She wasn’t about to tell Jackson that Charlie was sitting right behind her wanting nothing more than to wring the life out of him. “I want to talk to Lisa!”
“How can you be sure I haven’t killed her already?”
“What?” she gasped.
“You can talk to her, but how will you know it’s not me mimicking her voice? ‘Mommy, Mommy,’ I could say. ‘Come help me.’ I could say all those things. So if you want to talk to her, you can, but it will prove nothing.”
“You son of a bitch!”
“Would you still like to talk to her?”
“Yes,” LuAnn said pleadingly.
“Manners now. Yes, what?”
She hesitated for an instant, taking a deep breath, trying to keep her wits and her nerves together. “Yes, please,” she said.
“Just a minute. Now where have I put that child?”
Riggs was doing his best to listen in. Exasperated, LuAnn finally opened the door and got out of the car.
She strained to hear any sound in the background.
“Mom, Mom, is that you?”
“Honey, baby, it’s Mom. Oh, God, sweetie, I’m so sorry.”
“Oh, excuse me, LuAnn, that’s still me,” Jackson said. “Oh, Mom, Mommy, are you there?” he said again, mimicking Lisa’s voice precisely.
LuAnn was too stunned to say anything.
The next voice she heard was Jackson’s real one. His tone almost bit into her ear it was said with such forcefulness. “I’ll let you talk to her, really talk to her. You can have your mother — daughter emotional exchange. But when you’re done I will tell you exactly what you will do. If you deviate in any way from my instructions...”
He didn’t finish. He didn’t have to. They both sat there on the phone, not saying anything, simply listening to each other’s breathing, two trains careening out of control, about to slam into each other across the wireless void. LuAnn tried with all her might to hold back the thick gush of air that was ramming against her throat. She knew what he was doing. What he was doing to her mind. But she was equally aware that she could do nothing about it. At least not right now.
“Do you understand?”
“Yes.” As soon as she said the word, she heard it. She heard the sound in the background that made her both smile and grimace simultaneously. She looked at her watch. Five o’clock. The smile increased at the same time her eyes took on a gleam. A gleam of hope.
The next minute she was talking to Lisa, quickly asking her questions that only her little girl would know the answer to. They both desperately wanted to reach through the darkness that separated them.
And then Jackson came back on the line and gave her the instructions, the where and the when. None of it surprised her as she focused again on the sounds occurring in the background on his end. He ended the call by saying, with daunting finality, “See you soon.”
She clicked off the phone and got back in the car. She spoke with a calmness that astonished the two men, particularly under the circumstances.
“I’m to call him tomorrow at ten A.M. He’ll give me the meeting place then. He’ll let Lisa go if I come alone. If he even thinks anyone else is around, he’ll kill her.”
“So it’s you for Lisa,” Riggs said.
She looked at both of them. “That’s the way it’s going to be.”
“LuAnn—”
“That’s the way it’s going to be,” she said more forcefully.
“How do you know he’ll let her go? You can’t trust him,” Charlie implored.
“On this I can. He just wants me.”
“There’s got to be another way,” Riggs exclaimed.
“There’s only one way, Matthew, and you know it.” She looked at him sadly before putting the car in gear and driving off.
She had one more card to play. But Charlie and Riggs weren’t going to be invited to the game. They had already sacrificed too much for her. Jackson had nearly killed both men, and she wasn’t about to give the man another try on either. If Jackson were given an extra shot, she knew what the outcome would be. It was now up to her. It was up to her to save her daughter, and that, she felt, was the way it should be. She had been self-reliant for most of her life, and truth be known, that was the way she liked it. That knowledge was reassuring. And she knew something else.
She knew where Jackson and Lisa were.
Chapter fifty-eight
The rain had finally slackened off but the spring showers were far from over. LuAnn had tacked up a blanket over the shattered window of the cottage. Riggs had turned the heat fully on and it was comfortable enough. The remnants of a meal rested on the kitchen sink. Riggs eyed the stains on the dining room floor. His blood. Charlie and Riggs had pulled mattresses down from the upstairs bedroom and laid them out on the floor. They had decided the cottage was the best place to spend the night. Charlie and Riggs had argued with LuAnn for hours trying to change her mind. Finally, she said they could call the FBI in the morning before she called Jackson. It was possible the FBI could trace the call. That had appeased the men enough that they agreed to let LuAnn keep the first watch. Riggs would relieve her in two hours.
Exhausted, both men soon began snoring deeply. LuAnn stood with her back to the window and silently observed them. She looked at her watch; it was after midnight. She made sure her gun was loaded, then she knelt next to Charlie and gave him a light kiss on the cheek. He barely moved.
She moved over to Riggs and watched the even rise and fall of his chest. Brushing the hair out of his eyes, she watched him a while longer. She knew the odds were not good that she would ever see either man again. She kissed him gently on the lips and then rose. For one long moment she leaned back against the wall, taking deep breaths as everything she was confronted with threatened to simply overwhelm her.
Then she was on the move again, climbing through the window to avoid the squeaky front door. She put up her hood against the fine rain falling. Ignoring the car and the unavoidable noise it would make, she went to the shed and opened the door. Joy was still there. LuAnn had forgotten to call anyone to come get the horse; however, the shed was dry and warm and there was still water and hay left. She quickly saddled the animal and swung onto Joy’s back. Easing her out of the shed, they made it to the woods with scarcely any noise.
When she reached the edge of her property, she dismounted and led Joy back to the horse barn. She hesitated for a moment and then she took the binoculars off the wall, edged through the thick brush, and set up surveillance in a narrow break in the tree line, exactly where Riggs had earlier. She scanned the rear of the house. She jerked back as a car’s headlights glinted off the binoculars. The car pulled around to the garage side, but the garage doors didn’t budge. As LuAnn watched, a man got out of the car and walked around the rear of the house as if on patrol. Under the rear floods, LuAnn could see the FBI insignia emblazoned on his windbreaker. Then the man got back in the car and it pulled off.
LuAnn broke from the trees and raced across the open ground. She made it to the side of the house in time to see the car head back down the private drive toward the main road, the one where she had fled from Donovan, the encounter that had started this whole nightmare. The FBI was guarding the entrance to her home. She suddenly remembered that Riggs had mentioned that to her during his conversation with Masters. She would have dearly loved to have enlisted the agents’ very able assistance, but they no doubt would have arrested her on the spot. Yet fear of arrest wasn’t the chief factor. She simply refused to involve anyone else in her problems. No one else was going to be stabbed or killed because of her. Jackson wanted her and only her. She knew he expected her to walk meekly to him, to receive her punishment in exchange for her daughter’s release. Well, in this case, he was going to get more than he wanted. A lot more. She and Lisa were going to survive this. He wasn’t.