Lisa Gardner - Touch & Go

Z released my shoulders, and as quickly as they’d come, both men disappeared.

Justin looked up, his formerly handsome face now beaten nearly beyond recognition.

“Libby,” he whispered. “Libby. I was wrong. We have…to get…out of here.”

Then, my husband collapsed into a bloody heap upon the floor.

Chapter 23

WYATT COULDN’T SLEEP. He didn’t mind sleep. Had nothing against it. But tonight, after a long investigative day tackling a high-stakes case, his brain wouldn’t shut up. He lay in the moderately priced hotel Kevin had found using the modern miracle of their vehicle’s built-in navigation system, and his brain was running a mile a minute.

His current 2:00 A.M. musing: Why a whole family?

So far, most theories of the case had to do with financial gain. After all, Justin Denbe was a wealthy man, heading an even bigger dollar corporation. A guy like that gets Tasered and abducted from his elite Boston brownstone, money was the first thing that sprang to mind.

According to his company, he carried an insurance policy making him worth a cool two mil—hard to argue with that. And looking at the company itself—going through a difficult industry transition, maybe some infighting among the management team—you could see where a key player might perceive gain if Justin didn’t show up for a bit. Hell, maybe a good old-fashioned kidnapping would sour Justin on the whole business. He’d step aside permanently, allowing either the old guard, or the new blood, to take over the reins and move the business triumphantly into the full glory of design, build, operate.

Whatever.

Wyatt wasn’t into businesses. He was into people. Case like this, no matter where you started, would never end up being about P and Ls. It would be about people, what made them tick, and what made some of them tick differently.

Which brought him back to his first thought: Best they could tell, there were a couple of lucrative reasons for kidnapping Justin Denbe, but why his whole family?

Kidnapping three was tricky. For one thing, you immediately added coconspirators in crime, and if there was a coconspirator out there who could keep a secret, a prison official hadn’t met him yet. Second, the logistics increased exponentially. Transportation—now you had multiple perpetrators and multiple victims. Hell, getting from point A to point B was no longer neat and discreet, but involved a regular party boat. Might as well rent a stretch limo and call it a day.

Then, lodging. Where do you put that many people? Granted, this is where northern New Hampshire made sense, especially this time of year. Some of the campgrounds involved decent-size seasonal lodges. They’d be a bitch to heat, and uncomfortable as hell, as they weren’t meant for winter occupancy, but they’d definitely provide a private, inconspicuous way to house a bunch of hostages.

Of course, now you gotta feed a whole party as well. And sure, you can stock these lodges; that’s what happened in the summer months. But it still involved effort . Trips to the grocery store, which as an experienced shopper himself, Wyatt knew were nearly impossible to get right the first time. You always forgot something on the list. Or, something unexpected came up—say a rich Boston wife suddenly going through opiate withdrawal and now requiring aspirin and Imodium and all sorts of TLC.

Work, work, work.

Risk, risk, risk.

If these guys were truly professionals, why expose themselves to the hazards of grabbing an entire family? Especially if the most financial gain could be made by simply kidnapping Justin himself?

Wyatt didn’t like it.

Two A.M. to three A.M. to four A.M.

Why take the entire family? Why not just kidnap Justin Denbe?

And thirty hours later, where the hell was the ransom demand?

WYATT ROLLED OUT OF BED AT SIX. He showered, which made him feel moderately human, then shaved, which definitely made him feel better, and finally changed into a fresh uniform he kept packed in a duffel bag, because in his line of work, an initial call out had been known to involve several days away from home.

Too early to call the North Country yet. If his people had real news, either from the hotline or direct public contact or from the campground searches, they would’ve let him know, regardless of the hour. His cell phone had no messages, same with his voice mail, which led him to believe they were still in the all-pain, no-gain phase of their investigation. Fair enough.

HE HEADED DOWNSTAIRS to retrieve a fax from the Boston PD, and found Kevin already in the lobby, holding two large cups of Dunkin’ Donuts coffee.

“Good man,” Wyatt said, grabbing the thick bundle of papers, then accepting the offered coffee. He looked around. The lobby was deserted.

“They provide a continental breakfast,” Kevin commented. “Can you believe it doesn’t open till seven thirty on a Sunday?”

Wyatt grunted, took a sip. He liked Dunkin’ Donuts regular. Nearly white with cream and heavy with sugar. Good stuff.

“Sleep?” Kevin asked.

“Who needs it? You?”

“I watched pay-per-view. But not porn. I know they make this big deal about none of the movie titles showing up on the hotel bill, but that just makes everyone look like they’ve been viewing porn.”

“Good to know.”

“You don’t talk much in the morning.”

“And you talk entirely too much.”

The men headed for a small table in the common room. No one around, so they didn’t have to worry about prying eyes or keen hearing.

“Game plan for the day?” Kevin asked.

“Stick around. Unless we get a development from up north, only real crime scene is here, not to mention all the players are in the city as well. Tricky, trying to profile an entire family. The number of interviews, background reports… We need more manpower. ’Course, we don’t have it to give.”

“FBI will start throwing more bodies at it, especially now that the family’s beyond the twenty-four-hour mark,” Kevin said. “Won’t have a choice. It’s been, what, a day and a half, and we have no leads, not even a ransom demand.”

“FBI’s gonna set up a command center. I’m guessing they’ll bring in a mobile unit, park it in front of the Denbes’ town house. They’ll be thinking seriously about preparing for contact from the kidnappers, wiring the house, tapping the landlines, all that stuff. I bet they keep the Denbes’ mobile phones as well. Just in case a call comes through them.”

“Can you text a ransom demand?” Kevin mused. “Especially on the teenager’s cell. There’s something suitably ironic about that.”

“Hell, if you can sext, why not ransom text? Textortion? Sounds good to me.”

Kevin took a sip of his own coffee. “So what do you think of Tessa Leoni? You got to interview with her last night.”

Wyatt shrugged. “She asked good questions. Can’t get a vibe on her relationship with Denbe Construction, though. On the one hand, they’re her client, on the other hand, it seemed to be her first time meeting any of them.”

“First,” Kevin confirmed. “Looked it up last night. Denbe has had Northledge on retainer for the past seven years, but it doesn’t appear to be a major account. Northledge probably provides routine background checks on prospective employees, that sort of thing, which is handled lower on the Northledge food chain than Tessa Leoni. Her boss saves her for more strategic situations.”

“This would be a situation needing some strategy,” Wyatt concurred, but he was frowning. “She seems kind of young to be the investigative big guns.”

“Twenty-nine. Served four years as a Massachusetts state police trooper. Two years at Northledge.”