Rocky Mountain Rescue

“I don’t want to see them.”

“Why not?” Had there been a rift when she married Giardino?

“That’s none of your business.”

He conceded the point and let his gaze drift to the boy. The key with a hostile witness was to find some point of connection. “How is your son?”

“He’s tired and confused. He wants to go home.” Her expression softened and she stroked the boy’s hair again—a honey color several shades darker than her own. “I haven’t told him about his father yet. I’m not sure he’d understand.”

“And how are you doing?”

The hardness returned. “If you’re worried I’m all torn up because my husband’s dead, don’t be.”

“So you’re not upset?”

“I’m not. I hated him.”

“Then why did you marry him?”

She shook her head. “You wouldn’t understand.”

“Try me.”

She pressed her lips together in a thin line. He thought she wasn’t going to say anything, but he waited anyway. Had she really hated her husband, or was this a ploy to distance herself further from the Giardinos and their crimes? “My father and his father arranged for us to get married,” she said. “I scarcely even knew him.”

“Come on. This is the twenty-first century. And it’s America, not the old country.”

Her expression clouded. “I told you you wouldn’t understand.”

He let the words hang between them, hoping she’d elaborate, but she did not. She didn’t look away from him either, but kept her gaze steady and challenging, unflinching.

He shifted, and his leg brushed against her arm. She flinched and he moved away. This wasn’t right, him looming over her this way. He pulled up a chair and sat beside her, turned to face her. “I wanted to ask you a few more questions about today,” he said.

“I can’t tell you anything about the Giardinos.”

“You were married to Sam Giardino’s son for four years. You lived in the Giardino family home during all that time. I believe you know more than you think you know. Did people often come to the house to discuss business?”

She remained silent.

He removed a photograph from the folder—an eight-by-ten glossy used by Senator Greg Nordley in his campaign. “Have you seen this man before? At the house or with Sam or Sammy somewhere else?”

She scarcely glanced at the photo. “Where are the other women—Victoria and Elizabeth? Have you asked them these questions?”

The women were at this moment in other interrogation rooms, being questioned by other officers. “They’re safe. And yes, we’re talking to them.”

“They’ll tell you the same thing I will—we don’t know anything. We weren’t allowed to know anything. Women in the Giardino household were like furniture or children—to be seen and not heard.”

“I’m surprised you put up with that kind of treatment.”

Anger flared, putting color in her cheeks and life in her eyes. She looked more striking than ever. “You think I had a choice?”

“You strike me as an outspoken, independent young woman. Not someone who’d let herself be bullied.” When she’d stepped out into the basement, the boy in her arms, she’d looked ready to take him on, despite the fact that she was unarmed.

She looked away, but not before he caught a glimpse of sadness—or was it despair?—in her eyes. “If you lived in a household with men who thought nothing of cutting a man’s face off if he said something they didn’t like, would you be so eager to speak up?”

“Are you saying the Giardinos threatened you?”

“They didn’t think of them as threats. Call them promises.”

“Did they physically abuse you?” His anger was a sharp, heavy blade at the back of his throat, surprising in its intensity.

She shook her head. “It doesn’t matter.”

He shifted, wanting to put some distance between himself and this woman who unsettled him so. She was alternately cold and vulnerable, in turns innocent and calculating. He pretended to consult the file folder, though the words blurred before an image of Stacy, cowering before a faceless thug with a gun.

“Does the name Senator Nordley mean anything to you?” he asked, forcing the disturbing image away.

“He’s a senator from New York. What is this, a civics test?”

“We believe the senator was at the house shortly before we broke in this afternoon.”

“I didn’t see him.”

“Did you see Sam Giardino with anyone in the past few days who was not a regular part of the household?”

“No. I stayed as far away from Sam as I could.”

“Why is that?”

“He and my husband were fighting. I didn’t want to get caught in the cross fire. Literally.”

“What were they fighting about?”

“Control of the family. Sammy wanted his father to give him more say in day-to-day operations, but Sam refused.”

“But Sam was the natural successor to his father, wasn’t he?”

“Supposedly. But Sam used to taunt him. He’d threaten to pass over Sam and hand the reins over to his brother, Sammy’s Uncle Abel.”

Patrick leafed through the folder. He found no mention of anyone named Abel. “Who was Uncle Abel?”

“Sam’s younger brother. He was the black sheep no one ever talked about—because he wouldn’t go into the family business.”

“But Sam threatened to turn things over to him instead of to Sammy?”

“It was just his way of getting back at Sammy. Abel had nothing to do with the business and hadn’t for years.”

“Where is Abel now?”