Running Strong Page 6

  “We all are, but we’ll get them back. There’s no one better to do the job.”

  That was true. Jamie Kendrick Savage knew that from experience. She’d once been one of Reddington’s captives. LCR operative Dylan Savage, the man who was now her husband, had rescued her.

  “I’m sure he’s just using them as leverage. I know they’re terrified, but he’s not going to let them be hurt. He’ll lose his advantage if something happens to them. Besides, Samara is one of the strongest people I know, and those kids are amazing. They’ll be fine until we can get to them.”

  Raphael didn’t know if she said the words to reassure him or herself. While it was true that Reddington’s people might not plan any harm now, no one knew for sure. Jamie knew better than most what the bastard was capable of doing.

  “You’re going to go see Giselle?”

  “Yes. She needs to know.”

  “I tried calling her several times and could never get through. I’m astonished you’re being allowed to see her.”

  He was a little surprised, too. When he’d asked to speak with Giselle, he’d been told she wasn’t available. That had been no shocker. He’d been prepared for her refusal. Before he could explain that speaking to her was imperative, he’d been told to show up at the Fletcher Compound in East Hampton, New York, at ten o’clock tomorrow morning.

  That’s what he planned to do.

  “Even though I’ve been invited to the estate, she still may refuse to see me.”

  “I doubt that. You two might not have ended things in the best way, but you have a history. I remember how you guys used to look at each other. As if no one else existed.”

  “That was a long time ago.”

  “Maybe.” She paused, then added, “I understand her husband is gone.”

  “Yes.” Raphael left it at that. There was speculation in Jamie’s tone that he wouldn’t address. This wasn’t some kind of reunion between old lovers or friends. It was a business matter and nothing more.

  Jamie being Jamie didn’t take the hint. “I know things didn’t end well between you two. Things are different now. You might—”

  “We’re about to land. I’ll give her your regards.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”

  “It’s okay. We’re good. Just gotta go.”

  This time, thankfully, she dropped it. “Stay in touch.”

  “Will do.”

  Raphael ended the call, settled back in his seat, and closed his eyes. Reliving past mistakes and old feelings accomplished nothing. His mission was to warn Giselle that her father was on the rampage again and ask for her help. Once she gave her answer, he’d know how to proceed. Either way, he’d return home and help figure out a way to rescue Samara, Micah, and Evie. They were his family. Giselle was no one other than someone he used to know.

  ***

  Fletcher Compound

  East Hampton, New York

  Raphael stood before the oversize door of the massive mansion. At six-four, he was used to towering over most things, but had to admit he felt like a mouse knocking on a giant’s house.

  The mile-long drive, with its towering trees and decorative shrubbery, gave him an idea of the wealth he was about to face. Large amounts of money neither intimidated nor impressed him, but he had known too many wealthy people who put their money above their integrity. Making snap judgments wasn’t necessarily his way, but he couldn’t deny the feeling of bias that was already developing. He told himself it had nothing to do with Giselle, but he wasn’t buying it. These negative feelings had everything to do with her.

  Within seconds, the door opened, and a middle-aged, dour-faced butler stared up at him. “May I help you?”

  “I’m here to see Giselle.”

  Though the man’s expression never changed, Raphael swore there was the slightest hint of alarm in his eyes. He recovered quickly and intoned, “And you are?”

  “A friend of the family.”

  “What family?”

  “Her mother’s family.”

  Another brief flicker of…something. What the hell was it?

  In case the man needed more information, Raphael said, “I called yesterday. I am expected.”

  “Of course, sir. And your name?”

  “Raphael Sanchez.”

  The butler backed away, saying, “Please come in and have a seat in the parlor. I’ll go…” Mumbling something Raphael couldn’t quite make out, the man pointed toward a room to the right and then hurried away.

  Even though the family was known for their extreme privacy and eccentricities, the butler’s behavior was still damn odd.

  Shrugging away the moment, he crossed the giant marble foyer and headed to the room the butler had indicated. He stopped at the door, getting a brief glimpse of the kind of affluence few could imagine. Giselle had grown up surrounded by wealth, but Reddington’s measly millions were nothing compared to what this family was worth.

  Raphael walked to the middle of the room and stood, waiting. There were plenty of places to sit…three sofas, four chairs, and an uncomfortable-looking chaise to be exact, but he preferred to stand.

  “Mr. Sanchez, please come with me.”

  Following the butler, Raphael felt eyes on him. Though he saw no one else, he knew he was being watched. Security? Or curious family members?

  The butler stopped at a large cherrywood door and knocked softly. On hearing a voice say, “Enter,” the butler pushed the door open and stepped back. Raphael entered the large office, noting there was only one occupant. He hadn’t expected to see Daniel Fletcher, Jr. himself. The secretary hadn’t mentioned he would be meeting with anyone else, especially not her father-in-law. He had stupidly assumed it would be Giselle. Hell, maybe this was for the best.

  Fletcher stood and walked around his desk. The man was impressive in photographs and even more so in real life. He was just a little over six feet, movie-star handsome, with a bit of silver crowding out the honey-gold hair. Fletcher was reportedly a little over sixty but moved toward Raphael with the energy of a much younger man.

  “How wonderful to meet an old friend of Giselle’s. She never talked about her past a lot. Understandably, considering what her father put them through.”

  Raphael shook the man’s hand, noting the smoothness. His own were callused and likely felt like tree bark.

  “We were friends a long time ago. I haven’t seen her in years.”

  “Please, have a seat.”

  Raphael sat in the chair Fletcher nodded toward, unsurprised that the man settled into one across from him. The older man’s demeanor was friendly, inviting, and almost grandfatherly. Raphael couldn’t put his finger on why, but he didn’t trust him. Maybe because he seemed to be trying too hard to be nice.

  “Now, tell me how I can help you.”

  Though Raphael wanted to be the one to tell Giselle about her father’s newest evil deeds, he saw no reason not to give a brief explanation. “My employer’s family has been abducted. We believe Stanford Reddington is responsible and that he plans to use them as a bargaining chip to get to his own family.”

  “How horrifying.” A puzzled frown appeared on the older man’s face. “I wonder why I haven’t seen any news reports. Surely an abduction of this magnitude would bring reporters from everywhere.”

  Considering the man likely squelched ninety percent of media stories on himself, Raphael was surprised at the question.

  “We’re keeping it out of the press. LCR specializes in rescuing kidnap victims. We’re handling this in-house.”

  “Of course. Of course. That makes sense. But are you sure the culprit is Reddington? Isn’t he still in prison? Don’t tell me some fool has let him escape.”

  “No. He’s still there. We’re not quite sure yet what the man’s agenda is, but we felt it important to alert Giselle of what her father has done. If he’s got people working for him on the outside, he could very well find another way to get to her.”

  “And you’re absolu
tely sure her father is responsible? There’s no doubt?”

  “None whatsoever.”

  Fletcher released a powerful sigh, shook his head. “What a tragic upbringing that poor girl endured. She was such a blessing as a daughter-in-law. She and my son loved each other deeply. When Giselle lost the love of her life, she was, understandably, inconsolable.”

  Like a wild animal sensing danger, Raphael felt the hair on the back of his neck stand up. Every instinct he had was blaring a warning. There was something wrong. Why did the man keep referring to Giselle in the past tense?

  “Where is Giselle? Is she here?”

  “No.” Fletcher gave a deep sigh. “I wish there was an easier way to say this, and I’m sorry to be the one to tell you, because I can see you really cared for her.” He drew in a breath and said, “Giselle is dead. She passed away several months ago.”

  Chapter Seven

  Raphael couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think. He could hear a voice in his head repeatedly saying, No, no, no. He was surprised his frozen lips managed to mumble, “What happened?”

  Tears glistened in Fletcher’s eyes. “We were so focused on our own grief, we missed how devastated Giselle was. She held back her despair, didn’t share how she was really feeling. By the time we realized, it was too late to save her.”

  “I—” Raphael’s voice croaked. He cleared his throat, tried again. “How did it happen?”

  “My wife went to her bedroom to wake her. She thought a girls’ day out, shopping and a spa session, would help them both. She found our darling Giselle in the bathtub. She had cut her wrists and was long gone.”

  No, he refused to believe it. She might have hurt him when she left, sliced his heart into a million pieces, but he knew Giselle, knew her heart. Despondency was not part of her personality, no matter what life threw at her.

  “That doesn’t sound like Giselle.”

  “We didn’t think so either.” Fletcher’s expression was grave with grief as he explained, “But she loved our son so very much. They were inseparable up until the end. She was lost without him.”

  “Does Sarah, her mother, know?”

  “No. I’m sure she doesn’t. We kept it very private. We’re not ones to share our personal grief with others. And since we had no way to get in touch with her, I don’t see how her mother could know.”

  Standing, still numb from shock, Raphael said woodenly, “I would like to go to her gravesite, pay my respects.”

  “That’s not possible, I’m afraid. Her body was cremated. We spread her ashes in the same place we distributed our son’s. In the ocean behind our house. We thought the location the most appropriate, as it was one of their favorite places to go together.”

  He had to get out of here. A thick wave of grief threatened to engulf him, swallow him whole. He could not spend one more moment in this man’s suffocating presence.

  He managed, somehow, to thank Fletcher for the information and get out of the house before he lost it. He got into his rental car, managed to drive almost a quarter mile down the road before he had to pull over. He pushed open the car door seconds before losing the contents of his stomach.

  Giselle was dead? Had killed herself? How was that possible?

  ***

  The instant Sanchez’s vehicle moved away from the house, Daniel Fletcher breathed an easier breath. The matter was far from resolved, but he thought this part had gone rather well.

  The door behind him opened, and his longtime friend and confidant Hugh Rawlings strolled into his office. “Well, that was a bit of a shocker.”

  “So you saw him?”

  “Yes. Uncanny. Did you expect that?”

  “No, I had no idea. Changes things a bit.”

  “Not really.” Seeing Daniel’s surprise, Hugh shook his head. “Don’t make it more complicated than it needs to be. We’ve known from the beginning what needs to be done.”

  Daniel sighed. “I know. It’s just all so messy...so tawdry.”

  He slapped his old friend on the back. “It’ll work itself out.”

  “I suppose. Cavendar’s not pleased.”

  “So?” Hugh gave a careless shrug. “He works for us, not the other way around.”

  “I wish I had listened to you from the beginning.”

  “You had your reasons.”

  A wave of gratitude engulfed Daniel. Out of all the people he’d known in his life, his longtime friend and associate was the only person who had never disappointed him.

  “What’s next? Is there anything more I need to do?”

  “No.” Walking over to Daniel’s desk, Hugh grabbed the item he needed. “You just relax and let me take care of the rest. We have more than enough people to handle the situation. By this time next week, all of this will be like a bad dream, and you can go on as you planned.”

  One hundred percent confident, Daniel nodded his approval. “Excellent.”

  ***

  The flight back to Virginia was a blur of images of Giselle—when he first met her, when they were together. Raphael’s gut felt as though hot embers were burning him from the inside out. The hideous words kept reverberating through his mind.

  Giselle is dead.

  How could a healthy twenty-six-year-old woman be dead, just like that? Yeah, it happened, but not to the woman he had once known and loved. Just, no.

  As Raphael stared sightlessly out the window of the plane, he tried to reconcile the young, vivacious girl he had known with a woman so despondent over her husband’s death that she would choose to end her own life.

  Had she changed that much? With her mother and family far away and unable to communicate with them, who had she been able to turn to? Had she had no friends? A priest, a minister? Someone to talk to?

  He could not get his head wrapped around the concept that Giselle was actually gone. How had his gut—the one thing he’d relied on for so many years—not let him know in some way that she was no longer on this earth?

  From personal experience, he knew that grief could ravage even the strongest of souls. His own mother had lost her will to live early in life.

  Raphael remembered nothing about his father, but he had no problem remembering the men who came after him—so many of them. The last one had broken his mother, not just her heart but also her spirit. He had watched the woman who used to love and care for him become someone else. The alcohol and drugs dimmed the pain, and she all but forgot she had a son. By the time he was ten, he was on the streets, rummaging in garbage bins for food, stealing when he could get away with it.

  When he was about twelve or so, he went back to their rat-infested hole-in-the-wall apartment to find her dead from an overdose. For two days, he had sat in the corner beside the mattress she’d died on and wept his heart out. Then he’d covered her body with a blanket and walked out the door. He’d stopped long enough to make an anonymous tip to the police about a dead body, and then he’d used the small amount of money he had left to buy a bus ticket to the next town over.

  Those were the years he preferred to forget, from the constant hunger to the near miss of becoming Donald Rosemount’s drugged-out zombie slave. Then LCR had happened, and his life had never been the same.

  He had survived. His mother hadn’t. And somehow, something similar had happened to Giselle.

  Guilt slithered through him. At one time, he was her friend. Her only friend. Even though she abandoned him, he should have found a way to make sure she was okay. Yes, she had changed her name, and it would have been hard to find her, but perhaps Noah might’ve been able to find something out. He had blamed her for abandoning him, but maybe he’d been the one to do the abandoning. To know she had suffered so badly that she felt taking her own life was her only option sickened him. How alone she must have felt.

  Would things have been different if he had returned her call that day? On the same day that news of her marriage was exploding across the tabloids, she had called him, leaving a mysterious voice mail that she needed to talk with him
. He’d been thrown for a loop. When he’d heard her voice, he’d still been reeling from learning about her marriage. Bitter and angry, he had deleted the message. What was the point in calling a newly married woman?

  But now, looking back, he couldn’t help but think about that moment and wish he’d made a different decision.

  Images long buried resurfaced in his mind. He remembered her smile, her beautiful laugh, the way she saw wonder in every living thing. To know that that light had been snuffed out ripped at his insides.

  He shook his head. No, just no. Damn if he would just accept her death without getting all the facts. He owed it to Giselle to find out the truth.

  For right now, the priority was getting Samara, Micah, and Evie back home, safe and sound. But when that had been accomplished, he would be launching another investigation.

  Something was off here—way off. And he was going to find out what.

  Chapter Eight

  Gardner-Vicks Cemetery

  Queens, New York

  The young man drove down the narrow, graveled road. Spotting the now familiar clearing in the distance, he headed there. The late afternoon sun struggled to brighten up the dreariness of the day. He always chose the late afternoons to come. Not too many people wanted to hang around a graveyard after the sun went down. It didn’t bother him. He actually enjoyed the quiet.

  He pulled off into a clearing, parked the vehicle, and got out. Fighting the almost overwhelming anxiousness inside him, he went around to the back of the vehicle and pulled the gardening equipment from the trunk. A hoe, shearing scissors, a small broom, and an empty garbage bag—tools of the trade for a maintenance man in charge of clearing debris from graves and tombstones.

  If anyone happened to see him, they might think he was too young for the job or that the slenderness of his physique would prevent him from doing anything too strenuous. They would be wrong. Beneath the worn clothes, he was much fitter than anyone could imagine. It had taken him longer than he’d ever anticipated, but he was healthy once again. And he was ready to face the challenges ahead. No matter what.