Brandon's Bride

by Lisa Gardner

  Now Justin slowed the Range Rover, starting the futile search for curbside parking. Our town house included a lower-level garage, a luxury nearly worth the property taxes, but of course Justin saved the space for me, leaving him to play the highly competitive game of street parking in downtown Boston.

  He passed by our town house once and my gaze automatically went up to the third-story window, Ashlyn’s room. The window was dark, which surprised me because she was supposed to be staying in for the evening. Maybe she simply hadn’t bothered with the overhead light, sitting before the glow of her laptop instead. Fifteen-year-olds could spend hours like that, I’d been learning. Earbuds implanted, eyes glazed over, lips sealed tightly shut.

  Justin found a space. A quick reverse, a short pull forward and he’d neatly tucked the Range Rover into place. He came around the front to get my door, and I let him.

  Last few seconds now. My hands were clenched white-knuckled on my lap. I tried to force myself to breathe. In. Out. Simple as that. One step at a time, one moment after another.

  Would he start by kissing me on the lips? Perhaps the spot he’d once discovered behind my ear? Or maybe we’d both simply strip, climb into bed, get it over with. Lights off, eyes squeezed shut. Maybe he’d be thinking about her the whole time. Maybe it shouldn’t matter. He was with me. I’d won. Kept my husband, the father of my child.

  Door opened. My husband of eighteen years loomed before me. He held out his hand. And I followed him, out of the car, down the sidewalk, neither of us speaking a word.

  * * *

  Justin paused at the front door. He’d been on the verge of punching the code into the keypad, when he stopped, frowned, then shot a quick glance at me.

  “She disarmed the system,” he muttered. “Left the door unsecured again.”

  I glanced at the door’s keypad and saw what he meant. Justin had installed the system himself—not a mechanically controlled bolt lock, but an electronically controlled one. Punch in the right code, the system disarmed the locks and the door opened. No code, no entry.

  The system had seemed to be an elegant solution to a teenage daughter who more often than not forgot her key. But for the system to work, it had to be armed, which was proving to be Ashlyn’s next challenge.

  Justin tried the knob, and sure enough, the door opened soundlessly into the darkened foyer.

  My turn to frown. “She could’ve at least left on a light.”

  My stiletto heels clipped loudly as I crossed the foyer to flip on the overhead chandelier. No longer holding on to Justin’s arms, I didn’t walk as steadily. I wondered if he noticed. I wondered if he cared.

  I made it to the wall panel. Flipped the first light switch. Nothing. I tried again, flipping up and down several times now. Nothing.

  “Justin . . .” I started in puzzlement.

  Just as I heard him say: “Libby . . .”

  A funny popping sound, like a small-caliber gun exploding. Whizzing. Justin’s body suddenly arching. I watched, openmouthed, as he stood nearly on his tiptoes, back bowing, while a guttural sound of pain wrenched through his clenched teeth.

  I smelled burning flesh.

  Then I saw the man.

  Big. Bigger than my six-two, two-hundred-pound husband, who worked in the construction field. The massive black-clad figure loomed at the edge of the foyer, hand clutching a strange-looking pistol with a square-shaped barrel. Green confetti, I noted, almost hazily. Little pieces of bright green confetti, raining down on my hardwood foyer as my husband danced macabre and the faceless man took another step forward.

  His finger released the trigger of the gun, and Justin stopped arching, sagging instead. My husband’s breath came out ragged, right before the big man hit the trigger again. Four, five, six times he made Justin’s entire body convulse while I stood there, openmouthed, arm outstretched as if that would stop the room from swaying.

  I heard my husband say something, but I couldn’t understand it at first. Then it came to me. With a low, labored breath, Justin was ordering me to run.

  I made it one step. Long enough to glance pleadingly at the darkened staircase. To pray my daughter was tucked safely inside her third-story bedroom, rocking out to her iPod, oblivious to the scene below.

  Then the huge man twisted toward me. With a flick of his wrist, he ejected a square cartridge from the front end of what I now realized was a Taser. Then he leapt forward and planted the end of the barrel against the side of my leg. He pulled the trigger.

  The contact point on my thigh immediately fired to painful, excruciating life. More burning flesh. Screaming. Probably my own.

  I was aware of two things: my own acute pain and the whites of my attacker’s eyes. Mask, I realized faintly. A black ski mask that obliterated his mouth, his nose, his face. Until he was no longer a man, but a faceless monster with white, white eyes stepping straight out of my nightmares into my own home.

  Then Justin lurched awkwardly forward, windmilling his arms as he rained feeble blows on the larger man’s back. The black-masked figure turned slightly and, with some kind of karate chop, caught Justin in the throat.

  My husband made a terrible gurgling sound and went down.

  My left leg gave out. I went down as well. Then rolled over and vomited champagne.

  My last thought, through the pain and the burning and the panic and the fear . . . Don’t let him find Ashlyn. Don’t let him find Ashlyn.

  Except then I heard her. High-pitched. Terrified. “Daddy. Mommy. Daddy!”

  In my last second of consciousness, I managed to turn my head. I saw two more black forms, one on either side of my daughter’s twisting body, as they dragged her down the stairs.

  Briefly, our gazes met.

  I love you, I tried to say.

  But the words wouldn’t come out.

  The black-masked figure raised his Taser again. Calmly inserted a fresh cartridge. Took aim. Fired.

  My fifteen-year-old daughter started to scream.

  Pain has a flavor.

  The question is what does it taste like to you?