Lisa Gardner - Touch & Go

The other members of the posse nodded.

“Except, of course,” Lopez continued, “nothing about Justin is easy. And we’re the ones who know that, too. So don’t go staring all flinty-eyed at us.” He shook his finger at Nicole in particular. “We shot with Justin at least once a week. The guy could take care of himself. Not to mention, most of us were around for his wedding, plus we helped change Ashlyn’s diapers. He’s one of us, his family is our family. We’re not the fucking problem here. You’re gonna have to sniff somewhere else for that.”

Lopez appeared to have said his piece. He sat back, crossed his arms over his chest. His guys nodded beside him.

Score one for the hood, Wyatt thought.

“I think we can all agree,” Bennett interjected diplomatically, “that we are deeply concerned about Justin, Libby and Ashlyn. Please, you’re handling this investigation. What can you tell us?”

“We do have some initial leads,” Nicole supplied. “For starters, Taser confetti was recovered at the scene, which we can use to trace the weapon used in the attack.”

“Won’t help,” the Bacon guy spoke up.

All eyes turned to him. “Illegal in Mass.” He shrugged, apparently not a big talker. “Meaning Taser’s probably not registered, meaning serial number on confetti won’t tie back to a listed weapon.”

Nicole thinned her lips, and Wyatt could tell by her expression that she’d already known that. Still, knowing you had no leads didn’t necessarily mean admitting you had no leads.

“Neighbors didn’t see or hear anything?” Wyatt asked.

“No. But sometimes a negative can be a positive.”

Good line. Which was why Nicole had a real career with the FBI, while Wyatt was still a semi-carpenter.

“For example,” she continued, “to transport a family of three, as well as multiple kidnappers in a single vehicle, would require at least a van or SUV. Presumably, for the kidnappers to remove three bound-and-gagged individuals from a home without arousing suspicion means such a vehicle would have to be parked in the immediate vicinity. Inside the Denbes’ garage would be one option, but none of the neighbors saw the garage opening and closing that night, let alone Libby’s vehicle being moved onto the street. How, then, did the kidnappers manage to illegally park a large vehicle right near the house without arousing suspicion?”

“Delivery van.” Tessa Leoni spoke up for the first time. Her tone wasn’t cool, just matter-of-fact. Wyatt’s first guess: She had yet to hear anything at this table she didn’t already know.

Nicole frowned slightly, clearly not thrilled to have had an outsider beat her to the punch. “That is our current theory, correct. We’re assuming the vehicle was disguised as a caterer’s van, which is the kind of thing few people would notice in such a neighborhood. The Denbes have rights to an aboveground parking space, located next to the garage entrance at the rear of the town house. It would’ve been easy enough to park a van there, and quickly remove the family members from the house under the cover of night.”

“How’d they enter the house?” Wyatt asked, as he knew the least about the Boston scene.

“Overrode the security.”

“No.” One of the posse, Paulie, spoke up. “I installed that system myself. Can’t be overridden.”

Paulie rattled off about double this and reinforced that. Nicole let him talk, her expression more patient than surprised.

“Then it wasn’t overridden,” she stated calmly, when he was finished. “It was disarmed.”

“You’d have to know the code,” Paulie began.

“Exactly.”

“Meaning…”

“Exactly.”

Around the room, the various members of the management team all stared at one another, the message loud and clear.

An inside job. The Denbes had been abducted by people who knew them, their security code and, most likely, the ransom insurance policy. Definitely a friend had masterminded the kidnapping, not a foe. And most likely, given that it was a Denbe employee who’d installed their security system, and the Denbe management team that had approved Justin’s insurance policy, it was someone sitting right at this table.

Tessa Leoni leaned forward, taking the initiative for the first time all meeting: “In the event of a divorce between Justin and Libby, what would happen to Denbe Construction?”

Absolute, immediate uproar from the Denbe contingency. Never, couldn’t happen, how dare she…

Wyatt leaned back, crossed his arms over his chest and took it all in. No doubt about it, 9:00 P.M. Saturday night, they were finally getting down to business.

Yep, his job was never boring.

Chapter 20

DINNER DIDN’T MAKE IT. I threw up within the first few minutes of returning to the cell. Ashlyn held back my hair as I leaned over the stainless steel toilet. Afterward, I rinsed my mouth with water from the sink, then, given that there were no towels, patted my face dry with the sleeve of my orange jumpsuit.

“Are you okay?” Ashlyn whispered, my fifteen-year-old daughter who hadn’t spoken to me in months, now the epitome of motherly concern.

“Just need to rest,” I said. “I’ll be better by morning.”

She nodded, though morning seemed a strange concept, locked up in an overbright prison cell. What time was it, anyway? I peered out the far window, the one overlooking the barren dirt outside. The sky was pitch-black. Meaning, this time of year, it could be anytime after 5:00 P.M. I felt the hour was probably around eight, maybe nine, but was mostly guessing.

The three of us stared at one another, stuck together in a tiny cell, unsure of what to do next. Justin was gazing at me with open concern. Then he caught me staring, and quickly smoothed his expression.

“We should compare notes, assess what we know,” he said briskly. He moved away from the door, toward the left-hand bunk. He winced as he sat down.

I couldn’t help myself: “How are you feeling?”

He waved a hand. “Fine, fine.”

Watching him closer, I detected the tight set of his jaw, the fine lines creasing the corners of his eyes. He was in pain, definitely. How many hits had he taken with the Taser? Six, eight, twelve? Enough to cause permanent damage? Maybe Z and his cohorts had fried my husband’s spinal cord. God knows, Ashlyn and I were sporting decent-size burns from the Taser’s contact points. Justin must have nearly a dozen of those, not to mention one extremely overstimulated central nervous system. Of course he hurt.

“The front door was locked.” Ashlyn spoke up earnestly. I sat down next to her on the lower right-hand bunk. She took my hand, her face pleading with me. “Honest, Mom, I told Dad on the way to dinner. I never touched the system after you two left. I was in my room the whole time, playing games on my iPad and texting Lindsay.”

I looked at Justin. He’d armed the system when we left. He always did, Mr. Safety and Security. If I thought back hard enough, I could even picture him doing it. His fingers moving quick and sure over the keypad.

“Did you hear anything?” I asked softly. My head still throbbed, but if Justin could will his pain away, I could do the same. He was right, after all. We needed to figure out what we were up against.

“No.” Ashlyn flushed. “I was, um…going to the bathroom, and this guy, he just…appeared in the doorway. It was the larger one, Mick, I guess. And I, I got scared and I grabbed hair spray and went after him—”

“Good girl,” Justin said.

She flashed a look at him. “I ran for your room. But you weren’t there, of course, and I…”

Her voice drifted off. She didn’t look at either of us, and I realized that, all of a sudden, my daughter was near tears. Because she’d needed us, run to our room, and we hadn’t been there. Said a lot about our family these days.