Behind the Lies (A Montgomery Justice Novel)

by Perini, Robin

  Less than a minute later, the door clicked closed again, and heavy footsteps walked away. She squeezed her eyelids and a tear leaked down her cheek. She curled her arms around her abdomen and pressed tight, shoving down the shame and fears rising up into her throat.

  No one could beat Brad, but he would never expect her to fight back. He’d cowed her for so many years. She would be the only one who might get close enough to surprise him—and stop him.

  The longer she lay there, though, the more she doubted herself. Zach would be furious at her. He’d have gone in to meet Brad with his brothers—each armed with enough weaponry to kill ten men. She scraped her hands through her hair. What was she thinking trying to somehow surprise Brad enough to kill him with her bare hands?

  She rolled onto her back and stared at the ceiling. She didn’t want to die and leave Sam alone.

  God, what a fool.

  She knew what she had to do. She’d have to admit to Zach and his brothers what she’d done. They weren’t going to be happy.

  She groaned and sat up. Something crinkled beneath her. She tugged the manila file folder free and stared at her name, printed on the label. Her emotions were all over the place. This burgeoning sense of disaster hovered over her.

  She should go out there and face Zach.

  Instead, she removed the paperclip holding the documents together and opened the file. Several photos slipped out, including her engagement picture with Brad. The edge of the paperclip dug into her finger. She slipped it into her back pocket and nudged the image aside. Her hand trembled. Sure enough, her father’s eyes stared back at her.

  Beneath the newspaper clipping lay a mug shot. A prison photo. Of her father? But he’d died in an accident when she was fourteen. Maybe it wasn’t him. This man had crow’s-feet around his eyes. And the date. Only a few years ago.

  It made no sense.

  Her fingers trembled. She searched and found another document. A death certificate bearing her father’s name and a date. Oh God.

  Not over a decade ago. Two years ago. In prison.

  She scanned the paperwork. In prison for fraud, tax evasion, assault, and battery.

  The heroic image she’d held for so long exploded into sharp shards that pierced her heart. Her father had been a thug.

  He hadn’t died in a car wreck like she’d been told.

  Another lie, but this one shook her to her core. She’d believed in him. Every cell of faith in humanity inside her came from him. And he had been a fraud.

  Her stomach twisted. She gasped for air.

  She’d loved her father. Believed in him.

  Nothing about her life was real. Nothing. Not her marriage, not her childhood, not her life. She ripped the locket from her throat and dropped it on the floor.

  Had Zach known?

  She shivered again. She felt so cold. She glanced at the window. The curtains fluttered into the room, billowing.

  “Mommy?” a small voice whined from the doorway.

  Jenna turned her face from the window and scrubbed the tears from her cheeks. Sam tiptoed in.

  “Hi, baby.” She choked the words and struggled to stop her body from quaking. She needed the one person in her life who loved her unconditionally. “Can Mommy have a hug?”

  “Don’t cry, Mommy.” He ran across the room and climbed into her lap, crinkling the file beneath her. She didn’t care. She shoved the papers to the floor and clutched her son, praying he would restore the heart that had just been pulverized into oblivion.

  Sam squirmed on her lap and faced her. He patted her cheek. “Everything will be OK, Mommy.” He laid his head against her breast and she rocked him, holding on to the one real person in her life.

  “Tell me a story, Mommy. It’ll make you feel better.”

  Stories had been her father’s way of driving away the pain, of giving her hope. The inspiration had vanished. “I don’t have any more stories, Sam.”

  He sat up, his eyes wide. “None?” He gently kissed her cheek. “It’s all right, Mommy. I’ll tell you a story.”

  Tears burned her eyes. She lifted Sam and sat him on the bed. Her eyes flicked to the blowing curtains. Oh, my God. The window was open…and it hadn’t been.

  “Mommy. Are you all right? You’re breathing really fast.”

  “I’m…I’m fine.”

  But she wasn’t. She ran to the window and slammed it down. The screen was gone.

  She turned around. “Run, Sam. Get out—”

  Sam’s eyes suddenly grew wide. His mouth gaped open. “Mommy!”

  Something slammed against the side of her head and the room went black.

  She’d made a terrible mistake.

  Zach looked down the hall. Had he heard something? The television on the counter droned the local newscast.

  “Hey, Seth, shut off the TV.”

  He half expected Jenna to stalk out and tear into him, but Sam reaching out to him instead of her seemed to have broken her. Plus, Brad’s call had obviously shaken her to her core. She’d become comfortable with the idea of running. She’d trusted him to help her disappear, but that was it. “I don’t think Jenna believes we can stop Brad Walters.”

  “She’s wrong,” Luke said. “She’ll come out when she’s ready. She probably just needs to process.”

  “Process? Seriously?” Seth laughed. “Where the hell did you learn that?”

  “Army shrinks,” Luke muttered.

  “Yeah, well, Jenna doesn’t process,” Zach said. “She stands her ground…or runs.”

  A flash of insight hit him. “Damn it, she runs.” He rose from the chair so fast it clattered to the floor behind him. He should have recognized that look on her face. The same resigned determination he’d witnessed after she’d hot-wired his damned truck.

  “You think she’s gone?” Seth said, following at his heels.

  “God, I hope not.”

  His hand gripped the last bedroom’s doorknob. Locked.

  He knocked on the door. “Jenna?”

  No answer.

  He knocked harder. “Jenna!”

  “Shh. You’ll wake the kid,” Luke said.

  A dark, horrifying feeling enveloped Zach. She wouldn’t have run without her son.

  “Check Sam,” he shouted at his brothers, then kicked in the door. The room was empty. The curtains fluttered in the window.

  “The kid’s gone,” Luke yelled from down the hall.

  Zach stuck his head out of the window and his blood froze at the stain of crimson on the windowsill. The screen lay in pieces on the ground.

  No. He cupped his hands. “Jenna!”

  His heart raced as he waited, focusing, praying to hear the sound of her voice above laughter from the bar.

  Seth ran in. “They’re both gone.”

  Zach turned and his foot slipped on a piece of paper. He glanced down at the floor and scooped up the file folder and the small locket he’d caught her fondling. It didn’t take a second to scan her father’s mug shot, record, and date of death. Jenna had told Zach her father died when she was fourteen. The same year her father had gone to prison. Oh God. Had this been the final straw for her? Had it sent her into the night? That made no sense.

  “Zach,” Luke said, pocketing the necklace. “We’ve got a problem. My phone was on the bed. She called Walters.”

  “Oh, Jenna,” Zach rubbed his face. He cursed himself for not forcing himself into this room and making her talk to him. “There’s blood on the window.”

  “She could still have left voluntarily,” Luke said.

  “You’re right,” Zach muttered. “Check the cars. She might have hot-wired one or stolen the keys. She’s resourceful.”

  They burst out the front door. All the vehicles were there. Zach yelled her name again, his desperation growing.

  She’d left on foot? But the blood…

  Zach scanned the parking lot. The spotlights had been dimmed after the basketball game ended, but something unusual caught his attention. An are
a of torn-up grass to the side of the house. He knelt down. Wet, sticky. Blood. And two tiny hands had dug into the earth.

  Sam.

  “Seth, get over here,” he said quietly, his fist clenched to tamp down the foreboding.

  His brother crouched beside him and let out a curse. He spanned his hand across the smaller handprint. “Sam didn’t go willingly.”

  “Brad’s taken them.” Zach bit down.

  “It doesn’t mean he’ll kill her.” Seth studied the ground more closely. “There was a car here.”

  “Brad wants the evidence,” Luke said. “He needs her until he gets it. We have time.”

  “The evidence is still in California in a safety deposit box. She mentioned La Jolla. There are hundreds of possibilities.”

  “Then we’ll start searching,” Seth said.

  Luke let out a slow, deep breath. “She’ll buy us time. She’s already proven she can think on her feet.”

  Zach rubbed his chin. “Yeah, but she’s afraid of him.”

  “Jenna had the courage to leave,” Luke reminded him. “She called him. She faces her fears.”

  “She might tell him the evidence is in California and only she can retrieve it. That might give her an escape opportunity. She’s smart that way,” Zach said.

  “We need a watch on the airports. Walters won’t want to take sixteen hours to get that evidence. He’ll try to hire a private plane.”

  “I’m on it,” Luke said.

  Zach followed his brothers inside. Within seconds, Luke had opened his computer, and Seth pulled out his phone to hit up his own contacts.

  An overwhelming fear paralyzed Zach. “We’ve got to find her,” he choked. “I don’t think I can live without her.”

  Darkness and cold metal surrounded her. The smell of exhaust and rubber filled the air. A bounce shifted Jenna hard against a mound under her shoulder. The roar of a vehicle rumbled around her. Oh God. She was in the trunk of a car.

  She groaned, then blinked, but she still couldn’t see anything.

  The pain splitting her skull pounded incessantly where she’d been struck. She tried to move, but her hands had been secured behind her back. The metal cuffs bit into her skin.

  A small, trembling body pressed against her back.

  Sam. Oh, God, help them.

  The vehicle took a hard left, fast. The movement slammed them against the cold metal.

  A whimper sounded from behind her. She squirmed, desperate to touch Sam, but she couldn’t budge.

  She felt for him and finally caught his little hand in hers. His wrists were bound with rope. He wiggled his hand against hers.

  “Baby, are you hurt?” Her husky words filtered through the black.

  “No. Scared,” he mumbled, as if something were stuffed into his mouth.

  The vehicle jerked, slamming Jenna into the ceiling of their prison. They were moving slower now, and bouncing like they’d turned onto a back road.

  Brad. It had to be. But why treat them this way? She’d promised him she would bring the evidence. And why hurt Sam? She couldn’t believe he’d be this cruel to their son.

  The rumbling of the car stopped. Jenna tensed.

  The trunk opened.

  A bright light pierced the darkness, blinding her. She blinked, but she couldn’t see the figure behind the beam.

  “Brad?” she choked. “Why are you doing this?”

  “Silence,” a voice said.

  Not Brad’s voice. A voice with an accent.

  The man grabbed her arm and tugged Jenna from the trunk. She fell to the ground then turned her head to get a view of her attacker. A mask covered his face. He pulled her up by the handcuffs, nearly dislocating her shoulders. She stumbled to her feet. He slammed the trunk closed with her son still inside.

  “Sam!” she screamed.

  He backhanded her. “Shut up.”

  He shoved her toward a small, boarded-up dwelling. No streetlights. Trees all around. She had no idea where she was. Or how far from Gabe’s house they’d traveled.

  How would Zach find her?

  The man opened the door. “Sit.”

  He pointed to a lone chair in the middle of a small, sparse room. The fetid smell of trash and mold overwhelmed her. She didn’t want to walk inside. Her entire body trembled.

  The dilapidated shack—and it was a shack—screamed at her not to enter. She swallowed, looking right, then left.

  “Sit.”

  He slugged her again and forced her inside. Pain shot through her cheek. She fell to the ground.

  He kicked her in the belly. “Chair. Now.”

  She curled up into a ball. He grabbed her hair and dragged her across the room. She cried out in pain.

  “No one can hear you,” he said, “but scream again and I will cut out your tongue.”

  He lifted her onto the chair and yanked her arms behind her. She couldn’t prevent the yelp, but bit down hard to stop the sound. He unlocked the handcuffs and threaded them through the back of the chair. He then attached each of her legs by the ankle to the wooden chair. When he’d finished, she couldn’t move anything except her head and a slight bend of her wrists.

  He stood, his breathing harsh. “Do you know why you are here?” he asked, his accent thick but clearly Middle Eastern.

  “Brad?” she whispered, her voice questioning.

  “Zane Morgan,” he spat. “Or, should I say Zach Montgomery?”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “You will,” he said, and trained the flashlight in her eyes. She could see nothing behind him, and then a large shadow shifted toward the door, a stick in his hand.

  “You will understand an eye for an eye.”

  Brad stared across the street at Sammy’s, the bar Gabe Montgomery had purchased using a fairly mundane dummy corporation.

  It had been simple enough for Brad to triangulate Jenna’s cell signal to a tower not too far away. She had to be here.

  His phone rang. He glanced at the screen. Damn it. He couldn’t avoid the call again.

  “I feel as if we’re having the same conversation over and over again, Mr. Walters,” the annoying voice droned. “Garrison is still alive.”

  Brad cursed under his breath. He didn’t need this. Not now. “He won’t be for long.”

  “So you’ve promised. Another job has come up, and I’m out of time or I wouldn’t be giving you another opportunity to fail. And Mr. Walters. Your payment will be half the usual rate until you prove yourself to me again. Screw this up and I’ll see that your reputation is worthless.”

  Brad gripped the phone. They both knew his identity had been compromised. His life as Brad Walters was over—what was his client playing at?

  He had to maintain control to keep her guessing.

  “Location?” he said, through gritted teeth.

  “The outskirts of Denver, very near where you are. This job should make you feel like a patriot. An Afghani terrorist has infiltrated the country. He will be in Golden, Colorado, sometime in the next twenty-four hours.” The specific coordinates came through as a text. “I want you to kill him, but I need an identifiable body for the authorities. Do you understand? You may have to get up close and personal.”

  Brad sat stunned, watching the light that showed the conversation successfully recording and logging the number. A government number that wasn’t blocked.

  For the first time, his client had made a very big mistake. Elated, Brad watched the seconds tick by. No longer was he the puppet. Very soon he would become the puppeteer.

  “I understand.”

  “Notify me when it’s done.”

  The call ended.

  Brad drummed his fingers against the steering wheel, planning payback.

  Suddenly, the door flew open and a gun pressed against his temple.

  “Where’s Jenna?”

  Zach’s finger twitched against the 1911’s trigger. He wanted nothing more than to kill this bastard. Instead, Zach tapped his earpiece. “I’ve got
Walters. Keep searching. Jenna’s got to be nearby.”

  The Chameleon stilled, his hands unmoving. The yellow streetlight illuminated the car. Denver and its suburbs never truly went dark. The nondescript man had kept the CIA, FBI, Interpol, and every other international spy agency completely baffled for a decade.

  “Lost your edge, Walters?” Zach asked.

  The assassin said nothing.

  “Get out,” Zach ordered. “On the ground, arms and legs spread. You so much as twitch, you’re dead.”

  Slowly, with deliberation, Brad eased out of the vehicle and lay next to the car.

  Zach pressed the heel of his boot against the back of the guy’s neck. One wrong move and Zach would end him.

  “Don’t kill him yet, big brother,” Seth said, striding across the street. He sidled up to Zach. “We can’t find her.”

  Oh God. Bile slammed into his throat. He briefly closed his eyes, praying he was wrong. He reached into the car for the keys and tossed them to his brother. “Check the trunk. Carefully.”

  Zach pressed harder on Brad’s neck. If Brad had hurt Jenna or Sam…the bastard wouldn’t live another thirty seconds.

  Seth checked for wires then flicked open the trunk. He looked inside, paused, and met Zach’s gaze.

  Zach couldn’t breathe.

  “Empty,” Seth said.

  Zach yanked Walters off the ground and slammed him into the car’s side. “Where is she?”

  The assassin blinked. “Last I heard she was with you.”

  “We better take this inside,” Seth said, glancing around. “Too many eyes. Especially if we’re planning on encouraging him to talk. Accidents do happen.”

  Knowing his brother was right, Zach shoved Brad forward. “Walk straight ahead. You so much as look in one direction or another, your brain splatters all over the parking lot and I won’t bother to clean it up.”

  Brad raised his chin. “You clearly believe I have Jenna. You’re wrong. She wants to come back to me. She called about starting over. Be a family. She’s had her fling with you. It’s over.”

  “Liar,” Zach said, his conviction unwavering. He knew his Jenna. Whatever love she’d felt for her husband, Brad had destroyed.

  “Sucker,” the assassin laughed. “You’re in love with my wife. She reeled you in, too.”