“I happen to be in town on business that has nothing to do with you. I have no idea where your father is. I haven’t spoken to him since your mother’s funeral.”
“That’s a lie.” Jason’s calm response was a huge contrast to Lark’s wild attack, and seemed to disturb Ella more. Her mouth dropped open slightly and her shoulders sagged. She tried to recover, but Lark could see in her eyes that she knew it was too late, that her reaction had limited her options. Lark tried to tap into Jason’s calm and hoped that after this, she’d never have to play interrogator again. She really sucked at it.
“We know you called him the other day. And that you went to the house,” she added quickly, thinking the call wouldn’t be enough to pressure her. “My father runs the best security company in the world. We have you on tape.” Of course they didn’t. Matthew didn’t have cameras on his grounds and definitely not in his house. He’d seen enough invasion of his clients’ privacy and didn’t want to give anyone the chance to invade his.
“I doubt that,” Ella scoffed. “Even if I had gone to his house, he would have changed a great deal to have started filming his life. You forget, child,” she added at Lark’s disgruntled expression, “I knew your father as an adult long before you did. And your mother confided everything to me.”
Anger flared again, this time with hurt. “And you betray her by being party to my father’s abduction? Betray me?”
Not a flicker of affection was apparent in Ella’s face. “There must be trust for there to be betrayal. I haven’t been a part of your life enough to have inspired trust. And your mother never trusted me. Not fully.”
“That’s why she didn’t give you the money you wanted.” Lark floundered, no longer certain where to go, but kept talking as Jason moved in her peripheral vision. Since he wasn’t chiming in on this conversation, he must have another plan. Lark tried to keep Ella’s attention with information she wouldn’t know Lark had. “Right? Your grandfather’s money? Because of trust.”
“You know nothing about that.” But Ella sat on the edge of the bed and crossed her legs, draping one arm over her knee in a classically defensive posture.
“I heard you talking about it. She planned to use it for my education. If you had kids, she’d have given you half, right? But you don’t, so she didn’t. And Dad never touched the money. You can’t stand that it’s just sitting there unused.” She didn’t know where all this was coming from. She was just snapping things together, hoping one of the pieces would spark a confession or at least start a conversation. She didn’t have her pitchfork and doubted Jason was planning to pull a gun to coerce Ella into talking. “So where does Isaac Kemmerling come into this?”
Ella’s gaze stayed fixed on Lark’s. Not a good sign.
“Why on earth do you think I’d tell you anything about anything?” she asked, her tone cold.
“Because,” Lark said desperately, “you loved my mother. Didn’t you? And she loved my father, and me, and he’s all I have left.” She sensed rather than saw Jason jolt when she said that.
She refocused on Ella, who pressed her lips together and looked away. Lark had touched on something, but it hadn’t been enough.
“Come on, Ella,” she ground out. “Tell me what’s going on!”
Jason came up beside Lark then. “Ms. Darron, you drugged your brother-in-law, coerced him to make a recording of lies, and were party to kidnapping, which is a federal offense and could get you jailed for years. You tell us what you know, and we’ll make sure you’re not implicated when the case goes to trial.”
Maybe it was his reasonable tone. Maybe it was the reminder of the severity of her actions. Or maybe she realized Jason had just searched her things right under her nose and found evidence she couldn’t explain away. Whatever it was, Ella caved.
And Lark and Jason caught their first break.
* * *
Just a few more steps. Just to that block of shade. Okay, made it. Stop for a second. That’s all, keep moving. Get to that big rock.
Gabby had to open and close her eyes in stages, they burned so badly, and sunlight and grit made it worse. The latter coated her glasses when it wasn’t infiltrating her eyelashes, and the former refracted weirdly off the dust. The virus that had taken hold of her would have been merely annoying on a normal day, but now it turned every little discomfort into a major obstacle.
They’d been walking for hours. Twice they heard a car and slipped into the woods, but one had been an old farming truck driven by a grizzled gray-haired lady, and one a motorcycle with a guy in a wife-beater and no helmet. There was no sign of Isaac, which struck her as odd. Matthew refused to comment on it.
He refused to comment on much of anything, actually. At first she assumed he was planning, but after a while she realized there wasn’t anything to plan, not when the only things around them were trees and hot sun and cracked asphalt. Then she decided he was conserving his strength and she should, too. Which meant neither one of them had talked in an immeasurable amount of time.
They reached the boulder that was her next landmark, and she noticed, in the ten seconds she had her eyes open, that it had a nice curve in the top that would be a good place to rest. She considered asking if they could stop, but worried that if they did, she’d never get going again. Plus, her throat had stuck to itself, and she didn’t think she could talk.
Matthew suddenly put his hand on her elbow. “Hold on.”
Gabby stopped moving and squinted at him. He had a listening posture, so she listened, too. She couldn’t hear anything different from the last however-many miles. She would have asked what he’d heard, but he couldn’t hear it if she was talking. And then there was that throat thing.
She wondered if she was starting to become delirious.
“Wait here.” Matthew led her to the boulder and lowered her into the little seat, making her smile. “I’ll just be a few minutes. If a car comes—”
She nodded and waved at the ditch behind the boulder. She could just roll down into it and no one would see her. Matthew hesitated, then disappeared between two trees. Gabby closed her eyes and tried not to sway hard enough to topple over. Maybe Matthew hadn’t heard anything. Maybe he just had to go to the bathroom. She didn’t. After relieving herself this morning, she hadn’t had to go again. With the harsh sun, she’d been sweating like crazy. Of course, they were both dehydrated.
There was no noise to warn her of his return. No leaf rustling or shoe scraping on pavement, no breathing noises or saying her name. Matthew just appeared at her side, took her hand, and led her into the blessed coolness of the woods. She was able to keep her eyes open then, which was good because finding her footing was a challenge.
He must think I’m such a putz. She tripped three times and wanted to cry, except she didn’t have the tears. He held her up, gently guiding her around a fallen log and some random animal droppings.
Then she heard it. Oh, my God. The words didn’t come, her mouth moving silently, but the cheerful splash and gurgle of water over stones filled her with new energy. Her feet lifted higher, her steps became faster, and a few moments later, they were on the banks of a clear, tiny brook. Gabby fell to her knees and dropped her hands down into it, plunging up to her elbows in the icy stream. Her whole body sighed. She cupped her hands and brought them to her mouth, making rude sucking sounds as she drank, but ohhhh, it tasted amazing, cold and soothing on her throat. She thrust her hands back into the water.
“Go slow,” Matthew cautioned, but she didn’t need the reminder. She was a doctor, a fact she might have forgotten in her misery but that revived along with the rest of her. She drank slowly but deeply, letting her body adjust between handfuls. She splashed it on her face, shoved wet hands through her hair, then pulled off her shoes and stuck her feet into the brook. She sighed and dropped her head back.
“Thank you.”
He shook his head and picked up one of her shoes, a dress flat chosen for the thick, padded insole and rubber bottom. The edg
es of the leather were scuffed and dusty, but they were holding up.
“How are your feet?” Matthew asked, frowning at the shoe.
“Fine.” Her voice still croaked. She bent and drank another scoopful of water. “Those are good shoes.”
“They are not. And I didn’t even notice.”
“What could you do? You’re not carrying walking shoes in a variety of sizes in your back pocket.” She sounded smoother, clearer, the more she talked, but there was still a husky quality to her voice she actually liked. In other circumstances it would be seductive. Circumstances where she wasn’t a complete mess. “They’re better than pumps, anyway.”
“True.”
“How about we stay here for a while?” she asked, trying not to sound desperate.
“A short rest.”
She couldn’t take his tension any longer. The short answers, the lack of eye contact…if there was something worth worrying about, she wanted to know. “What’s wrong with you? What’s going through your head? We’re free. We’re out of that cabin, and they aren’t—”
“Don’t say it.”
“Okay.” She believed in jinxes, though it surprised her that he did, too. “But what?”
She didn’t think he was going to explain. He set her shoe down and examined the other, then swung her legs around to look at her feet.
“I don’t have any blisters.”
“That’s good.” He smoothed the water away from her instep. “I have a feeling we’re in hunting country, which might mean we won’t reach civilization for days.”
“Come on, this is Virginia, not Montana.” His fingers were making her feet tingle. She pulled them away and put her shoes back on before her feet started to swell. “Even hunters need beer. We’ll come across something.”
“What if we don’t?”
“Matthew.” She dropped her foot and leaned to put her hand on his face. “We’ll be fine. We’ll find a phone or a person driving—we can flag down the next old farm lady we see.”
“No one has driven by in hours.”
“Then we won’t flag someone down. But the road has to go somewhere.”
The muscle of his jaw flickered, and his eyes looked hard. “You’re sick.”
Ah, now she understood. His silence, his abruptness, stemmed from guilt. He was worried about her and couldn’t immediately fix everything. If nothing else, Matthew Madrassa was a fixer.
“I’ve just got a virus.” She grabbed his chin and shook it in frustration. “Matthew, I’m a doctor. I know my symptoms. I’m not dying, for cripes sake.”
He didn’t look convinced, and that more than anything gave her the energy to stand up. “Let’s go. We won’t find a phone sitting here in the woods.” She didn’t wait, but led him back to the road, pleased when they emerged two feet from her boulder. The sun was high now, and her stomach rumbled. She decided to take it as a good sign and set out down the road again.
“It can’t be too much further to a store or something, or even a house. That woman in the truck came from this way. And the kid on the motorcycle wasn’t an off-roader. So I’m sure it’s just a matter of a mile or two.”
Matthew didn’t say anything. She stopped chattering, annoyed with herself and exasperated with him. She felt lighter, though, more hopeful, and as they approached a curve in the road, she was certain this was it, what they were looking for.
But she’d only been partly right. Around the bend was a reason to stop walking, but it wasn’t what she’d been expecting.
It was the end of the road.
Chapter Twenty-One
Once Ella decided to cooperate, things moved fast. She used her laptop and professional access to search property records, looking for some place Isaac owned that could hold Matthew and Gabby.
“I thought everything was localized.” Lark watched over Ella’s shoulder as she worked, but no screen stayed up long enough for her to catch anything.
“It mostly is, but there are larger databases. Realtors sometimes contact property owners who haven’t put their properties on the market but might still be interested in selling. Since we do relocation services, help people transition to other parts of the country, this makes it easier.”
“Where does the data come from?”
“Official public records. The owner of the database incorporates the data and charges a subscription fee to those of us who want to use it. Now go away and let me finish this.”
Lark joined Jason on the tiny balcony, leaving the door open to watch Ella. He had his laptop propped on the balcony wall and was typing as furiously as Ella was. Lark shoved her hands into her back pockets and tried not to feel superfluous.
“What did you find?” she asked in a low voice.
Jason gave her a cursory glance. “A syringe in her purse. Prefilled, used. No evidence of medication she would need it for, or even illegal drugs.”
“Probably what she used on Dad, then.” Lark pulled her hands out of her pockets and folded her arms, trying not to think of her father helpless. “What else?”
He held up a cell phone he’d connected to the laptop. “She called Kemmerling, among other people, but I can’t get a fix on all the numbers. Some are in Florida, so probably not related. But there were two calls to land lines in DC. No listings.”
“And since they’re land lines you can’t GPS ‘em.”
“Right.”
“Dammit.” She dropped her arms and made a move to pace, but stopped short and eyed the narrow ledge. If she moved, she might knock Jason’s laptop to the ground. That would be bad. “What are we going to do with her? We can’t just let her go.”
“But we can’t involve the police yet, either.” Jason straightened. “We’ll put her under surveillance. I have a team set up. They’ll be outside before we leave.”
“Who? How can we trust them?” Isaac had gotten to too many people already. They had no idea who else was compromised.
Jason closed the laptop. “I don’t know if we can, but they’re the people I’ve worked with the longest, the ones who’ve had my back dozens of times. For what it’s worth, I’d never have picked Nils, even without the ties to Kemmerling.”
That would have to be good enough. There was still the possibility Ella would lead them to her father, if nothing panned out here. Lark folded her arms tightly around her body and huddled in the corner of the balcony. It didn’t keep her from feeling she was about to fly apart at any second.
“I got something!” Ella called from inside. Lark hurried in, Jason close behind her. Ella scribbled something on a piece of paper.
“Is this it?”
She handed the paper to Jason. “I think so. I can’t know if Matthew’s there, of course, but—” She stopped when she caught Lark’s glare. “Okay, okay. I found nothing under Isaac’s name but his apartment in DC and the lease for the security offices. But you’re lucky I know Seamus. I know something about their families.”
“I didn’t think Isaac had any other family.”
Ella looked down her nose at them, even from where she sat at the little table. “Perhaps I know my business partner better than you know your enemy.”
“Fine. Just tell us!” Lark couldn’t stand the delay any more. She snatched the paper from Jason’s hand. “How do you know this is what we’re looking for?”
“Seamus told me his father and Isaac’s used to go hunting together all the time. They owned some land with a hunting cabin on it, a good-sized one. Seamus went with them a few times as a teenager, and said how remote it was. But there was a fire at a nearby house that killed some friends of theirs, and neither brother wanted to go up anymore. So they sold the land. Isaac was furious. He thought they should have kept it for him and Seamus, though Seamus didn’t care. The older men, Thomas and Aaron, both died of heart attacks in their early fifties.” She nodded at the paper. “That property was sold to a corporation three years ago. The name of the corporation is ISTA. I for Isaac, S for Seamus, T for Thomas, and A for Aaron.
”
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