Lisa Gardner - Touch & Go

“So you were going to divorce him.” The second FBI agent again.

“I didn’t say that. Justin also said he’d miss me. He’d miss our family.”

“Well, it’s all a moot point now.” Special Agent Adams, not sounding harsh, just matter-of-fact.

“He swore he would keep us safe,” I whispered. “Justin knew he wasn’t the perfect husband, the perfect father. He worked too much, was absent too often, let alone the whole matter of faithfulness. But he swore he would keep us safe. We were his family and he would not fail us. And he didn’t.”

I stared them in the eye. Dared these investigators to besmirch my dead husband. Dared them to question a marriage and life that had already cost me so much.

They didn’t.

Instead, another investigator, with wire-rim glasses, spoke up for the first time. “So, what can you tell us about the missing eleven million dollars?”

I stared at him blankly, and felt the ground open up beneath my feet yet again.

BY THE TIME ASHLYN RETURNED TO THE ROOM, I was done. I couldn’t answer one more question, I couldn’t absorb one more “truth” about me, my husband or the family business. Someone had embezzled money from the firm. A lot of it. For a long time. And apparently, in the past few weeks Justin had stumbled across the theft and taken some countermeasures.

Except he’d never related anything to me. Maybe because for the past few weeks, he’d still been sleeping downstairs in the basement, a husband kicked out of his own marital bed.

The firm’s financial future was rocky. Not insurmountable, I was told, but rocky. Which, given that the firm owned my homes, my car and my furniture, was probably something I should care about, if not for my own sake, then at least for Ashlyn’s. Except I wasn’t sure I could absorb one more shock.

My husband was dead. Someone close to us had been stealing from us for over a decade. And most likely, that same person had hired Z and his team, probably not because of ransom at all, but to remove Justin from the picture before he uncovered the full extent of the embezzlement scheme.

Which must have had Z and his team laughing on the inside. Here they were, already paid to kidnap and torment us, probably with instructions to buy time, maybe even to kill Justin but have it look like part of a separate crime. Then we’d gone and offered them an additional nine million. Win Z over? Manipulate him into doing our bidding? Please. Talk about double-dipping. First, he got paid by some shadowy client, then, got even more money from his own victims.

The man was an evil genius, and I almost wished I could return to our incarceration just so I could poison him this time. While starting a kitchen fire and burning the whole damn place down around their ears.

I hated him. Every time he’d looked at me with respect. The background report hadn’t indicated you’d be a problem…

He’d lied to me.

My husband had lied to me.

Except my husband had also died for me.

My thoughts were such a tumultuous mess. My head hurt and I was tired. So unbelievably tired.

The feds wanted to put us in a hotel, safe house, something of that nature. Our kidnappers were still on the loose. No sign of the white cargo van, just a hole in the perimeter fencing where they’d made their getaway. Until they had more information, Special Agent Adams felt it was best to keep us safe.

But I saw the expression on my daughter’s face. Felt its match on my own.

After all we’d been through, the days, the nights. The look on Justin’s face, the knife, the knife, the knife, the knife, sinking into his chest…

We wanted to go home. Safe or sorry, we needed to be home again.

More consultation. A phone call with the Boston PD, further discussions.

Finally, it was agreed. The agents would graciously permit us to return to our own residence. But given that Z and his team also knew where we lived and might have incentive to finish what they’d started, basic precautions needed to be taken. I would immediately change our security passwords the second I stepped foot into my house. In addition, the Boston PD would assign a uniformed officer to keep watch from the street, as well as beef up patrols in the area.

Special Agent Adams also suggested that I not immediately invite over any family or friends. In fact, if there were people we wanted to see, she recommended that we meet them in full daylight, at public places.

You know, because someone we trusted had clearly betrayed us. And that person hadn’t escaped with eleven million dollars just yet.

It was okay, I said. We didn’t just want to go home; we wanted to be alone. No more eyes watching. No more audience judging.

It was time to just be. Once a family of three, now a family of two, battered, shaky, grief-stricken, but still hanging in there.

Shortly after ten, the cops finally let us go. The feds provided the escort, a black sedan heading three hours south to Boston. Ashlyn fell asleep in the back. I think I dozed off a time or two.

Then, we were there. Our home, which would never completely feel like our home again. The crime-scene tape, subtle but present on the doorway. Evidence placards, still marking random places in the foyer.

My wedding ring, buried in a pile on the kitchen island. I took it out. I slipped it on, and felt the first wave of grief hit me like a wall.

But I would not succumb. Not yet, not now.

Off to the security system’s control panel. Running through the instructions Justin had given me time and time again. I needed a code, a string of numbers no one would know but I could easily remember. I went with a date: the day I’d moved out of the tenement housing. The first step toward building a better life. If only I’d known then what I knew now…

I told the agents we were all set. I let them graciously out the front door, then promptly activated our security system, listening to various dead bolts fire home.

Ashlyn was still standing in the foyer, looking at the spot where I had vomited. Just three days, but already a lifetime ago.

“Can I sleep in your room?” my fifteen-year-old daughter asked.

“Yes.”

“I want a gun.”

“Me, too.”

“I want it loaded, underneath my pillow.”

“Everything we learned not to do in firearms safety,” I observed.

“Exactly.”

“Loaded clip next to the unloaded firearm, in the top drawer of the bedside table,” I countered.

“Okay.”

“Ashlyn… I’m proud of you.”

My daughter didn’t look at me, but stared at the vomit stain. She said, “I’ve been sleeping with Chris Lopez. He likes you, he’s always liked you. But he can’t have you, so he settled for me instead. And I knew it was wrong, but I didn’t care. You and Dad…you just seemed so far away, and I wanted someone to make me feel special again.”

I opened my mouth. I closed my mouth. “Oh, honey.”

“I just want it to go away now, okay? Don’t tell anyone. Don’t do anything. Just…make it all go away.”

“Did you tell the police?”

“Of course not! I just want it to be over. Please, can’t it all be over? I can’t stop seeing his face, Mom. Dad and the blood, and that knife! He died for us. He died because of me!”

Ashlyn collapsed. Hunched over on the bottom step, her arms over her head, as if that would block the terrible images. And I understood what she meant, because I had the same visions stuck in my own head. As well as way too many unwanted revelations. Chris Lopez, Justin’s most trusted second in command, sleeping with our teenage daughter. Is this why Tessa Leoni had asked about him specifically? Because she already suspected him in my family’s kidnapping? After all, he’d meddled in my marriage, then seduced my fifteen-year-old daughter.