“How is it you’re so calm?”
“It’s an illusion, love. One you need to embrace right now. Plus, I’ve had practice saving my breakdowns for after the crisis.”
“It’s a nursing thing?”
“And a military wife thing,” she confessed in a whisper.
He pulled her into his lap and held her close. She kissed his brow and relaxed into his embrace. “The enemy isn’t supposed to be over here,” he said.
“I know.”
Too many emotions to name were winding around his heart, gripping tight. “The enemy isn’t supposed to be one of our own.”
“I know that too.” Her fingers combed through his hair.
“When they find Eaton, I’ll kill him for this.”
“I know you’ll want to.” She sat back, holding his gaze. “But Mark’s team will probably beat you to it. They’re so big and strong and perfect, you know.”
His heart eased with her humor, even if the laughter itself got bottled up in his throat and caused his eyes to sting. “What would I do without you?”
“You’ll never have to find out.” She kissed him again and slipped out of his arms. “Come to bed now.”
Dawn arrived a few hours later and Ben felt marginally better, though hardly well rested, plagued by the lingering images of his son suffering. He and Patricia both picked at their breakfast before giving up on food. Her lack of appetite was the only obvious sign of her distress.
When they reached the temporary office Hank had established on the nearby naval base, the young man they considered a son was waiting outside the door, his expression grave. Ben caught Patricia’s hand in his and held on tight. They’d get through this together.
Hank looked as if he’d been up all night and just changed into a clean uniform. He probably had. “Come on in.”
Patricia paused to hug Hank before they walked into the room. Ben saw a series of still shots, apparently from the video, taped to a whiteboard and moved to shield his wife. With a tiny shake of her head, she stepped around him and studied the images.
“Why isolate these?” she asked, turning to Hank.
“The lip readers,” Hank replied. A day or two ago, he’d told them he was bringing in specialists to pick apart every video for clues to Eaton’s plan and location. “We still don’t have enough to create a search grid, but we’re getting closer.”
None of the videos Eaton sent showed even a sliver of a window in view of either camera in the area where Mark was being tortured. “Did the lip readers pick up anything?”
“Pictures have been too fuzzy to get an accurate read,” Hank said. “But we’re working on it.”
“The sandwich indicates lunch or dinnertime?” Patricia put her back to the pictures and took a seat at the long table in the center of the room.
“Or just what was available at the time,” Hank replied. “There’s been no rhyme or reason to the food in any of the shots with Mark.”
“It’s a tactic,” Ben said.
“Yes, sir. I believe it is.” Hank urged Ben to sit as he did the same. “We’ve gone over everything from the first live broadcast, moving forward. Eaton seems most consistent and conventional when he brings in Charlotte.”
It had been a blessing that Eaton hadn’t done anything physical to her so far. Ben knew all of them were holding their breath every time another video came through, waiting for Eaton to cross that line. They’d done all they could to keep her parents informed without worrying them unnecessarily.
“Using the best timeline we have,” Hank was saying, “I’m thinking he’s holding them somewhere south of here.”
Ben lurched to his feet. “So let’s go.”
“Not so fast, sir. That’s still too much coastline, private and commercial, to search.”
“Why not north?” Patricia asked.
“There have been storms north of us that most likely would have knocked out the live feeds that have come through. At the least we would have seen signal interference and poor video quality.” Hank stacked his fists on the tabletop. “Other than that, it’s a guess.”
“How far south?” Ben queried. He wouldn’t put it past Eaton to stage this somewhere close to their beachside home in North Carolina.
“I sent a team to search the immediate area around your beach house,” Hank said. Clearly his thoughts were similar to Ben’s. “It’s clear.”
Catching Hank’s gaze, Ben asked, “Is there something we can add to your investigation or search effort?”
“Not yet,” Hank said. “He has help on the technology side. I have experts countering that. None of the mercenaries who’ve worked with him can shed any light on this site.”
“He keeps them compartmentalized.”
“Yes.” Hank pressed his thumb to the furrow between his eyebrows. “The money has been almost untraceable.”
“Almost?” Patricia sat forward.
“We’ve learned he didn’t go straight into mercenary work. We have people dedicated exclusively to unraveling the money trail from the legitimate business he sold a few years ago to the present. I’m hoping that will give us more clues to his current location.
“One last thing,” Hank continued. “Based on the bits of conversation we think we’ve interpreted correctly, Eaton is about to change up their routine. Hopefully that means we’ll have some external clues that will allow us to search properly.”
“And make a rescue,” Patricia said.
“Yes,” Hank confirmed.
The door burst open and they all turned. “The live feed is back and we have some audio,” a young man in uniform announced. “Begging your pardon, sir,” he added, his eyes wide when he recognized the retired general.
Ben waved off the interruption.
“Stay here,” Hank said. “I’ll forward what I can.”
Less than a minute later, Ben’s phone hummed as the live feed came through. Damn Eaton for being so persistent with this tactic.
“He knows it bothers you,” Patricia said.
“It’s hardly original. This would bother anyone,” Ben grumbled. “You shouldn’t watch.”
“You shouldn’t keep trying to protect me, Benjamin Riley. I’d rather deal with facts than speculation.”
As the video began, Ben and Patricia both sucked in a breath at the sight of Charlotte chained to the rebar embedded in the pad of cement.
“Any last requests?” Eaton asked from off camera.
The audio quality was excellent. Patricia clutched Ben’s free hand as they watched.
“Let us go,” Charlotte said.
“You’ll be free tomorrow.”
Charlotte’s eyebrows lifted in disbelief. “Free?”
“Yes.”
“You’re setting us free tomorrow?”
Patricia covered her mouth. They both knew it had to be a trap.
“That’s the plan,” Eaton confirmed. “No more cuffs or cages. You can walk right out the door.”
“What’s the catch?”
Eaton laughed and the vile sound struck hard against the corrugated metal walls and bounced back. “You are the clever one, aren’t you?”
Charlotte only glared at him.
“I hear you miss your creative process.” Her eyes went wide, but she kept quiet. “I have a proposition for you,” Eaton was saying. “Before I let you go, I want a Charlotte Hanover original painting. It’s an investment sure to increase in value.”
Patricia gasped at the veiled threat that her art would be worth more when she died.
“You and Mark had such a nice conversation last night,” Eaton continued. “Vacations, antics, family fun. It was very enlightening.”
“Go to hell,” Charlotte snapped. “That was private.”
“Little girl, nothing is private in a prison. I’m surprised Mark didn
’t share that tip with you.” Eaton circled behind her, motioned for something to move or adjust. “Your feelings and devotion to the Riley clan is nauseating. Still, it got me thinking.”
A thin guard dressed in black from head to toe set up an easel within Charlotte’s reach, adding a canvas and a small folding table of supplies. Through it all, Eaton droned on, talking about the vacation he’d taken with his family to Hawaii after a deployment.
“I want you to give me a painting of that time when I had a family,” Eaton said. “Before General Riley destroyed us.”
“It can take weeks or more to finish a painting,” Charlotte said, clearly resistant to his demands.
“You have today if you want to walk free tomorrow.” Eaton handed over what appeared to be an old photo. “Use this for reference. Better get busy. If you don’t finish to my satisfaction, you both stay.”
“I knew there was a catch.”
“Oh, there is. If you stall, Mark will pay the price.” Eaton walked out of the camera view and Charlotte took stock of the provided supplies.
Hank returned, putting the live feed up on a wall-mounted monitor. They all watched in silence as Charlotte began to work.
Occasionally they heard noises from Eaton, presumably at his desk, but it was too far from the microphone to be useful.
“That’s not the right vegetation for Hawaii.” Hank cocked his head. “She knows she’s on camera and she has the picture for reference right there.” He pointed to the corner of her canvas. “I think she’s painting in trees that she’s seen recently. This is helpful.” Hank dashed out of the room, leaving Ben and Patricia to watch over Charlotte as she painted a landscape wildly different from the photo Eaton had provided.
CHAPTER 7
Charlotte prepared a palette and her canvas in silence, though her back already ached from sleeping on the cage floor and her range of motion was limited by the handcuffs. These shoes had zero support and the artificial lighting posed another challenge. Dark splotches and spatters decorated the area, bloodstains from abusing Mark in this very spot.
This didn’t have to be her best work, but it had to be good enough to convince Eaton she’d tried.
“You refused to let me go so I would paint for you?” she asked, glancing at him from around the canvas.
He frowned. “You were in the wrong place at the wrong time. I decided to capitalize on the opportunity.” He flicked his fingers, indicating she should get busy. “Be grateful I liked your work when I looked you up online.”
She didn’t have much confidence she could pull this off. He’d done nothing but ask her questions about the Rileys and though she’d kept her answers vague, she had the sense she wasn’t telling him anything he didn’t already know.
Being confined—literally—to this space and this canvas was bad enough. Creating a painting for the jerk holding them captive, threatening to hurt Mark if she didn’t paint well, compounded the issue a thousand times over. Could she paint fast enough to please Eaton and slow enough to keep Mark safely in his cage for the entire day? He needed time to recuperate.
She wondered who monitored the cameras Eaton had installed, wondered if there was audio as well as visual. Did anyone edit the videos Eaton sent the general to torment him or was it all just a raw feed? She couldn’t imagine the pain of watching a child endure the beatings Mark had taken. He played off the pain, but she could see his recovery took longer every night.
She hated being party to a system that brought pain to Ben and Patricia, though it would be worth it if she could use it to their advantage. “Where did you get the painting supplies?” she asked.
“I have means and men at my disposal,” Eaton replied. “I assume the quality is sufficient to the task.”
“Yes.”
“Then shut up and paint.”
Ignoring that, she studied the adorable face of his daughter, alight with joy as she held a bright pink flower in her hands. It was a lovely scene, Charlotte thought with some regret. As much as she despised whom she was painting for, she appreciated the time to paint at all. The tropical paradise in the photograph was lush and green with a soaring blue sky. The rich, verdant landscape surrounding the little girl bore little resemblance to the trees and path she’d seen on the walk here from the dock.
Still, there was some resemblance, in size and scope, with the tall trees that framed the photo. Enough to give the investigators Mark believed were searching for them a clue to their location. She used a blank space of the canvas and painted the leaves from trees she’d seen on the hike in from the dock. There had been stubby palms and swaying grasses and the ocean had been deep and clear under the dock.
Quickly she sketched out the path she’d walked, the plants and leaves she’d seen. Later she would add layers and depth to build the painting into what Eaton requested. She had no idea if the cameras caught any of her work or why Eaton would even give her this chance to put out a cry for help, but she did it anyway.
If he noticed and challenged her, she’d simply explain it away as a warm-up exercise. It hardly mattered. She didn’t believe that he would set them free tomorrow, not by any reasonable definition anyway.
With no window, she had no idea how much time passed as she covered the quick beach scene here with the deeper blue-greens of the Hawaii landscape. She only knew her hands and neck had cramped and her feet were wishing for thick, warm sand rather than more of this unyielding floor.
“Could I walk a bit?” she asked, rolling her neck. “Just around the office would be helpful.” Normally she’d take breaks for food, stretches or a long walk outside. She’d give her eyes and hands a break by reviewing inspiration boards or doing whatever she needed for the next burst.
From behind the desk, Eaton narrowed his gaze. “Is that part of your process?”
“Well, my process would be to go for a run or take a yoga break outside. Painting the outdoors isn’t the same as breathing fresh air.”
“No.”
“Exactly. I didn’t think you’d grant either of those requests.”
“I won’t take the cuffs off either.”
“You do know the law of diminishing returns?”
“As well as I know you’re running out of time,” Eaton said, his gaze on his laptop.
She rocked back and forth on her feet, then twisted her shoulders side to side. Anything to get the blood moving. The girl in the picture had the sweetest expression and despite her aggravation with Eaton, Charlotte couldn’t purposely botch that precious face. She wasn’t particularly well known for her portraiture, but she didn’t really have much of a choice.
His mention of the painting increasing in value hadn’t escaped her notice. The prevailing joke among artists was that death was the best way to boost sales and gain fame. All she’d really wanted from fame was the means and reputation to eventually create a retreat that would give artists and other creatives a place to rejuvenate and recharge.
She peeked at Eaton again. What did he have planned? He wasn’t going to let them walk out of here because he’d had a change of heart. He’d been too hard on Mark for her to believe that.
“Do you think you’re in love with him?” Eaton asked, interrupting her speculation.
He’d asked her that question, or a variation of it, each time he’d had her brought in. The significance escaped her.
“I’ve loved Mark all my life.” She gave the same honest answer as she had previously. If these were her last hours, she wouldn’t hold back. “He’s family.” Though she kept her gaze locked on the canvas, she heard his chair scrape against the floor as he pushed back from his desk.
“He doesn’t love you,” Eaton said, his cold eyes stared at her from over the top edge of the canvas.
A bug under a microscope would have more confidence and definitely more space. Between his intimidation tactics and the cuffs changing the weight of
her brush strokes, she was close to ruining the painting. There couldn’t possibly be time to start over. She took half a step back.
“I’ve watched this family for years. Learned their patterns, strengths and weaknesses,” Eaton bragged. “It’s clear to me, and it should be clear to you, the Hanovers don’t factor in their lives.”
Then he hadn’t done any deep research at all. The Hanovers and Rileys were inseparable in spirit even when they weren’t in the same geographical area. Patricia and Sue Ellen had decided nothing would minimize their friendship and they’d built those values into the family dynamic.
One more reason Charlotte had never confessed to her unrelenting crush on Mark. She wouldn’t be the wedge that interrupted how well the families clicked or that made any of them feel awkward.
She lowered the brush so he didn’t see her trembling. “Does that mean I’m free to go?” It was worth a try.
“No.” He shifted a bit and she decided if she ever painted him, he’d be a snake, lurking and ready to poison any perceived happiness.
“The handcuffs are a hindrance,” she said. “I’d like to honor your daughter by capturing the sparkle in her eyes. That’s delicate work.”
He came around to view the canvas from her angle. Watching him, she caught his first unguarded reaction to the painting. The meanness faded from his expression, softening as he took in the photo coming to life on the canvas.
A gratifying moment for any artist, to know the work makes an impact. Inwardly she sighed. If it was going to be her last painting, she should give it her best effort. Who knew taking pride in the work would be so frustrating?
He pulled a key from his pocket and released the cuffs. “Don’t make me regret it.”
“You won’t.” She shook out her hands and circled her wrists one direction and another, releasing the tension. “May I walk a bit?”
Eaton scowled. “Stay clear of the door and my desk.”
Since he’d put the easel on the opposite end of the room, it wouldn’t be a problem. She plucked the photograph from the clip at the edge of the canvas and paced the width of the office. Back and forth, letting her hands and mind rest. Using the wall for support, she stretched her back and legs too.
Harlequin Romantic Suspense December 2020 Box Set Page 82