Lisa Gardner - Touch & Go

“Ever meet his wife?”

“No. Just saw her once or twice, in the lobby. I thought she was beautiful. She had on this real artsy skirt and form-fitting turquoise top. She looked like she took care of herself, you know. People said she was nice. I didn’t… I didn’t ask too many questions.”

“What did Justin say about her?”

“He didn’t. Our time was our time. He wanted to keep it that way.”

“And you never asked him questions? Like why he was having lunch with you, instead of her?”

The girl had the good grace to flush again. “He just said they’d been married for a long time. She was a good mother, he respected her—”

“Seriously?”

“But, um, you know, then he’d seen me. And there was something magical—”

“Ah, please.” Tessa bit her lip, belatedly trying to call back her own interjection. Always better to let the subject talk.

But Kate was nodding right along. “I know. I look back at it now, and I was so unbelievably stupid. I knew, I think I always knew. But he was just so attractive, and he had this way… He made me feel special. As long as I didn’t think about it too much, of course. But for those moments, when we were together…”

“He gave you gifts?”

“A bracelet. From Tiffany’s. I keep thinking I’ll give it back, but I haven’t, um, seen him.”

“Did his wife know? About the bracelet?”

“I don’t know.”

“She ever find you?”

Kate shook her head. “I wondered if she might try. If she’d call, or worse, come to the office. I tried to think of what I might say… I don’t know, what do you say?”

“She came. She saw you. She thought you were very young. And given Justin’s skills, you never stood a chance.”

The girl wilted. Why not, Tessa figured. Imagining yourself as hated by the ex-wife was one thing; discovering you were actually pitied, instead…

“Are they really missing?” Kate asked.

“Yes.”

“I don’t know anything about that. I mean, I haven’t even seen Justin for weeks and I never spoke to his wife. I guess I figured they were working things out. I mean, when Justin ended it with me, he ended it. Just like that. He loved his wife, and he wasn’t coming back.”

“And you let him go?” Tessa pressed. “No notes slipped under his windshield wiper, calls to his private line, visits to his job sites?”

“Oh, I called. Third time, he even answered. Told me very firmly…like, like a father , that I was not to bother him again. That his decision was made and his family came first, and he knew he’d been selfish, and now he needed to work on the irreparable harm he’d caused to his loving wife, blah, blah, blah.”

The girl broke off suddenly, flushing as if she understood how callous she sounded. She added, heatedly, “He said if I was struggling this much with the end of our relationship, maybe it would be better if I sought a new place of employment. Well, I got that message loud and clear. He was threatening to get me fired! I haven’t finished college yet. You know how many jobs I can’t get out there? I need this one. Trust me, I got the message just fine. I let him go and that was it.”

Tessa studied the young travel agent. She seemed sincere enough. And yet, the girl’s recollections seemed to rely a lot on simply knowing things. She’d known Justin had wanted her. She’d known he was trying to get her fired. Made Tessa wonder just how much she should trust the knowings of a twenty-one-year-old girl. Especially one who was apparently learning many of life’s lessons the hard way.

“One last question,” Tessa said. “Justin never spoke of his family when you were together, but how about work? Any construction jobs he was worried about, either current or in the pipeline?”

Kate shook her head. “We didn’t have much time together, remember? Let’s just say we didn’t waste it talking.”

“You know you’re better off without him.”

“That’s what I keep telling myself.” The girl dropped her cigarette, ground it out with her foot. “If you don’t mind, I should head back. Like I said, I need this job.”

Tessa nodded, glanced at her watch. They’d been talking longer than she’d expected. Kate’s absence would be noted, not to mention that Tessa was now five minutes late for her first Denbe Construction meeting.

She grabbed the handle of the office building’s back door, about to reenter, when it came to her: the oldest trick in the book, the lie of omission.

She turned around, studied the young travel agent carefully. “Hey, Kate, you said you never met Justin’s wife. But what about his daughter?”

Chapter 18

THE PRISON’S KITCHEN WAS HUGE, a commercial space filled with stacked ovens, bakery-quality mixers and endless miles of stainless steel counters. The kind of kitchen meant to serve hundreds of people in an overcrowded cafeteria. It was fully stocked with pots, pans, bakeware, mixing utensils, measuring cups, etc., though it appeared Z and his crew had replaced the knives with plastic utensils.

Our first test, the team leader informed us. If we wanted to eat, we would cook. Enough for all six of us. Z cut the zip ties binding our wrists, allowing the three of us to stand together, unrestrained, for the first time since this ordeal had begun. While the knives had been removed, the kitchen still held cast-iron skillets, graters, peelers, rolling pins. Plenty of options for violence, if we felt motivated enough.

Z stated this directly, standing loosely before us, his back to a rolling, stainless steel island. He had the Taser stuck in a leather holster around his waist. Other objects protruded in discreet black leather pouches attached to his belt. I had a feeling we didn’t want to know what was in those other pouches.

I noticed that when Z spoke, his dark green snake tattoo seemed to undulate around his head, the scales moving sinuously beneath the too bright overhead lights. As if the cobra were advancing. As if the cobra would come for us next.

Mick would simply kill us. Z, on the other hand, would hurt us in ways that would make us wish we were dead.

Z finished his friendly reminder that should we choose to cause trouble, our punishment would be immediate and include but not be limited to a loss of food privileges for the remainder of our incarceration.

He said it just like that. The remainder of our incarceration. As if we were somehow serving hard time, maybe life without parole.

I felt like giggling, but I didn’t.

The commandos had procured supplies. Not much in the way of fresh produce—again, because we were serving a life sentence?—but an impressive array of canned foods, bagged lentils, and dry goods. Enough to fill several long shelves in the twelve-foot-by-twelve-foot walk-in pantry. I tried not to think about how much food was present, how long this supply could conceivably last and what that might say about our kidnappers’ plans, as I worked my way through the pantry, trying to assemble enough ingredients for a credible dinner.

For our first night of gourmet prison dining, I went with pasta with tomato sauce. We had plenty of cans of crushed tomatoes, olive oil, dried herbs, and garlic cloves. I added a jar of olives, a jar of pearl onions, then canned carrots and baby corn to the stack on the stainless steel island. Without fresh produce, we were reduced to a diet of processed vegetables, terrible in taste, nearly deadly in sodium content. Not much I could do about salt levels, but incorporating items such as carrots and corn into a marinara sauce would help supplement the nutritional content without totally sacrificing edibility. The olives and onions would assist with flavor, creating a sauce that might not win any awards in the North End but would be medal-worthy inside a state institution.