Marilyn Pappano - Criminal Deception

Decker held out his phone, and everyone gathered to watch over Joe’s shoulder. The room on the small screen was dark except for the light shining on Liz’s face. Her cheek was scraped raw, her left eye swollen shut, her nose and upper lip puffy and dried blood trailed across her skin. She lay motionless, eyes closed, lips slightly parted. She could be unconscious. She could be dead.

Then, after a mumbled command, a booted foot came into frame, nudging her shoulder. Her lashes fluttered, her forehead wrinkled and a low moan escaped her.

And the clip ended.

Tension expanded in Joe’s chest, making it damn near impossible to breathe. “How am I supposed to find Josh and have him here by midnight?”

“That’s not my problem, Mr. Saldana.”

“I need more time.”

“Sorry.” Wallace sounded professional, strictly business. “I operate on the schedule I’m given. Midnight. I’ll call you again to tell you where we’ll make the exchange. Just you and your brother. No one else.”

Wallace hung up, and Joe did the same, his hand shaking. Across the table, Decker and Maricci were watching the video once more. He didn’t ask to see it again. The image of Liz’s battered face was burned into his brain.

Please, God, don’t let it be the last picture I have of her.

It took every bit of strength Liz possessed to open her eyes. Her lids felt heavy and her vision was fuzzy, limited on the left. Her shoulders ached, and her wrists…movement showed they were secured together behind her back with what felt like thick cable ties. Her entire face throbbed, especially around her left eye, which was tender, swollen, probably spectacularly black. Her cheekbones hurt, the inside of her mouth was sore and the taste of blood lingered on her tongue.

She hoped the jerk who had hit her had at least a few scrapes to show for it.

She was inside the van, lying on her side, and her head was pounding-from the blow? From being unconscious so long? The sky visible through the van’s windshield was black, dimly broken by distant stars. A long time to stay knocked out from a simple blow. Although, she thought dizzily as she started the painful process of sitting up without the help of her hands, there had been nothing simple about that blow.

Finally semi-vertical, she sagged against the van wall as voices sounded outside, three, distinct, although their words were little more than murmurs. One was Daniel Wallace, politely menacing. One seemed vaguely familiar, nothing definite that she could point to, just the feeling that she knew it. The other was a stranger.

Wallace’s voice grew louder as he came nearer the van. An instant after his words stopped, the back door opened, and he appeared, handsome, elegant, dangerous in the dim overhead light. “Our guest is finally awake. I admit, I was starting to wonder if my associate miscalculated the dosage of the sedative he gave you.”

She looked past him, but both of his associates were hidden from view. All she could see was heavy woods and, to the left, faint light reflected on water. Copper Lake? That was where Joe was supposed to have taken her this afternoon, on Natalia’s borrowed bike. She would much prefer his company to Wallace’s.

Wallace moved to sit in the open door. “You’ve slept half the day away, Liz. You don’t mind if I call you that, do you? Ms. Dalton seems so formal, given the circumstances.”

“By all means, Danny, go ahead.” Her voice was hoarse, her throat dry.

His gaze narrowed before he treated her to the predatory smile again. “I’m sorry about your injuries. If you’d just come along nicely, there would have been no need for violence.”

No need? He intended to kill her. No doubt he’d called Joe, offering to trade her for Josh, but even if Joe could pull that off, Wallace still had to kill her. He and his buddies had kidnapped her, assaulted her and were holding her hostage-all felonies. How much easier to add murder to their list than to leave a victim alive and able to identify them.

They would kill Joe, too.

She didn’t want to die, didn’t want him to die, especially thinking so little of her. If she’d just tried harder to explain things to him, if she’d just been more honest about her feelings for him… She’d told him she’d wanted him. Wanted. Not needed. Not loved.

The cuts inside her mouth hurt when she smiled, but she forced the action. “Gee, I never have been the type to play well with others.”

“I thought I knew your type-Saldana’s type. All flash, no substance. Empty-headed, neither bright nor capable, willing to do whatever it takes to catch and hold on to a guy. And yet inside that cute little purse, along with your lipstick, money and debit card, you had a GLOCK.45. That’s a hell of a gun for a pretty woman like you. Why do you carry it?”

“Because of scum like you.” He waited for more, and she went on after a moment. “You know the kind of people Josh gets mixed up with. Better safe than sorry.”

“I bet right now you’re sorry you didn’t shoot me in the parking lot.”

She smiled. “There’s still time.”

He glanced at his watch. “Not much. I gave Saldana a deadline of midnight. It’s ten till. Either he delivers his brother or…” An eloquent shrug that said so much. Or they would kill her and Joe both, and when Josh found out, he would go into hiding for the rest of his life. The Mulroneys would never have to worry about him again.

“Come on,” Wallace said, rising, dusting his pants. “Let’s get you out of there.”

Shrinking away from the hand he offered, she scooted to the open door, lowered her feet to the ground and gingerly stood up, then followed him to the front of the van. They were in a clearing at the lake’s edge, parked next to a picnic pavilion. On the other side were two other vehicles: a black SUV-gee, no surprise there-and, barely visible beyond that, the front end of a compact car. Wallace’s accomplices were standing in the shadow of the pavilion, two dark figures, one tall and stout, the other shorter and thinner. Stout held a rifle and faced the road. Short held a pistol at his side and faced the lake.

A ripping sound brought her attention back to Wallace. He’d torn a six-inch strip off a roll of duct tape and was coming toward her, smiling. He pressed it across her mouth, gently smoothing the edges, then gestured to the west. “Walk out there to the middle of the field and sit down.”

Liz gauged the distance to the center: thirty feet, tops. If she made a break for the woods on either side, a halfway decent shot with a halfway decent rifle would bring her down. She started walking across grass that had recently had its first cut since winter and smelled sweetly of straw, summer and lazy days.

Before she’d gone fifteen feet, she became aware of an engine in the distance, and her heart seized in her chest. Joe.

A set of headlights came on, followed by two more, elongating her shadow at odd angles. If she turned back to face them, she would be blinded. Joe would be blinded, too, dealing with disembodied voices, unable to see their weapons.

“That’s far enough,” Wallace called, and she stopped. “Sit down.”

She did that, too, awkwardly, settling sideways so she could see both the road and the bad guys, as yet another set of headlights flashed briefly through the trees ahead. The SUV that came slowly around the bend was dark in color and belonged to Tommy Maricci; he’d given her and Joe a ride home in it just a few nights ago.

The headlights swept across her as the vehicle slowed even more, then turned off the road into the grass. It stopped, the engine still running, the headlights still on, but long moments dragged past before the door finally opened and the driver slid out.