Touch & Go (Tessa Leoni, #2)(3)

His finger released on the trigger of the gun, and Justin stopped arching, sagging instead. My husband’s breath came out ragged, right before the big man hit the trigger again. Four, five, six times he made Justin’s entire body convulse while I stood there, open mouthed, arm outstretched as if that would stop the room from swaying.

I heard my husband say something, but I couldn’t understand it at first. Then it came to me. With a low, labored breath, Justin was ordering me to run.

I made it one step. Long enough to glance pleadingly at the darkened staircase. To pray my daughter was tucked safely inside her third-story bedroom, rocking out to her iPod, oblivious to the scene below.

Then the huge man twisted toward me. With a flick of his wrist, a square cartridge was ejected from the front end of what I now realized was a Taser, then he leapt forward and planted the end of the barrel against the side of my leg. He pulled the trigger.

The contact point on my thigh immediately fired to painful, excruciating life. More burning flesh. Screaming. Probably my own.

I was aware of two things: my own acute pain and the whites of my attacker’s eyes. Mask, I realized faintly. Black ski mask that obliterated his mouth, his nose, his face. Until he was no longer a man, but a faceless monster with white, white eyes, stepping straight out of my nightmares into my own home.

Then Justin lurched awkwardly forward, windmilling his arms as he rained feeble blows on the larger man’s back. The black-masked figure turned slightly and with some kind of karate chop caught Justin in the throat.

My husband made a terrible gurgling sound and went down.

My left leg gave out. I went down as well. Then rolled over and vomited champagne.

My last thought, through the pain and the burning and the panic and the fear…don’t let him find Ashlyn. Don’t let him find Ashlyn.

Except then I heard her. High-pitched. Terrified. “Daddy. Mommy. Daddy!”

In my last second of consciousness, I managed to turn my head. I saw two more black forms, one on each side of my daughter’s twisting body, as they dragged her down the stairs.

Briefly, our gazes met.

I love you, I tried to say.

But the words wouldn’t come out.

The black-masked figure raised his Taser again. Calmly inserted a fresh cartridge. Took aim. Fired.

My fifteen-year-old daughter started to scream.


PAIN HAS A FLAVOR.

The question is, what does it taste like to you?





Chapter 2


THE TWEETING OF HER CELL PHONE woke her up. This surprised her for two reasons. One, because, in theory, she no longer had a job where phones rang in the small hours of the morning. Two, because it meant she must’ve fallen asleep, something else that, in theory, she hadn’t done for months.

Tessa Leoni lay on the left side of her bed as her phone began a louder, tumbling cascade of chimes. Her hand was outstretched, she realized. Not reaching toward her phone, but toward the empty half of the bed. As if even two years after his death, she still reached for the husband who once slept there.

Her phone chirped louder, more obnoxiously. She forced herself to roll toward the nightstand, noting that actual sleep turned out to be more disorienting than chronic insomnia.

She answered her phone just as the last chime was fading. She registered her boss’s voice, a third surprise as he was rarely the one who initiated contact. Then the last of her fogginess faded and years of training took over. She nodded, asked the questions she needed to ask, then had the phone down and clothes on.

A final moment’s hesitation. Firearm or no firearm? Not a requirement anymore, unlike the days when she’d been a Massachusetts state police trooper, but still sometimes practical in her new line of work. She contemplated the brief amount of information her boss had relayed—the situation, the timeline, the number of known unknowns—and made her decision. Gun safe, back of her closet. She rolled the combo with practiced fingers in the dark, withdrawing her Glock and slipping it into her shoulder harness.

Saturday morning, 6:28 A.M., she was ready to go.

She picked up her cell phone, slipped it into her jacket pocket, then crossed the hall to alert her live-in housekeeper/nanny/longtime friend.

Mrs. Ennis was already awake. As with many older women, she had a nearly preternatural ability to know when she’d be needed and generally operated one step ahead. Now she was sitting upright, bedside lamp snapped on, notepad in her hands for last-minute instructions. She slept in an ankle-length red-and-green-plaid flannel nightgown Sophie had given her last year for Christmas. All she needed was a small white cap, and Mrs. Ennis would look just like the grandmother in “Little Red Riding Hood.”

“I’ve been called in,” Tessa said, an obvious statement.

“What should I tell her?” Mrs. Ennis asked. “Her” meant Sophie, Tessa’s eight-year-old daughter. Having lost the only father she’d ever known to violence two years ago, Sophie wasn’t keen on letting her mother out of her sight. It was for Sophie’s sake, as much as her own, that Tessa had resigned from being a state trooper after Brian’s death. Her daughter had needed more stability, to know at least one parent would be coming home at night. Tessa’s new job in corporate investigations generally allowed for nine-to-five hours. Of course, this morning’s call…

Tessa hesitated. “From what I can tell, the situation is urgent,” she admitted. “Meaning it might be a day or two before I return. Depends on what kind of juggling I have to do to gain traction.”