicken on a cutting board and then to where he had left their cells side by side on the bar.

  He expected her to ask him something about her situation, but she turned back to the fragrant onions. “Don’t they have children?” Her voice was barely audible. “Or is it none of my business?”

  “We’re a pretty open family, so I can tell you. Gina can’t have kids, so they’re waiting to adopt now that Sean’s bu
siness is doing well.”

  “That’s wonderful. I mean about adopting.” She stirred the onions with too much vigor, sending a few pieces to sizzle on the stove top. “So you have two older sisters?”

  “And brothers.” Nick wrinkled his nose and began to tuck the chopped herbs beneath the chicken skin, trying not to feel the rubbery texture of the raw meat. “I’m the baby.”

  “Better than being the only.”

  “Uh-huh. Do you want to trade jobs?”

  She glanced at him. “What’s wrong?”

  “I hate the feel of raw meat.”

  “Seriously?” She laughed, a genuine ripple of humor straight from her lungs. “You didn’t flinch when you saw my bloody feet, but raw chicken makes you squeamish?”

  “Yep. I fully admit it.”

  And the weakness was worth it to hear that laugh. The sound warmed the overly air-conditioned room.

  “Okay, we’ll trade.”

  Nick washed his hands probably longer than necessary, then took over the sautéing. “How are your feet?”

  “They’re improved, but I wish I had a good pair of flip-flops, something thick and soft.” She looked at her phone. “Any chance we can go to my house so I can get some clothes of my own?”

  “Maybe someone can bring you some.” Nick turned off the flame and scraped the onions into a waiting bowl.

  “The idea of a stranger going through my things doesn’t make me happy, but if it’s the only way...” She fell silent for a moment, glaring at him. “They already have, haven’t they?”

  “There could have been clues.” He defended the agency’s actions.

  “And you wonder why the media called me a suspect when you’re treating me like one?” She began to throw the chicken pieces into the slow cooker with more vigor than necessary.

  “I’m sorry.” He didn’t know what else to say.

  She knew the action was necessary.

  “I’ll get someone to bring you clothes. Do you want to make a list? I can email it.”