Aftershocks (3 page)

She closed herself in a stall and pressed her palms to the cold metal, inhaling deeply to stave off the memories. It was inevitable, she supposed, that nostalgia would encroach. Almost nothing about that night ten years ago was like this one. Grant had proposed to her outside. They’d been wearing cutoff shorts, and the most enduring detail was the smell of fish bait.

Well, not
the
most enduring detail.

Go
away
.

She wouldn’t let the past affect this night any more than she’d let it affect any other important event. If it took her over now, even for a moment, how could she stop it from encroaching on everything else? That was
not
how she wanted her marriage to be.

Her stupid phone buzzed again. Grumbling, she snapped open the clutch and yanked it out, scowling at the screen. The unknown number again. From Ohio. There had been five calls while they’d dined, all from the same number. No voice mail messages had been left.

She swept her thumb over the first listing, deleting it, then each one more fiercely than the last. “Stupid telemarketers,” she muttered before flinging the phone back into her bag and slamming out of the stall. They called and called and it didn’t matter if the number obviously didn’t belong to their target. Jerks. Wasting people’s time and causing unnecessary tension. She hated Ohio.

When she returned to the ballroom, the speaker was making his closing remarks. A small band began playing, and Kell met her halfway to draw her onto the dance floor. She nestled into his arms and sighed. His broad chest was strong under her cheek, and she smoothed her hand down the satin of his lapel. Drakkar Noir—common, maybe, even cliché, but her favorite of his colognes—banished the memory of fish and everything else. She closed her eyes and sank into the moment, the
now
, as she’d become so expert at doing. Her body slowly relaxed as they swayed.

Kell’s voice rumbled through his chest, breaking the spell. “I’m sorry.”

She looked up in surprise. “For what?”

“This didn’t work out like I’d imagined. I timed it wrong. It was rushed, and you were pressured—”

Zoe released his hand to press her fingers over his mouth. “It was perfect.”

Tension lines on his face eased. “You’re just saying that.”

His lips rubbing against her fingers sent a zing to her core. She tried to keep her smile from becoming a grin. “My only regret is that I can’t”—she leaned closer and tilted her mouth toward his ear—“strip you out of that tux and show you just how damned happy you’ve made me.”

Kell chuckled, capturing her hand again and pulling her tight against his body while he whirled her around the floor.

Later, after accepting toast after toast from Kell’s parents and sister, their friends, and various groups of acquaintances who wanted to wish them well, Zoe and Kell went back to their apartment, and she did show him just how happy she was.

She was moments from sleep, wrapped in his arms, everything she ever wanted just inches from her grasp, when the phone in her purse, abandoned on the floor, buzzed. And she had to fight the feeling that she was about to lose it all.

* * *

“Congratulations, Zoe!”

“Thanks, Sherry.” Zoe swung through the half door next to the reception desk and smiled at the admin assistant as she went by. “Sorry I’m late. My flight got delayed.” This was the first day she’d been in the office since Kell proposed. She’d left the next morning for a three-day conference in California and taken the red-eye back, even though Kell was already at work when she got in and she still had to wait until tonight to see him. She smiled at the ring on her hand, its weight unfamiliar yet already reassuring, and headed for the coffee pot behind the reception desk.

“Ms. Ardmore?”

The unfamiliar voice froze Zoe mid-step. Sherry, twenty-two and dressed like it, nervously smoothed her micro-mini and tilted her head at the dark-suited man who’d just risen in the guest area. Zoe didn’t know him, but he was still familiar. Her body seemed to vibrate with denial, and she zeroed in on three vases of flowers on the polished wood counter. She opened her mouth to ask Sherry where they’d come from, but that was a stall tactic. A defense mechanism against the sheer terror that began screaming in her brain as soon as she spotted the FBI agent.

“Yes. I’m Zoe Ardmore,” she added, since half a minute had gone by. “You are?”

“Special Agent Henricksen. May I have a minute of your time, please?”

Absolutely not
. “Certainly.” She led Henricksen down the brick-walled hallway and let curses fly through her brain. Everything had been fine while she was on her trip. No more momentary senses of doom or phone calls from unknown numbers in any state, including Ohio. She’d decided not to tell Kell about the abduction. Why mess with things when they were so perfect?

And now this.

Maybe it has nothing to do with you
. The FBI could be investigating some other thing. Maybe he wanted her cooperation in gathering information on one of her clients. Or they’d inadvertently been connected to someone running a porn site, though she worked very hard to make sure that didn’t happen. There were dozens of reasons the FBI could have sent an agent to her office.

But Zoe had learned a long time ago about the futility of denial. She was an expert at facing reality, and it was about to hit her in the face. Hard, since that was the only way reality hit.

“This is a cool office,” Henricksen complimented as they passed through the main area.

“Thank you.” Instead of cubicles, she’d let her design staff separate their work areas in any way they wanted. The converted warehouse, with its polished hardwood floors and high ceilings, echoed wildly when too many people were talking. Throw rugs, curtains hanging from rods suspended from the ceiling a story above, and thick screens divided the spaces. She’d had acoustic panels hung, which helped muffle the noise, and the art on the walls had all been created by her staff.

When she launched her web design and hosting company several years ago, it had been a typical home-based enterprise. She’d built it at a steady pace from herself and one freelance designer to a million-dollar company with fourteen employees. They created websites and e-commerce portals for businesses all over the world. The thought that whatever had brought Agent Henricksen here could jeopardize what she’d built made her want to throw her body over the whole thing and protect it with her life.

She unlocked her office door, a tall panel of maple set between glass walls, and ushered the agent inside. He stood patiently in front of her desk while she stowed her briefcase and jacket. She almost offered him coffee, but that was another delaying tactic. When she motioned for him to sit, he waited until she’d done so before sinking tensely into the well-padded guest chair in front of her desk.

“I’m not sure if you’re aware of the reason for my visit,” Henricksen started.

“How would I be?” she asked.

“A notice would have been sent to you.”

Her gaze landed on the three-day pile of mail on the corner of her desk. It wasn’t large, as Sherry would have sorted out the junk. Sure enough, when Zoe flipped through it, she found a thin envelope with an official-looking seal in the corner. She fingered the edge but didn’t move to open it.

“I guess you should start at the beginning,” she told the agent. Her heartbeat slowed, her breath taking longer to drag in and push out.

“Of course,” he said graciously.

His voice sounded deeper, stretched. She knew what was coming. Not the details, but the essence. And she really, really didn’t want to hear it.

“Patron Rhomney and Fredricka Thomashunis have been granted parole.”

Everything rushed back toward her, a rage of noise and color and light. Heels tapped on the floor as they passed her door. One of the designers laughed. A phone rang. The red snapdragons and orange lilies in the flower arrangement on her desk tore at her eyes. And her voice, when she managed to work it up through the despair closing her throat, sounded weak and groggy.

“Would you close the door, please? And the blinds,” she added. No one was looking through the windows, but she couldn’t take the movement out there. Nor did she want to have to explain to anyone later what had happened. She was sure her devastation showed on her face.

“Ms. Ardmore?” Henricksen returned to the desk and hovered uncertainly. “Are you all right?”

“Give me a moment.” She managed a deep inhale, and the bombardment receded somewhat. “I’m sorry. I should have been expecting it.”

“It’s understandable.” He waited while she breathed a few more times, trying to keep memory and emotion at bay. Finally, he must have deemed her composed enough, because he went on.

“Mr. Rhomney and Ms. Thomashunis underwent their sixth parole hearings last month. The parole board found no reason to deny either one. Rhomney has obtained employment in Delaware County, north of Columbus, Ohio, while Thomashunis is in a halfway house in Marion.”

Zoe nodded. She unfortunately knew that area well, despite having moved away so many years ago.

“They are far away from Boston,” he assured her, “and the terms of their parole require them to remain in Ohio and check in with their respective parole officers once a week, in person.”

“Yet here you are, notifying me of what is no doubt already in this letter.” Zoe held the envelope a few inches off the desk and dropped it. But she couldn’t look away from it. Henricksen remained still and silent while she fought a rush of rage and despair, forced herself to remain in the present, that off-white rectangle a bizarre center point holding her in place.

She wasn’t as divorced from her past as she’d believed. It wasn’t going to stay where it belonged.

And she’d been getting phone calls from Ohio.

She straightened and looked at Henricksen. “So why
are
you here? What’s happened? The FBI doesn’t do courtesy calls and hand-holding.”

“No. Nothing has happened that anyone is concerned about.” For the first time, he shifted in his chair and looked uncomfortable. “I was a junior agent at the time of your abduction. You haven’t left my mind since.”

She noticed that he referred to her, not her case. That warmed her, but she didn’t understand. “The bad guys were caught. I was fine. It’s not like the unsolved case that haunts a career. So why…”

“You were brave and fierce, and your escape gave me hope that I could actually make a difference in this job. But that’s rare. Most cases do the opposite.” He cleared his throat and tugged his suit jacket forward. “I’ve kept tabs on Rhomney and Thomashunis and knew you’d be getting a notification letter.” He eyed the envelope. “It’s a pretty cold way to learn something like this.”

Zoe didn’t tell him that might be a good thing. Acting like something was a big deal sometimes made it one. “Is there reason to believe I’m in any danger?” She was pleased with the steadiness of her voice, but swiveled her engagement ring into her palm and clenched her fist around it. A reminder that she was an adult, not a powerless child.

Henricksen didn’t sigh, but he might as well have. “Not officially, no. Reports indicate your abductors had no apparent contact during their incarceration, and those who followed them but escaped prosecution have dispersed.”

Zoe felt her mouth twist and consciously relaxed it. It wasn’t Henricksen’s fault that prosecutors had let so many of Pat and Freddie’s people go for lack of evidence. Most of them hadn’t done anything bad to Zoe. Some had even been kind. But they knew she didn’t belong there, and they did nothing.

Pat and Freddie had both pled out on Zoe’s abduction to avoid a trial, which was what enabled their parole now. Zoe’s fury that the DA had been unable to prosecute for Jordie’s murder had compromised her recovery for a long time. No body, no weapons, no evidence, no eyewitness testimony except the word of two young teenagers who had never actually seen anything—the prosecutors had just gone with what they had, assuring Zoe’s and Grant’s families that it would be enough.

It wasn’t.

But that was out of her control, and she’d finally accepted that. Or at least some part of her had.

Dragging herself back to the topic at hand, she said, “So the FBI didn’t send you here.”

“No. I’m here on my own. I have a bad feeling about their intentions, but bad feelings aren’t actionable.” He smiled a little. “Not in real life.” He spread a hand toward her. “You should have someone you can come to if it becomes necessary. Someone you know and can trust.”

Zoe nodded. “I understand. And I appreciate it.” She told him about the phone calls she’d gotten but hadn’t answered. “Is that actionable?”

He slipped a small notebook out of the inside pocket of his jacket. “If you give me the number, I’ll look into it. Thomashunis made a call to Rhomney the day after he was released. I can at least find out if it’s the same number, or if the one you have is connected to either of them.”

Zoe pulled up the last call, glad she hadn’t deleted that one like the others. “They’re going to want the totems,” she said. “Were they ever found?”

“No. But they weren’t listed stolen property and weren’t necessary to the prosecution of the case, so no one looked for them.” He cocked his head, his brown eyes kind in his dark, impassive face. “Do you know where to find them?”