Lisa Gardner - Touch & Go

“Of course, all good things must come to an end. Which in this case is August, when purely by accident, Ruth Chan discovered the first fake vendor. She does a little more digging, gets her ducks in a row, then discloses the fraud to Justin four weeks ago.”

Kevin frowned at him. “Justin knew about the missing money for a whole four weeks.”

“Yes and no,” Wyatt found himself correcting. “At the time, Chan thought the total amount skimmed was only four hundred thousand, an amount more annoying than horrifying for a hundred-million-dollar company. In fact, Justin decided the amount was so low that, instead of involving the police, he devised a strategy for stealing his own money back. He sent Ruth Chan to the Bahamas to close out the fake account, except the money was literally transferred out the day before.”

“So when does Justin know the full extent of the damage?” Kevin asked.

“He…didn’t,” Wyatt murmured, thoughts hitting overdrive.

“Huh?”

“He didn’t. Chan called him Friday afternoon. Told him the one account had been closed already but didn’t mention anything else. She asked for more time to investigate instead. Then…just hours later, Justin and his family were abducted from their own home.”

Kevin was staring at him. “To cover up the embezzlement,” the brainiac stated, as if this should be obvious. “So Justin would never know about the full eleven million that had been stolen from his family firm.”

“Maybe.” When he walked through the timeline out loud, what Kevin said made sense. Ruth Chan discovered the embezzlement was actually twenty times worse than they’d suspected, and within hours, Justin had been kidnapped. No such thing as coincidence in policing. Meaning the two events had to be connected. And yet. And yet…

“Ruth Chan!” Kevin declared abruptly. “She was the embezzler, and she arranged Justin’s kidnapping to cover up her own crime. Better yet, she’s not even in the country, meaning she has the perfect alibi.”

Wyatt frowned at him. “Without Ruth Chan, we wouldn’t even know there had been sixteen years of fake billing. Since when does the thief report the theft?”

“To evade suspicion?” Kevin suggested.

Wyatt rolled his eyes, shook his head. “Who knew?” he asked abruptly. “That’s the question we need to answer. Who knew Ruth Chan had discovered the fake vendors? Who knew Ruth Chan would be in the Bahamas Friday morning to close out the first account? Who had enough inside information to transfer out all the money one day prior, to get his or her ducks in a row…”

Wyatt’s eyes, suddenly widening.

“Ruth Chan told someone,” Kevin was saying. “Or Justin did. Someone they trusted, but shouldn’t have, obviously.”

“Or, she didn’t tell anyone at all. She didn’t even want to talk to Justin about it, right? Not until she’d done all her homework first. That’s the kind of person Ruth Chan is, meticulous, discreet. We didn’t understand that. We didn’t pay enough attention to that. If anyone talked, it wasn’t Ruth Chan, it was Justin. Shit, I gotta make a phone call!”

Chapter 42

ASHLYN NEVER MADE IT TO THE BEDROOM. After the past few days spent desperately anticipating sleeping in her own bed, she barely made it out of the shower before crashing with wet hair and a T-shirt on the family-room sofa.

I’d been on the phone while she showered. Talking to Tessa Leoni, who was kinder and gentler than I would’ve expected. She assured me she would personally handle the situation with Chris. With discretion, of course. As well as the appropriate use of force. Her tone told me enough and only made me like her more.

I wanted to feel satisfied. Vindicated as an appalled mother, a betrayed friend. All those times I’d had him over to my house. And, yes, somewhere along the way, it had become clear he harbored a schoolboy’s crush on me. Certainly, right after I learned of Justin’s affair, Chris starting hanging around the house more, clearly willing to be a shoulder to cry on.

But I hadn’t leaned on him. I’d turned to painkillers instead.

I showered my way through my outrage. Washing my hair again and again and again. Lathering up, rinsing down, repeat, repeat, repeat. It was late, after 2:00 A.M. I should finish up, go to bed. I applied deep conditioner, then scoured my skin with the same ruthless diligence I’d just spent on my hair.

I wanted to think the worst of our experience was behind us, but I already understood from this evening’s ordeal that the grillings from various law enforcement agencies had only just begun. In the morning, they’d be back. More questions, maybe even a request for a formal statement regarding Ashlyn’s relationship with Chris. Maybe they’d require a medical exam. Maybe I should think about hiring a lawyer.

What were your rights when you were a victim of a kidnapping and other violent crimes? What kind of counsel was involved in prosecuting a grown man for sleeping with your teenage daughter? What if Ashlyn wouldn’t press charges, or answer questions? Should I demand it of her, or would it only traumatize her further?

Then, in the middle of the shower, rinsing the conditioner from my hair, it hit me:

My husband was dead. I was alone. For now, for always, there would be no partner to ask these kinds of questions. Ashlyn’s best interests sat solely on my shoulders.

My husband was dead.

I was now a single parent.

Justin…the knife protruding from his bloody chest.

I went down. Dropped to my hands and knees on the tiled floor, the water beating at my back while I panted, gasping for breath.

Moments in a marriage. All those times when I know I saw my husband. All those times I wanted to believe he saw me. The first time we made love. The priest, declaring us man and wife. Him, holding a squalling newborn in his arms. And Justin, dying before my eyes.

He’d looked at me. He’d known, maybe even felt the serrated blade already sliding between his ribs. He’d known he was dying. And he had not looked at me with anger and blame, only regret.

I would miss us , he’d said. He would grant me a divorce if I wanted it, but he would miss our family.

Was I crying? It was hard to be sure, with the shower spray pouring down my neck, around my face.

I would have to plan a funeral, I thought, but how did you plan a funeral with no body? Wait for the police to find it, I guess. Wait for that sheriff’s detective and his deputies to return my husband to me. And Ashlyn. She would want to say good-bye to her father. She would need closure, just as I had needed it thirty years ago.

And that thought stung me all over again. That for all my planning and sacrifice, in the end I hadn’t spared my child my deepest pain. She’d lost her father, just as I’d lost mine. Now I would play the role of my mother, trying to hold it all together. Meaning wading through finances that sounded like they were already strained.

What if we lost the house, what if we moved into tenement housing, what if Ashlyn never got to go to college, but became collateral damage of her father’s poor planning, just like I had been?

I couldn’t breathe. I was gasping, and yet no air would come into my lungs. I had survived three days in an abandoned prison, only to succumb in my own shower.

Then, in the back of my mind…hydrocodone. My orange-bottled pills. Maybe still downstairs in my purse in the center island. But if not, I had other stashes, a woman who knew how to keep her secrets. Half a dozen pills tucked in the back of the silverware drawer, ten more in my jewelry travel bag, four or five in the bottom of a crystal vase in the china closet. Close to two dozen emergency pills.

I stood up. I tasted oranges and I didn’t care. I was going to get out of this shower. I was going to head downstairs, raid the first hidden supply. Just this once, of course. After the past few days, I’d earned this.