When You Are Mine(34)

"Martin." Kristeene swallowed visibly. She walked over to her  ex-husband, stopping just short of actual contact. "What do we know? Was  the embassy any help?"

"No help at all." Martin's lips thinned with his disgust. "They have no clue where Walsh is, but I'm working on it."

"Just pay them the ransom, Martin." Kristeene grabbed his sleeve.  "Whatever they're asking, just give it to them as soon as you can. Get  Walsh back."

"I have no intention of paying any damn ransom." He looked fearlessly  into the horror Kerris saw in Kristeene's eyes. "And I am not relying on  an inept government, Haiti's or ours, to get my son back. You can  believe that."

"Martin, this isn't one of your hostile takeovers." Kristeene didn't  back down from the man towering over her. If anything, she seemed to  rise an inch or so. "This is our son. Don't play the hero. I want him  back home, alive. Not in a box."                       
       
           



       

"You don't think I want him alive, Kris? That's exactly why I refuse to leave my son's safety to bumbling idiot locals."

"Well, what then?" With her hands on her hips, Kristeene's eyes dueled with Martin's. "And this better be good."

"I have some military connections," Martin said, his voice low but  confident. "I'll get my son back, and make sure those presumptuous  bastards who took him pay the highest price."

"Martin, don't-"

"Don't ‘Martin' me. They need to be taught a lesson, and I'm more than  happy to do the honors. My contacts are analyzing the information we've  received."

"What information?" Jo stepped into the fray for the first time since her uncle arrived.

Martin Bennett looked hesitant, but still hoarded all of the room's  oxygen and energy for himself. Just like Walsh did without even trying.

Martin reached into his suit pocket, laying a grainy photo down on the  marble countertop. Kristeene, Jo, Cam, and Kerris moved as one toward  the picture, gasping aloud at the grisly sight. Walsh's passport, his  expensive Tag Heuer watch, and the bracelet Iyani made for him lay in a  pile scattered on the scarred wood of a table. In the center lay a  bloodied finger.

"No!" Kristeene turned her face into Martin's chest, clutching the lapels of his impeccable suit. "Oh, God, Martin. No!"

"Kris." Martin rhythmically rubbed comfort into the tense muscles of Kristeene's narrow back. "He's not dead."

"His finger, Martin. They've cut off his finger. Oh, God, they'll kill him. Just pay the damn ransom."

"It's exactly because of this that I'm not giving in to their ransom."

Kerris watched Martin put enough distance between him and his ex-wife to  look into her face so she could read the confidence in his.

"We can't trust them to do what they say they will, Kris. We just can't."

Jo was weeping softly into Cam's shoulder while he stood completely  still, his eyes averted from the ghastly sight of the photo. Kerris  leaned in closer, peering at the gruesome picture again, forcing the  bile back down her throat long enough to concentrate all of her  attention on the disembodied finger.

"That's not his finger," Kerris said, so softly no one acknowledged her comment for a moment.

When her words finally penetrated the chaos surrounding them, Martin  Bennett looked at Kerris, sitting at the counter still as a corpse.

"What did you say?" Martin eyed the leather and wood bracelet, exactly  like Walsh's, wrapped around Kerris's fragile wrist. "Who are you?"

To my son.

Though he left the words unspoken, Kerris heard them, even if no one else did.

"I … I'm Cam's wife. And Walsh's friend." She tugged on the bracelet that  had garnered his full attention. "I said that's not Walsh's finger."

"Of course it is, Kerris." Jo's voice was weary and thick with tears. "You know that's his stuff."

"Yes, it's his stuff." Kerris nodded and then shook her head, equally adamant. "But that's not his finger."

She glanced at Martin Bennett's hand still stroking Kristeene's back in an ancient rhythm of consolation.

"Those are Walsh's fingers."

Martin looked over Kristeene's shoulder at his hands, holding them out  for inspection. Walsh had his hands, his fingers, and the finger in the  photo was too dark, too short, too stubby.

"She's right." Martin's stern mouth hitched, his only concession since  he'd walked in the room. "They placed someone else's finger with Walsh's  things."

Kristeene turned back toward the photo, studying it more closely before  closing her eyes, tears streaking down her sunken cheeks.

"Not his finger," Kristine mumbled through trembling lips.

"They're playing games, Kris." Martin grabbed her chin and forced her to  meet his eyes. To look into his eyes. "Nobody mind-fucks me. Certainly  not these pieces of shit. Forget the government. They can't even balance  a budget, much less fly under the radar long enough to find my son.  We'll work through my contacts."                       
       
           



       

"Just bring him home." Kristeene leaned forward until her forehead flopped against Martin's broad chest.

Kerris watched, fascinated and bewildered by Martin's tenderness. His  hand stroked the soft hair constrained at Kristeene's neck. These two  people, whom everyone considered combatants, genuinely cared deeply  about each other. The potential for battle crackled between them at  every turn, yes, but the intimacy they had fallen back into was like a  favorite garment lost at the back of your closet, once rediscovered  still fitting, still beloved. Comfortable. Right.

Kerris could almost see Martin galvanize himself, squeezing his  ex-wife's hand before scanning the faces turned to him with varying  degrees of expectation and despondency. His eyes settled, inexplicably,  on Kerris, seated at the counter, resting her hand on the photo of  Walsh's effects, like it was a conductor to his soul, sending her  strength and resolve and hope to him.

"I'll bring him back," he said to the room, but looking directly into  Kerris's eyes, every inch the buccaneer, ready to impose the violence of  his will on all who opposed him.

Kerris took heart and almost felt a pang of sympathy for Walsh's captors.

Almost.





Chapter Twenty-Three



Mange!"

The gruff voice was followed by a cracked bowl of beans and rice sliding  across the floor to Walsh. He gulped back the nausea he had fought for  the last two days. He assumed it had been two days. They'd taken his  watch and there were no windows in this rank hole. It wasn't the rats  and roaches he could hear scurrying around him that caused his stomach  to turn and his skin to crawl. They'd shot Paul, the missionary from the  orphanage the foundation had considered funding. It was the stench of  Paul's corpse beside him that sickened him. In addition to the rot of  early-stage decomposition, his body had expelled its final waste, and it  puddled around him. The poor man had been in the wrong place at the  wrong time.

With the wrong man.

Walsh blinked back useless tears, still reeling from the  incomprehensible events that had landed him here. He would not give the  thug bastards the satisfaction of one tear. Not one. The emotion almost  leaking from his eyes was not from fear of what they'd do to him, though  he did feel fear. He kept seeing Camille and Josiah, Paul's wife and  young son, in the pictures he had so proudly shown Walsh. Surely by now  Camille knew her husband had been kidnapped. What she didn't know,  couldn't know, was that it was Walsh's fault.

He had pieced it together in his mind. It was no secret he was from a  wealthy family. In addition to his being on a fact-finding mission to  identify where they could pour large sums of money, his profile had been  pretty high over the last few months. Hell, the kidnappers might even  know about his "supermodel" girlfriend and their extravagant lifestyle  back in the States. His captors had probably been watching him almost  since the beginning, and when he and Paul had struck out to scope land  in the mountains for possible expansion, they had made their move,  ambushing their car and snatching them both.

Walsh banged the wall behind him with a weakly clasped fist. He had  awakened in this darkened, infested pit to find Paul already sitting up  beside him against the wall. Both of them had nursed wounds on the backs  of their heads.

"These men are mercenaries," Paul had whispered, his eyes holding  Walsh's in the dim light. "But they aren't fools. Your family is one of  the most wealthy, prominent families in America. They won't kill you.  They just want money. We'll get out of this."