Lisa Gardner - Touch & Go

“No.”

“No, I can’t speak…?”

“No, they aren’t here. We’re alone in the control room. We can keep them locked out, meaning we are safe from immediate physical assault. Explosives, on the other hand…” Justin’s tone was droll. He didn’t seem nervous to Tessa. Just…grim. A man who knew the score.

Beside her, Wyatt mouthed the words control room . Wyatt studied her. Tessa shrugged.

“Libby and Ashlyn are with you, but not your captors? You are alone?” Nicole continued. While her face remained impassive, one leg trembled beneath her. High-stakes poker, with other people’s lives at stake.

“Five minutes,” Justin said. Then, for the first time, his tone broke. “Look, I know you’re trying to trace this call. They know you’re trying to trace this call. I’m telling you, you don’t have time. For the next five minutes, my family and I are safe. That’s as good as it’s going to get. Now you get that fucking money in that fucking account, or your next visual will be myself, my wife and my daughter being blown to shit!”

“I understand. Your safety is our number one concern. Of course, we have to work with the insurance company—”

“Listen to me. This is not a negotiation. I am not in touch with our captors, they are not on this line. They are standing very far away, holding a detonator. They are monitoring the account. Either the money appears by three eleven, or they flip the kill switch. Those are the options.”

“Control room,” Wyatt muttered again beside Tessa. He was nudging her with his arm, as if that term should mean something to her. “The pile of personal possessions on the kitchen counter—wallet, jewelry…”

“Justin,” Nicole was saying, “I understand your concerns. Trust me, we’re on your side. But if they have wired your room with explosives, how do we know they won’t activate them either way?”

“Because rich men have incentive to get away. Poor men don’t.”

Then, Tessa got it. She turned toward Wyatt, keeping her voice low even as her eyes widened. “Prison. Prisons have control rooms. But, how could you smuggle a family into a prison unless…”

Wyatt was already one step ahead: “The new state facility,” he supplied grimly. “Completed last year, never been open. Locals still furious over the lost job opportunities, the waste of taxpayer funds. How much you want to bet—”

“It was built by Denbe Construction.”

“Meaning Justin knows exactly where he is. And if he’s still not providing his location…”

“He’s scared.”

“Suspects must really have access to explosives.” Wyatt grabbed a yellow legal pad. Wrote in giant black marker: WIRE $$ NOW . And held it up for Nicole.

The special agent never blinked, simply stated into the phone: “Good news, Justin. The insurance company has approved the full nine million. The money is being transferred as we speak. Couple of minutes more, Justin. Then you and your family will be safe.”

Tessa and Wyatt didn’t wait for the rest. They were already bolting from the room, Wyatt on the radio, sending out the request for backup over the preset emergency channel. Then, they were in the parking lot, piling into his cruiser.

“Thirty miles north,” Wyatt declared. “We should be there in twenty.”

He hit the sirens and roared onto the road.

Chapter 38

JUSTIN WAS ON THE PHONE. Talking, talking, talking.

Beside him, Ashlyn was bobbing up and down, looking more like herself, in her old pajamas, and yet not at all like herself, with her tightly drawn features and the anxiety radiating from every taut line of her body.

And myself… Facing the possible final ten minutes of my own life, I didn’t know what to do. I wandered around the room, which was bigger than I would’ve thought, with a broad, horseshoe-shaped control desk plopped in the middle of a larger area lined by charging walkie-talkies and several doors I assumed led to supply closets. I found the infamous key drop, an open metal tube into which, in case of emergency, a corrections officer would drop all keys, rendering them inaccessible to attacking inmates, and thus keeping all ammunition and firearms closets secured.

I turned my attention to the massive control desk, gliding my hands over the plain white Formica desktop, the various flat-screen monitors inlaid at an angled rise, then the half a dozen microphones that sprouted up like weeds. The corrections officers were locked in here, I thought, isolated by their very powerfulness. A mini set of wizards of Oz, seeing all, commanding all, but forever trapped behind the barred curtain.

Above me, mounted from the ceiling, hung a line of four flat-screen TVs. They were off now, but I bet this was how our captors had monitored us, reviewing various images from the dozens if not hundreds of security cameras. They had watched us cry. Watched us fight. Watched us slowly but surely break down into lesser beings, the total deconstruction of a family.

It made me suddenly furious. That they’d violated our privacy like that. Sat here in this locked room, maybe even took bets on our misery. Ten bucks says the woman cries first, five bucks says the girl can’t pee with an audience.

I hated them. Intensely. Virulently. Which, perversely, made me want to see them. Turnabout is fair play. If they’d once been able to study us like animals in a zoo, well, we had the control now. And there was nothing in Z’s terms that said we couldn’t monitor them.

I bent over, and while my husband cursed out some FBI agent for not having magically done exactly what he’d told her to do exactly when he’d demanded that she do it, I started powering up control screens and exploring the surveillance options.

“Mom?” Ashlyn appeared beside me.

“Just kicking the tires, honey. Now, if we wanted to see the view from the cameras outside the prison, which buttons would you hit?”

Ashlyn leaned around me, tapped the control screen where a white button indicated security and we both studied the menu that came up next.

The screen had a clock in the lower right-hand corner. It read 3:09. Two minutes till our captors gave up and launched a counterattack. Possibly even blew us up, as Justin was alleging.

I didn’t think Z would take out the room. He struck me as the kind of man who’d neatly eliminate the door. That way he could march through the smoking rubble, pull out a Glock 10 and tend to the rest of his business up close and personal. Waste less ammo.

On the monitor, a white van suddenly came into view. Growing larger and larger until it nearly filled the screen. I found myself staring at Radar, sitting behind the wheel. He was not looking up at the camera, no doubt mounted above the prison’s intake door, but was looking toward the passenger’s side, as if expecting someone.

Picking up. He was picking up Z and Mick, his cocaptors.

But he was supposed to be on the roof. Armed to the teeth and ready to fire upon first responders.

Unless the money had been paid. Wired straight into the account. Justin had been right: Rich men had nine million more reasons to make a quick getaway than poor men.

The clock on the bottom of the screen hit 3:10.

Radar, holding up his phone, saying something I couldn’t hear to a person I couldn’t see.

My gaze, flying up to find Justin. “Did they pay? Is it okay, did the insurance company pay?”

Justin, into the phone: “Have the funds been received? It’s three eleven, tell me the funds have been received?”

The FBI agent, her voice as crisp and authoritative as ever: “Justin, I have word that the money is being transferred right now.”

Radar, still studying his phone, hitting some buttons. Talking to the person I couldn’t see.