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.
I squeezed my daughter’s hand in silent apology, but wasn’t surprised when she pulled back, tucking once more into herself.
“The younger guy, Radar, showed up,” she whispered. “And between him and Mick…” She glanced up at Justin. “I heard you downstairs, the front door opening. I wanted to scream or yell or something, but Mick put his hand over my mouth. I tried…but there wasn’t anything…” She shrugged, shoulders rounding inside her oversize jumpsuit as she fell quiet.
“It’s all right,” Justin reassured her. “Nothing you could do. These guys, they’re trained. Professionals. And they had a plan we never saw coming.”
“What do they want?” Ashlyn asked plaintively.
“Money.”
I glanced up sharply, a motion that made me wince.
“Think about it,” he said, as if sensing my doubt. “They’re carrying Tasers, not guns. So their goal is to control, but not harm. They’ve Tased us, drugged us, bound us. Again, all strategies devised to subdue, but not injure.”
“Until the Mick guy beat the shit out of Mom,” Ashlyn muttered.
“Young lady,” Justin began, “I don’t want to hear that kind of language—”
“She’s right,” I interjected, already feeling Ashlyn’s growing hostility. “He beat the shit out of me.”
Justin scowled at our joint rebellion. “Which their leader, Z, immediately halted by Tasing his own guy, then he sent you for medical treatment. Again, if their intent is to harm, why would Z care if you have a concussion? Why bother having one of his men tend to you, taking up time and resources? For that matter, why feed us? Because he wants us subdued but unharmed, all the better for demanding ransom, where he’ll have to deliver proof of life.”
“Proof of life?” Ashlyn asked.
“As part of the ransom demand, Z will have to prove we’re still alive and well. Hence he went after Mick when Mick attacked your mother. It’s not enough to simply ask for money. Z has to prove he really has us, but also, we’re undamaged enough to be worth wanting back; hence your mother can’t be in a coma.”
“Kidnapping,” Ashlyn murmured. “Ransom. Proof of life.” She tested out each word, as if trying to determine how such phrases had come to apply in her life.
“The kitchen is well stocked,” I said, my gaze flickering to Justin with unspoken meaning. Such as, there were enough dry goods in this prison to last weeks, let alone days.
“Ransom cases can take time,” he said evasively. “Especially, given there’s an insurance company involved.”
Ashlyn and I stared at him blankly. He explained that Denbe Construction carried not only a life insurance policy on him, but kidnapping as well. Corporate insurance 101, he claimed, especially in this day and age when executives traveled to places such as South America and the Middle East, only to disappear in the middle of the night. Except Justin never traveled to any of those places, I thought. But apparently, he still had kidnapping insurance, and by extension, Ashlyn and I did as well.
Ashlyn perked up. “How much are Mom and I worth?”
Justin hesitated. “One mil. Each.”
“Cool!” Our daughter found this exciting. “And you?”
“Don’t remember…couple mil maybe.”
Ashlyn rolled her eyes at me. “Why are the men always worth more?”
“You don’t want to provide too much incentive,” Justin said, tone still deadly serious. “The point of insurance is to cover worst-case scenarios, while not making the insured—say, you or your mother or myself—appear so valuable that you become a target.”
He looked at me, and once again, wordless communication passed. Such as, while individually our abduction would not earn enough money to significantly compensate a trio of commandos, our family as a whole was worth at least four million, possibly more, if the commandos planned on stretching above the policy limit. For example, perhaps Z figured that if the insurance would kick in four million, then the company, Denbe, ought to be good for at least another two, meaning they’d demand six million for our safe return. That would translate to two million dollars per commando. Incentive, all right.
Justin was still staring at me, and in his direct blue eyes, I saw the other piece of the puzzle, the real reason he sat so straight and grim: Whoever had come up with this scheme must know about the insurance, must know us. Factor in what Ashlyn had said, that the front door had been locked, the security system armed, and that meant they also had access to our security codes.
Someone we knew. Someone we trusted. Someone we most likely considered a friend had hired Z’s team, researching our schedules, identifying this mothballed prison from Justin’s work history and planning each step of this operation. Maybe that person got three million, and Z’s team one apiece. Still plenty of incentive.
To betray a buddy and put his entire family at risk.
I shivered slightly. I hadn’t felt so violated since…well, since finding another woman’s sexually explicit texts on my husband’s cell phone.
“They’re professionals,” I murmured.
He nodded slowly.
“Military backgrounds,” I added. “I tried, in the infirmary, to ask Radar questions. He was careful with his replies, but he mentioned military barracks. Plus, the way they look, act…”
Justin wasn’t speaking, but he appeared troubled. “A lot of former military in the trades,” he said at last. An admission of sorts. Maybe the threat didn’t come from his company specifically, but from the construction industry as a whole.
Ashlyn was studying us, picking up on the unspoken communiqués. “What?”
“Nothing,” Justin said.
“Bullshit!”
“Young lady—”
“Stop it! Stop it!” She lurched to her feet, temper flaring. “I’m fifteen years old, Dad. I know all my swears. Shit, fuck, damn, bitch. And who are you to tell me how to talk? I’ve been on your job sites, I know how guys speak. What, it’s good enough for you, but too real for me?”
“Pretty girls don’t need to use ugly words—”
“Who says I want to be pretty? Maybe I like using ugly words. Maybe someone in this family should finally be honest about how they feel. Maybe Mom should start using the work fuck, instead of running around trying to be so perfect and accommodating. Maybe, if she said the word fuck once and a while, you wouldn’t have found another woman to fuck. There’s a thought.”
Justin paled. I sat, frozen across from him, staring at my daughter as if she’d just grown two heads.
Then Justin reached up and slowly, but firmly, pinched our daughter’s lips shut. “I do not want to hear that word from your mouth. Not now. Not ever. You might be fifteen, but I’m still your father and in this family, we have standards.”
Ashlyn crumbled. From shock, from shame, I couldn’t tell which. She collapsed on the bunk beside me, buried her face against me and wept. I stroked her long wheat-brown hair, wanting to ease the moment, but not knowing where to start.
“It’s not fair,” Ashlyn moaned. “You did everything to make him happy, and for what? Men are pigs. Men are pigs. Men are pigs!”
The way she said the words gave me a second jolt. A female didn’t speak with that much vehemence in defense of another woman’s feelings, but in defense of her own.
I closed my eyes, wondered what his name was, how long it had been going on and when we had all drifted so far from one another. Even nine months ago, I would’ve sworn we were a solid little family. Sure, Justin’s job took its toll…. But I would’ve said that we loved each other, trusted each other, told each other everything.
A whole family can’t fall apart just like that. Even with infidelity. There had to have been cracks, weaknesses in the foundation. But I hadn’t seen them, or hadn’t wanted to see them. Ashlyn was right about one thing: I did run around trying to be perfect and accommodating. I wanted my husband happy. I wanted my daughter happy. And I hadn’t thought that was such a bad thing.
Justin still wasn’t speaking. He watched me comfort our daughter and he didn’t appear angry anymore as much as hollow.
“You shouldn’t have told her so much,” he said finally, to me.
“I didn’t.”
“I figured it out for myself,” Ashlyn interjected. “I’m not an idiot, Dad.”
She pressed her head harder against my shoulder, giving him her back. I continued to stroke her hair.
“We need to stop fighting,” he tried again.
Ashlyn sobbed against me.
“We need…” His voice caught, he soldiered on. “We need to rest. It’s been a long day. But if we just stay calm… They’re going to ask for ransom. The company is going to pay it, and then we’ll go home. Tomorrow is Sunday, so it’ll probably take a few more days. But two, three days tops and this will all be over. We’ll be back in our house. Everything will be okay.”
Ashlyn remained with her head buried against me, so I returned Justin’s look, nodding once so he knew that I had heard him. Then, because I just couldn’t help it, I smiled at my husband sadly.
Poor Justin. Through sheer force of will he’d quadrupled his father’s company, completed dozens of hundred-million-dollar projects and become one of the foremost names in construction. Of course he thought his word was law, that if he could think it, he could make it so.
But he was wrong about things. In a few days, this would not be all over. Kidnapping or no kidnapping, ransom or no ransom, it didn’t matter.
Best I could tell, the total destruction of our family was just beginning.