“Come into the kitchen,” Lucy said. “But so help me, if you set a foot wrong, there are plenty of knives in there and I’ll scream my head off until the cops come.”
“You’ve got us all wrong,” Barrett said. “We’re not here to hurt you and we’d never hurt your daughter.”
Lucy wasn’t sure what to make of Barrett’s statement. But she led the way to the back of the house. Of course, she kept her head turned toward us so she could keep watch as we walked behind her, and it made me sad she’d had to learn to be so cautious.
The far side of the swinging door, however, surely brought her comfort. Lucy Ribisi’s kitchen was a country cook’s dream. Pristine white tile and commercial-grade appliances made a most excellent work space, while a breakfast nook with oak tables and chairs, and linens in pinks and reds, made an ideal place to sip coffee and get lost in a good book. Best of all, tall windows framed a glorious view that looked out over the trees, flowers, and hills of Texas.
Racks of cooling cookies crowded the countertops. Chocolate and cherry preserves and fresh blueberries dotted the various kinds. Lucy rounded the island in the middle of the kitchen, complete with a butler’s sink and an inlaid marble candy-maker’s slab. Barrett and I knew we were meant to stay on the near end. And with the long counter between us, Lucy’s confidence grew.
“Now, who are you and what do you want?” she demanded.
“We want you and your daughter to stay safe,” I said. “We want Elena Preble and her son to stay safe, too.”
“Elena’s son,” Lucy insisted, without so much as a denial that she knew the former assistant prosecutor, “is with his father—”
“I wish that were true.”
I went on to explain all that had happened to Elena, her family, and now Cody, too. I told Lucy how Marc, inside out with worry about his boy, had asked for my help and for Barrett’s. And I detailed how we needed to understand what drove Maximillian Ribisi so we could stop him.
“But your ex-husband Max doesn’t really care about making Elena’s life miserable,” I surmised. “Does he?”
“No.”
Lucy’s whisper was barely audible.
She seemed to shrink before my eyes.
“For Max, Elena’s just a means to an end,” I said.
“Yes.”
I nodded and glanced over at the pretty breakfast nook one more time. No sixth-grade textbooks or stacks of homework waited for Ruby on the table. No bottles of gross, green-glitter fingernail polish had been forgotten beside the cookie jar. Of course, there was a good reason for this. The reason was Lucy’s twelve-year-old daughter wasn’t here to leave those things behind.
“You know Max Ribisi wants to take your daughter away from you,” I said to Lucy.
“He called me in Omaha. My name was Lila then. He wants Ruby. He told me so.”
“So you sent your daughter into hiding. You sent her with Elena.”
“Please. Don’t say any more.” Lucy ran to the tall windows. She surveyed the back garden the way a little old lady looks both ways before crossing the street. “His men could’ve followed you here. They could be outside right now.”
“They didn’t,” Barrett said. “And they’re not.”
“Marshal Douglas is doing his part,” I added. “He’s telling everyone who’ll listen that you died in that fire in Omaha. But here’s the thing, Lucy—”
“That’s not my name now. Lacey’s my name in Texas.”
“—I didn’t believe Douglas. And Max doesn’t either.”
Lucy marched to the beautiful butcher-block table beside the stainless-steel fridge. She grabbed the hilt of a chef’s knife tacked to the magnetic strip on the wall. She ripped the knife free and brandished its point at me.
“Get out.”
“Elena can’t hide Ruby forever,” I said, as if that big, shiny knife didn’t scare me.
Barrett left my side. He moved around the end of the center island. Now we were two targets instead of one, and that made Lucy more nervous than ever.
“What are you going to do,” I asked her, “when Elena can’t hide Ruby anymore?”
“Get out,” she repeated. “Now!”
Barrett advanced on Lucy and I did the same. She’d have to pick and choose who she’d slice and dice—and she couldn’t take out both of us. Barrett had narrowed her options.
And that’s exactly what we needed to do to Ribisi.
“Lucy, I need you to contact Elena. I need her to give Ruby to the marshals. Then Ruby and Elena will be out of danger, and Max will have no more leverage to use against you. He won’t be able to use Elena’s boy to threaten her.”
Because we would’ve taken away the possibilities. We would’ve narrowed Ribisi’s avenues of attack. All he would have is Cody. And I’d think of a way to get Cody back. Or Marc would. Or Barrett. Since we weren’t about to let bad things happen to that sweet child. I would die before Cody did.
But Lucy hadn’t budged from the butcher block.
And she hadn’t agreed to do anything I’d asked.
I said, “You can’t let Max have Elena’s son and call that a fair trade for your daughter’s freedom. That’s not right.”
“Ruby is safe!” Lucy bellowed at the top of her lungs. “I won’t give her to the marshals! I won’t let Max find her! Do you know what an animal he is? Do you know what he does to people? To women? To girls? To me?”
The foyer door cracked open. The honeymooning couple poked their heads into the kitchen. The older couple were right behind them, and three or four other guests that I didn’t recognize backed them up in case Lucy needed help.
“Everybody out. Nothing to see here,” Barrett told them as Lucy let loose with a bloodcurdling scream.
She threw the knife at me. Its perfectly balanced weight sent it flying tip over tang. The guests fled into the main part of the house. I dropped behind the island—just as the blade buried itself in the cabinet that had been behind my head.
Chapter 39
“Marc,” I said into my cellphone as I trotted down the front steps of the Bonnie Bluebonnet B&B and arrowed toward the car, with Barrett bringing up the rear. Marc, local PD, and even the FBI had had no word of Cody. And considering the boy had been gone for eighteen hours now, that wasn’t a good sign. “Lucy’s alive. Her daughter’s in hiding with Elena. The girl is what Ribisi wants. And Lucy’s not giving out Elena’s details.”
Of course, that summary could qualify as a major understatement considering the woman had just thrown a chef’s knife at my head. But that action hadn’t been without consequences. Seven of Lucy’s guests were lined up on the front porch, gawking as Barrett and I made our hasty retreat. Three more were already toting suitcases to their cars in the lot past the B&B. I guess she’d have plenty of vacancies now.
Lucy herself had remained in her pretty country kitchen. I imagined she might be talking on the phone to Elena at this moment. Or she might be talking to Douglas.
“I think we can expect our favorite marshal soon,” I told Marc. “And Barrett and I are on our way to your mother’s house now.”
“Understood. And, babe? Be careful.”
I was extremely careful. Barrett was, too. Even when we reached the quiet neighborhood where Mrs. Sandoval lived in a quaint sienna stucco house with a spreading oak tree in her front yard, we were careful. Because in Colorado, Ribisi’s henchmen hadn’t just swept in and out of the Prebles’ neighborhood when they did their damage. They’d set up a surveillance station nearby.
Ribisi wasn’t watching the Sandovals from a neighboring house here in Texas, however. Marc and area law enforcement had made sure of that. But that didn’t mean Ribisi hadn’t found a work-around, such as paying off a meter reader to spend a little more time hanging around, pressuring a neighbor to spy through the curtains, or cruising past the house himself.
When we were relatively certain the coast was clear, Barrett parked in the driveway next to Marc’s car.
And Marc met us
in the well-lighted carport himself.
“Anything?” I asked him as he escorted us into his mother’s kitchen. Every surface had been crammed with casseroles, cakes, and plates of cookies.
“Nothing,” Marc said.
From the look of him, Marc needed a shave and a sandwich. Despite the home-cooked food friends and neighbors had brought to the distressed family, I doubted he’d eaten anything substantial since Douglas had bought us burgers the afternoon before, and an empty stomach couldn’t keep a man going for long, so he needed to eat. But most of all, Marc just needed his son back.
Mrs. Sandoval welcomed us to her home, her eyes puffy from crying. She crushed Barrett to her upon introduction and she held me in a stranglehold of a hug. In my ear, she whispered, “I wanted Marc to bring you home to Texas—but not this way.”
As she sobbed quietly into a tissue, I met Marc’s dad. He was a quiet man with a thick silver mustache and he shook my hand with great stoicism. I hadn’t even known he existed.
Once the meet-and-greet was over, I turned to Marc and said, “I’d like to see Cody’s bedroom.”
And he was more than glad to show it to me. Another pair of eyes can often catch a telltale sign that has been missed. I’d look all night if it meant finding a lead on Cody. Barrett, I knew, would too. He was the proud uncle of two little boys, one of whom was about Cody’s age. And being a military police officer, Barrett looked at crime scenes for a living. But neither he nor I picked up anything the primary investigators hadn’t found.
The bedroom was along the side of the single-story house, just off the great room, next to the bath, and a good distance from the master suite at the end of the hall. Two twin beds occupied the room. The crime-scene techs had stripped one of them of its sheets. Even now, they were probably hunting through them for hair and fabric fibers that could point with certainty to the perpetrator or seal the deal later on a conviction. They would’ve vacuumed the Moroccan-tile-patterned area rug between the beds, too, in case it could yield similar evidence.
Black fingerprint dust still clung to light surfaces like the painted windowsill, light switch, and doorjamb. Pale dust adhered to dark surfaces like the lamp base on the table between the beds. Every Matchbox car, storybook, and even Cody’s baseball glove had been examined.
“At least they took his slippers,” Mrs. Sandoval said.
She and Marc lingered in the doorway while Barrett and I carefully poked into the closet and under the bureau.
“So, he’s still in his pajamas?” I asked, examining the small shirts and pants that hung on hooks in the closet. Cody’s snazzy orange sneakers lay akimbo on the floor. And for a moment, I had to close my eyes so I wouldn’t picture him wearing them.
“Blue and green dinosaurs,” Marc said, “with blue ribbing at the neck and on the cuffs.”
Mrs. Sandoval added, “I’m just so glad his little feet won’t be cold.”
And she burst into tears.
In the great room, Barrett and I took a look at the sliding glass door. Mrs. Sandoval had found it standing wide open. And from the looks of things, such as the window in Cody’s room and the frame on the front door, it probably had been the point of entrance and egress.
The sliding door let out onto a paver patio. Another wondrous oak tree spread its gnarly branches over the backyard. No fence surrounded the perimeter. The Sandovals’ property was open to the lawns around it. Ribisi’s boys could’ve carried Cody to a getaway vehicle parked in any direction.
After Barrett and I had seen all there was to see—and had reached no new conclusions—there was nothing more for our sad party to do but to wait and rest. Resting, however, was easier said than done. Mrs. Sandoval had made Marc’s childhood bedroom ready for me while Marc was assigned to the lumpy old sofa in his parents’ den. Barrett was also given a spot in the den, and he was happy with a comfy pallet on the floor. But after going through the motions of getting ready for bed, all five of us eventually drifted into the great room to watch the television’s meaningless late-night flicker, peer out the windows at the sleeping neighborhood, or pace the floor.
I must’ve dozed off eventually, curled up in an overstuffed recliner, because the next thing I knew morning had caught up with me and the Sandovals’ doorbell chimed.
Ding-dong.
Marc was off like a shot, moving to the door with Barrett to back him up, but Mrs. Sandoval beat them both. She flung the portal wide without any thought of personal safety and grabbed hold of the package a delivery man offered with eager hands. She tore into it, practically shredding the box on the doorstep, and a cellular phone fell into her palm.
“Wait,” Marc ordered his mother.
“The delivery service,” I said, flinging aside the fleece throw someone had draped over me as I’d slept and springing from my chair.
“I’m on it,” Barrett replied, and he ran from the house to halt the driver.
“Did I do the wrong thing?” Mrs. Sandoval asked. All the color drained from her rosy cheeks, only to flood her face again in a red rush of panic. “Oh, Dios mío! I shouldn’t have touched it, should I? Now my fingerprints are on it, aren’t they, and I’ve smudged anybody else’s?”
“I wouldn’t worry,” I said, trying to calm her. “The sender surely wiped it clean before he sent it.”
The mobile was one of those simple flip phones. A cheap burner. Too common to trace.
“No note,” Marc said, fumbling through the remnants of the packaging. “The return address is nonsense. Just gibberish in the form’s fields and a San Antonio zip code.”
“May I?” I plucked the device from Mrs. Sandoval’s hands, opened the oyster-like phone.
It was brand new and never used. But in the contacts list was a single, solitary number. It featured a Chicago area code, but that didn’t mean much in this day and age. Cellphone owners could request the area code of their choice. Except Maximillian Ribisi had a cousin who lived in Chicago, and by all accounts, they’d been peas in a pod since their fathers had met their untimely deaths, allowing their offspring to climb higher on the organized-crime ladder.
“The driver knows nothing,” Barrett told us, walking through the front door and locking it behind him. “He picked up the package at the distribution center and he’s got the paper trail to prove it. The box came through the system legitimately.”
“I’m calling the FBI,” Marc announced.
But before he could, the suspicious cellphone rang in my hand.
“What do we do?” Mrs. Sandoval cried.
The phone trilled again. My stomach twisted into a butterfly knot. The phone rang a third time and, whether foolish or wise, I accepted the call.
“Hello?” I said.
Only the sound of the faintest breath met my ear.
“Cody?” I said. “Is that you?”
Of course, the boy couldn’t have sent the phone to his grandparents’ house. And if he’d found a phone wherever he was, he couldn’t possibly know the number to this one. But something—the soft breath, an I-don’t-know-what—brought the boy to mind.
And then a man said, “It’s about time you answered my call.”
Chapter 40
My caller didn’t identify himself.
But I knew who he was anyway.
“I’ve got something that belongs to you,” he told me boldly. “Would you like to have it back?”
“Yes,” I said. “Very much.”
“Good. Because you have something that belongs to me.”
He thought I was Elena. He thought I had Ruby. And I let him think it.
I said, “Let me talk to Cody. I have to talk to him.”
“No, no. You have to do as I say. Are you going to do as I say?”
“Yes.”
“Good. You’re going to tell me where you left my daughter.”
“I didn’t—”
“Is she with you? With you there? At the boy’s grandparents’?”
“No.”
“Then w
here did you leave her, Miss Preble?”
I racked my brain for a convincing answer. I glanced up into Marc’s strained face. He was counting on me to get this right.
Cody was counting on me.
“I dropped Ruby off at her mother’s,” I answered, “before coming here last night.”
“Well, you’re going to go get her for me,” Ribisi said in my ear.
His voice was easy, as if he were suggesting I pick up a six-pack of beer on my way to watch the college football game at his place. But his undertone was sinister. He would find a way to hurt me if I didn’t obey.
He would hurt Cody.
“Lucy contacted the Marshals Service,” I explained. “Ruby’s with them now.”
“You have buddies in the Marshals Service.”
“No, I—”
“You did. Seven years ago.”
“That,” I told him, “was a long time ago.”
“Too long,” Ribisi barked.
I’d woken the sleeping bear.
“Now, you listen,” Ribisi ordered. “You call your marshal buddies, and no one else. No cops. No FBI. You keep it between friends. You get my daughter. When you have her, you call my number.”
“It took me hours to reach San Antonio from Lucy’s. It could take hours to—”
“So? I’ll give you hours. But not many, Miss Preble.”
“I’ll bring her,” I lied. “Tell me where to meet you and we’ll go straight there.”
“I’ll tell you,” Ribisi assured me, “when you have my daughter. Or you’ll be picking out a casket for your son.”
He hung up.
And I thought I might throw up.
“Ribisi wants his daughter, Ruby,” I told my audience, folding the flip phone closed. “He thinks I’m Elena. He wants me to trade her for Cody.”
Marc’s face turned hard.
He stormed toward the den.
Barrett folded me against his chest. “You did great, honey. You bought us some time.”
The Kill Wire Page 24