Touch & Go

by Lisa Gardner

  All in all, Lopez couldn’t think of a single reason the family would willingly disappear. The firm’s finances were a bit thin, but in their industry, that was typical enough. And, no, Justin hadn’t seemed particularly stressed or angry or irrational. Hell, they were working hand in hand on a major RFP to repair an aging nuclear power plant, and Justin had seemed his usual nose-to-the-grindstone self. And, yeah, Lopez had heard talk of a date night on Friday. Justin had seemed in a good mood, looking forward to it. Scampo, right? Swanky place, just right for impressing the missus.

  As for who might abduct the entire family…

  Lopez had grown noticeably agitated. Sitting up straighter, hand thrumming against the top of his leg. From what Tessa could tell, it didn’t seem to be Justin’s kidnapping that bothered Lopez so much, but the abduction of Justin’s wife and child. Someone possibly harming women definitely pushed Lopez’s buttons.

  Tessa gave him credit for that.

  “I’ll do some poking around,” Lopez volunteered at last. “I mean, I can’t think of anyone inside Denbe who’d hold a grudge against the family, but… I’ll monitor the mood of my fellow inmates. If I hear anything, I’ll give you a call. We can talk about it over dinner.”

  “I don’t date on the job,” she informed him.

  “Why? You’re not a cop anymore. Who makes those rules?”

  “Basic professionalism. And I can make any rule I want.”

  “Hard-ass,” he said.

  “Well, I did allegedly shoot my own husband.”

  Lopez laughed. Apparently, a suspected murderess only attracted him more.

  Very interesting people in construction, Tessa decided.

  She wrapped up with Lopez just as her phone rang.

  She exited the coffee shop before picking it up, assuming it was Sophie and already feeling guilty she hadn’t taken the time to call. But it wasn’t home. Instead, it was D. D. Warren.

  “The eagle has landed,” the detective said by way of greeting. Tessa interpreted that as code for arrival of the FBI.

  “Trimming your wings?”

  “With a rusty razor,” D.D. replied dryly. “But, turns out Neil gets the last laugh—the New Hampshire cops, some sheriff’s department, has picked up the ball and is now running with it.”

  “The GPS beacon?” Tessa asked hopefully.

  “They found only the device. Looks to them like the kidnappers must’ve discovered the GPS capabilities of the jacket, so they pulled over at some abandoned diner, cut out that piece of the coat and dumped it in the woods. Tire tracks show the vehicle resuming a northern route.”

  Tessa frowned, tried to picture a map of New Hampshire in her head. “They were already three hours north of Boston. How much more north is there?”

  “Two hours to Canada. But also twenty minutes from the Maine border, so possibly they veered east at some point, which would really place them in the middle of nowhere. Basically we’re looking at hundreds of square miles of wild mountains, abandoned campsites and boarded-up summer homes. But other than that…”

  “Crap,” Tessa said, chewing her bottom lip. “Any word?”

  “No. FBI brought with them a Behavioral Analysis Unit agent whose specialty is missing persons. According to her, if this is a ransom case, we should hear by end of day or things aren’t looking good.”

  “It’s not kidnapping for ransom. It’s something…more personal.”

  “The FBI expert has a theory about that, too,” D.D. supplied.

  “Which is?”

  “In cases of retribution, people have a tendency to think in terms of an eye for an eye. They want to dish out as much harm as they feel they sustained. Under this theory, a suspect who felt his person or reputation was damaged by Justin would seek revenge against only Justin.”

  “Except,” Tessa said slowly, “it wasn’t just Justin who was attacked. They also abducted his wife and daughter.”

  “Meaning if this isn’t a kidnapping-for-ransom case, then whoever orchestrated the kidnapping feels Justin Denbe harmed his entire family, maybe cost him his own wife and child.”

  “That doesn’t sound like business anymore,” Tessa agreed. “That definitely sounds personal.”

  “Food for thought,” D.D. agreed. There was a pause. “So, given that the feds are now here and working their magic…”

  “Last insider’s call regarding this case you’re going to get to make for a bit?” Tessa guessed. Which begged the question of why her one-time nemesis had been so considerate as to use that call on her.

  As if reading her mind, D.D. said, “Speaking for the entire Boston squad, we don’t really care who saves the Denbes. We just want to hear that they’ve been located safe and sound. But if the family happens to be rescued by a local investigator versus, say, the very irritating feds who just commandeered our crime scene…well, all the better in our petty little world.”

  Having said her piece, D.D. disconnected. Tessa stood in the parking lot another moment, considering the detective’s update. What if money had nothing to do with the Denbes’ kidnapping? What if, as the FBI expert suggested, it wasn’t a professionally motivated crime, but a personally motivated crime?

  Not a matter of ransom, but retribution.

  Tessa checked her watch, skimming through the list of favorite contacts she’d gleaned from the Denbes’ phones. Justin’s right-hand man had claimed to know very little about his boss’s personal life. But what about a member from Libby Denbe’s inner circle? Sister, best friend, close confidant?

  Tessa Leoni, former state trooper, current investigator extraordinaire, selected her next target.

  Chapter 13

  HOW DO YOU KNOW when you’ve fallen out of love?

  There are entire songs, poems and greeting cards dedicated to the notion of falling in love. The power of the first glance across a crowded room. That moment right before the first kiss, when you’re still wondering will he or won’t he, while angling up your head in centuries-old invite.

  The first giddy days, weeks, when you are consumed by thoughts of him. His touch, his taste, his feel. You invest in better lingerie, take more time with your hair, pick out a new form-fitting sweater because you can imagine his hands following the same lines as the soft knit and you want, more than anything, to invite those hands anywhere.

  When the phone rings, you snatch it up in hopes of hearing his voice. When your lunch break arrives, you hastily calculate if you can make it to his office and back before the hour’s up. Wearing a trench coat and nothing else.

  Planned dinners out become hastily scrambled eggs eaten out of bowls in the middle of his king-size bed, because your new sweater worked its magic and neither of you made it back out the door. And now he lounges around in his boxers and you lounge around in his button-up oxford and you think to yourself, admiring the hard expanse of his bare chest, the rippling muscles of his upper arms, my God, how did I get so lucky?

  Then, his eyes darken, he reaches for you and you don’t think of anything else again.

  I knew when I fell in love with Justin. Felt it like the proverbial lightning bolt.

  And I thought, That Day, confronting him with the evidence, watching his face pale, then set, that I would feel my love for him die an equally thunderous death. Certainly, I caught my breath. Felt my stomach churn with growing nausea.

  As he looked me in the eye and quietly said, “Yes, I’ve been sleeping with her…”

  I yelled at him. Threw whatever was closest at hand. Raged and screamed with growing levels of hysteria. Ashlyn came racing down the hall to our room, but Justin turned and, in the sharpest voice I’d ever heard, ordered her back to her room right now. She literally spun around on one toe and went running for the sanctuary of her iPod.

  He told me to calm down. I remember that.

  I believe that’s when I went after him with the bedside lamp. He caught it, grabbed it with those strong arms I used to love and twisted me around until I was caught in his embrace, my back t
o his front, my arms locked by my sides where I could no longer hurt him. He held me. And he whispered, softly against the top of my head, that he was sorry. So sorry. So really, really sorry. I felt drops of moisture against my hair. My husband, moved to tears.

  The fight left me.

  I sagged against him.

  He held me up. Supported me in his embrace, and for a while, we stood together, both of us breathing hard, our tears comingling. I cried for the loss of my marriage. For the trust I’d had in this man, and for the terrible, terrible feeling of not just betrayal, but failure. That I had loved my husband with my entire being, and it still hadn’t been enough.

  And Justin? Those drops of moisture against the top of my head? Tears of shame? Pain at having caused me pain? Or simply regret at finally being caught?

  I hated him then. With every fiber of my being.

  But I don’t think I fell out of love with him. I only wished that I could.

  Afterward, I kicked him out of the house. He didn’t argue, just quietly packed his bag. I told him not to come back. I told him he was a terrible man and he’d hurt me too much, and what kind of man ripped apart his own family, and what kind of father abandoned his own daughter? And then, for a while, I said things that didn’t even make sense but simply poured out, a raging flow of hurt and spite. He took it. Stood in front of me, holding his black duffel bag, and let me hate him.

  Finally, I emptied myself of all words. We stared at each other across the silent space of our bedroom.

  “I was an idiot,” he said.

  I made a noise. It wasn’t kind.

  “This is my fault, my mistake.”

  Another noise.

  “Can I call you?” he tried again. “In a few days, after you’ve caught your breath. Can we just…talk?”

  I regarded him with pure, stony rage.

  “You’re right, Libby,” he said quietly. “What kind of man hurts his wife and tears apart his family? I don’t want to be that man. I never wanted to be like…”

  He hesitated, and I knew what he meant to say. He didn’t want to be like his own dad.

  I don’t know why that should’ve made a difference. Justin’s father had been a hard, misogynistic 1950s man who’d idolized his only son while driving his wife to drink with his nearly legendary unfaithfulness. So the apple hadn’t fallen far from the tree. That’s all Justin’s unfinished statement should’ve meant to me.

  Except…it made me remember other things, too. All those quiet moments of true confession during our dating years. The kinds of conversations that occur in the afterglow, sprawled naked on a bed, Justin stroking my bare arm, talking about the man he’d both worshipped and abhorred. Loved as a father, while being quietly appalled by the way he’d behaved as a husband.

  Justin had wanted his father’s business sense, but he’d vowed even then to be a better husband, a better man.

  Just as I looked back at my own parents and swore never to smoke and to always wear helmets.

  That’s the problem, you see. It’s so much easier to fall in love, and so much more complicated to fall out of it. Because I couldn’t just see this moment. I had eighteen years of memories of this man, including our younger days, and the hopes and dreams we’d both nurtured. When we’d magically assumed we could do better than our own parents, because we hadn’t walked in their shoes yet. We didn’t realize just how complicated and lonely even a good marriage can get.

  “I don’t want to lose you,” my husband had said That Day. “I’m willing to try harder. I want to do better. Libby… I love you.”

  I made him leave. But I did let him call. And later, he settled into the basement bedroom, as we officially moved into the “working on it” phase of our marriage. Which meant he traveled just as much but brought me flowers more often. And I fixed his favorite meals, while withdrawing deeper and deeper inside myself. Both of us waiting for our marriage to magically feel normal again.

  Time heals all wounds, right? Or if not, what the hell, six months later, you can always try date night.

  I told myself I stayed in the marriage for Ashlyn. I told myself you just don’t walk away from eighteen years together.

  But the truth?

  I still loved him. My husband had cheated on me. My husband had lied to me. He’d sent texts to another woman using the kind of endearments I thought were once reserved only for me. He’d slept with her. Then, based on what I could piece together, returned home and, on several occasions, made love to me.

  And yet, my heart still skipped a beat when he walked into the room. The sound of his laugh filled an ache in my chest. The feel of his long, strong fingers retained the power to make me shiver.

  And I hated him for that. For hurting me and then being decent about it. I didn’t want him kind or gentle or remorseful. I wanted him to be the bad guy. Then I could’ve just left him. Changed the locks on the doors and never looked back. But dammit, he kept trying. He ended the relationship as I asked. He moved out of our bedroom into the basement as I asked. He suggested marriage counseling, though in the end, I was the one who proved resistant. But he kept at it, dozens of tiny little gestures, trying to reassure me of his love, and that he was sorry and he really did want me back. Except, instead of making me feel better, all of his outreaches simply made me feel worse.

  I wondered, did he spoon with her afterward? Feed her oranges? Watch her lounge around in nothing but his favorite dress shirt? Did he whisper to her the kind of innermost dreams he once used to share with me?

  I couldn’t let her go. She had entered our marriage, some pretty young thing, and I didn’t know how to get her back out again. So I’d pop open the orange prescription bottle, shaking out two, then four, then six chalky white pills. Trying to halt the endless stream of painful imagery running through my head.

  But even I understood it wasn’t the memory of That Day I was trying to dull with the pills. Not even the pain of betrayal that I needed to go away.

  It was my love for my husband I was desperately trying to let go.

  Because if I could love him less, then maybe I could forgive him more.

  And it had amazed even me, how many pills it was taking to get the job done.

  ASHLYN HAD TO GO TO THE BATHROOM. She whispered her need in my ear as we were ushered into a single cell, her trembling body pressed to my side. I nodded once, half listening to her and half hearing the clang of the steel door slamming shut behind us.

  We were together, a pathetic party of three, now garbed in identical prison orange jumpsuits. The smallest size was still too large for Ashlyn, rolled up at the ankles and still swimming on her slight frame. The jumpsuits all had short sleeves, which I thought would be cold, except the cell was hot, the whole wing almost oppressive with its stale, overheated air.

  Z had informed us the thermostat was set at a fixed seventy-six degrees. Winter, spring, summer, fall. Didn’t matter in a prison. Likewise, the overhead lights were on 24/7. Morning, noon or night, also irrelevant for life behind bars.

  Our dingy white cinder-block cell was narrow and deep, with a set of cream-painted steel bunks on either side, topped by what appeared to be a few inches of foam covered in a vinyl I could only describe as Smurf blue. The end of the cell featured a tall, narrow window bisected by a single steel bar. The door, comprised mostly of twelve-gauge steel, also boasted a thin viewing window, probably for a guard to check on the inmates. The window in the far wall overlooked bare, brown earth. The window in the door overlooked the cell block’s cavernous dayroom, where prisoners could commune at hard metal tables, or tend to hygiene in exposed showers. In the middle of the space sat a lone command post, most likely where one corrections officer supervised an entire two-story wing of stacked cells.

  I checked for Z, Radar or the one called Mick. Best I could tell, all three had disappeared. The dayroom was empty. We were finally alone, shuttered up with a mere seven locked doors between us and freedom.

  I relayed Ashlyn’s need to Justin. He no
dded once, jaw clenched, eyes hard with equal parts rage and helplessness. When he turned to our daughter, however, his face softened and he sounded almost normal.

  “So, here’s the first part of prison life.” He spoke briskly, as if describing a strange, new adventure. “One toilet, one sink for all of us to share—”

  “Daddy—”

  “Think of it as summer camp—”

  “I can’t—”

  “Ashlyn, stop. I need you to hold strong. We’re going to get through this.”

  Her lower lip trembled. She was on the verge of tears.

  I wanted to reach out to my daughter, but I didn’t. Because what would be the point? Don’t cry, darling, we’ll all be okay?

  We’d been abducted by madmen out of our own home. We were clad in thin orange jumpsuits with slippers on our feet, shoved into a white eight-by-ten cell where there was barely enough room to stand and the only places to sit were prison bunks topped by the world’s thinnest vinyl mattresses. Things were not all right. Things were wrong, very, very wrong, and probably going to get worse.

  Justin moved to stand at the far window, his back to the toilet, his broad shoulders covering the exposed window. I moved to block the window in the doorway, my back also to my daughter, who’d begun demanding privacy at age eight, and by age fifteen, found anything involving the human body totally mortifying if not completely shameful.

  The quiet was unbearable. The rustle of Ashlyn awkwardly struggling with her oversize jumpsuit ricocheting around the hard-edged space.

  I started humming. Thought of Justin’s tone, as if this were nothing but a camping adventure, and found myself singing: I like to eat, eat, eat apples and bananas. Which led Justin to adding, raspy and off-key, I loke to ote, ote, ote opples and bononos.