Hostage Negotiation

Kaylee Brighton had endured unspeakable horrors.

Watching her blanch at one of Willow’s questions had Zack clamping his jaw so tight that his teeth ached. And when she shot him another one of her haunted looks, silently begging him to come over, this time he was helpless to say no.

Shoving away from the wall, he threaded his way through the patio tables and chairs, not stopping until he reached her side. Daring the detectives to say anything, he crossed his arms and prepared to stop this inquisition if it got out of hand. The relief on Kaylee’s face told him he was doing the right thing.

Cole, however, obviously disagreed. He gave Zack a disapproving frown from his seat beside his boss, Lieutenant Shlafer, who was sitting beside Special Agent Willow. Four other Collier County and Broward County detectives sat behind them in a semicircle.

Paying no attention to Zack, Special Agent Willow rested his forearms on his thighs and cupped his hands together. “You’re sure you never saw the man’s face?”

She shook her head. “I’m sorry. It was usually dark when he was there. And he always wore a leather mask, like a hood, tied around the throat. There were wide slits cut out for his eyes, and a hole for his mouth. But everything else was concealed. I couldn’t even tell you the color of his hair.”

“Leather? That’s very specific. You sure about that?”

“The material was dark brown, thick, but soft and pliable. If it wasn’t leather, it was something similar.”

“Soft. You touched the mask?”

Her cheeks tinged a light pink. “No, Agent Willow. The mask touched me, when he touched me.” Her words were short, clipped, angry.

Zack winced at the words that she wasn’t saying. She’d avoided sharing intimate details about her treatment so far. But she was getting closer and closer to telling them exactly what the man had done to her. And it was taking every ounce of control that Zack had to keep from putting his arms around her to protect her from having to relive that horror again.

Willow had the grace to look uncomfortable and cleared his throat. “You said he kept you in a box most of the time. What kind of box? Cardboard? Wood?”

“Plexiglas. And before you ask, yes, I’m sure. If it was real glass, I’d have broken it. God knows I tried.” She wrung her hands, massaging them, perhaps remembering how they’d hurt as she’d slammed her palms against the top of the box, trying to get out of it.

Zack remembered this part from an earlier interview, and it still made his hands fist at his sides and nausea roll in his stomach. She’d basically been buried alive, kept in a box the size of a coffin, surrounded by dirt walls, able to see the sky above on the rare occasions when the man removed the heavy black cloth that covered the top of the box most of the time. Small holes drilled into the Plexiglas allowed just enough air flow to keep her alive.

The man who’d imprisoned her had sometimes left her in the box for days at a time, without food or water. It was a wonder she hadn’t baked to death. There must have been branches overhead, helping to block the heat of the sun. When he did take her out, it was usually at night, or at times when the sun was just beginning to rise or set. She rarely got to see sunlight.

He mainly took her out to give her food and water, just enough to keep her hydrated and fed to the point where she wouldn’t die. He forced her to clean the box. And when he wanted to...play...to do whatever sick and twisted things he did to her...he would make her clean herself. While he watched. Anything more than that, including how she’d managed to escape her captor, was anyone’s guess. Because every time they got to that part of the interview, she’d shut down.

Willow pulled out the little pocket notebook where he’d made notes earlier when they’d covered this same ground. “You said the box was in the ground, that you could see dirt surrounding you on all sides. But the top was left open?”

Her hands began to shake and she gripped them together in her lap. “Not open. Closed, locked, but covered with a heavy black cloth most of the time. He almost never took the cover off when the sun was up. When he did remove it, his face was concealed behind a mask. That’s what gave me hope, that he didn’t want me to see his face. I thought... I thought he’d eventually let me go.” She swallowed hard and looked down at her lap. “But I found out otherwise, after he brought Mary and shoved her into the box with me. I knew he was going to kill me soon.” She shivered. “Mary was my replacement.”

“Why did you think she was your replacement?” Willow asked. “Was it because she didn’t have her own box?”

She shook her head. “No. I’d tr-tried to escape once before, and he was furious about that. After he...punished me for...defying him, things only got worse. Once M...Mary showed up, he promised he was going to k...kill me.”

And this was where the interview had stopped the last time, and the time before that. She started to shake. Her mouth worked but no more words would come. No matter how Willow phrased his questions about Mary, about what happened after that, about how she escaped, she shut down. Her eyes took on a horrified, faraway look as if she were retreating into herself, going somewhere they couldn’t reach her.

The therapist motioned to the nurse, who hurried over and checked Kaylee’s pulse. Zack knew what was next. They’d call a halt to the questions. And another day would end without them having any more clues that might help them narrow their search, or give them a new lead to follow. He tried not to be aggravated, or let his disappointment show. Because the pale, young woman a few feet away from him was just as much of a victim as Mary.

With one exception.

Kaylee had managed to escape. She’d survived. And Mary deserved that same opportunity. If they could just get Kaylee to answer all of their questions, maybe they could save Mary, too.

Just when it looked as if the nurse was going to wheel Kaylee back to her room, Willow held his hand out to stop her and leaned forward. “You know, Miss Brighton. For the life of me I can’t understand why an attractive and intelligent woman such as you would decide to tour the Everglades by herself. Everyone knows the woods are dangerous. Yet you chose to go on that path alone, without a weapon. Why would a pretty girl like you do that?”

His tone was so condescending, so accusatory that Zack’s mouth fell open. Everyone stared at the FBI agent in shock, including Kaylee. Willow might be impatient most of the time, but Zack never would have pegged him as one of those people who would blame the victim. As if by virtue of being beautiful, and a woman, she shouldn’t have the audacity to walk somewhere by herself without expecting that someone might attack her. Zack was about to tell the agent exactly where he could shove his questions when Kaylee leaned forward with her fists on her knees, glaring at Willow.

“I was in a public area, taking the same path any number of tourists take every single day,” Kaylee gritted out. “It’s my right as a human being—regardless of how pretty I am, Special Agent Willow—to walk anywhere that I want with the expectation of being safe. I shouldn’t have to always travel in a group like a pack animal to avoid being attacked.”

The nurse leaned down but Kaylee waved her back, never taking her gaze off Willow. “I’m staying right here. I want to hear what Special Agent Willow has to say.”

The agent shrugged. “I’m just trying to understand why you decided to go to that particular part of the Glades. Alone. It’s a simple question.”

“Then I’ll give you a simple answer, and hope you can grasp it.” Anger hardened her voice. “I always take a week’s vacation from my job at the bank around this time every year. My travel agent suggested some of the recreation areas off Alligator Alley might be a fun diversion before I went to the condo she’d rented for me in Naples.”

He poised his pen over a page in his notebook. “What’s your travel agent’s name?”

She blinked. “I don’t see where that matters.” Her voice still shook with anger, but she was engaged once again, no longer ready to end the questioning.

Had that been the agent’s intent all along when he’d asked that outrageous question? Was it part of his strategy? To make her angry so her fears would fade? Zack glanced at Cole, whose brows were raised as he, too, studied the agent.

“It’s just a question,” Willow said, his voice neutral, with none of the accusatory tone he’d used before.

Kaylee blew out an impatient breath. “Her name is Sandy Gonzalez. She works for Aventuras Travel Agency based out of Miami. She’s handled my family’s travel plans for years, decades.”

“And the reason you decided to vacation alone?”

“How are these questions going to help you find those missing women?” She sounded more perplexed than angry this time.

“Could you answer the question, please?”

She jerked her robe tighter over her hospital gown. “No. I can’t. I just spent ninety-three days of my life being controlled by a monster. Everything I ate, drank, every move I made, was dictated by him. I’ve done nothing wrong, Agent Willow. And in spite of what you’re implying, I didn’t bring any of this on myself.” She waved her hand in the air. “Somewhere out there is a monster who’s holding Mary Watkins and doing unspeakable things to her. Instead of thinly veiled accusations posed as questions, blaming me for what that man did to me, why aren’t you out in the swamp right now searching for her? And that other woman you said was missing?”

He straightened in his chair. “Miss Brighton, my apologies if I sound accusatory. And I know that my questions might seem like a waste of time to you, but this is how we figure things out. We gather as much information as we can about a crime, no matter how trivial, because you never know what the one thing will be that points us in the direction we need to go. As for searching for the missing women, we have teams out in the swamp right now looking for them. They’ve been out there every day since Chief Scott found you. So I assure you, any time we spend with you isn’t taking away from the search. It’s my hope that if I ask enough questions, then something you know—that you don’t even realize you know—will help us figure out how the man who hurt you targeted you and the others, and where he may be right now. Again, my apologies if I offended you in any way.”

Son of a... Zack shook his head. He’d completely misjudged Special Agent Willow. The man’s bedside manner might suck, and he was treating Kaylee far more harshly than Zack was comfortable with, but he’d gotten exactly what he wanted. He’d shaken Kaylee out of her stupor and stopped her from retreating into herself and ending the interview like she had always done before. Which must have been his intention all along.

The decision to engage the feds had been Zack’s. And he’d been regretting that decision since the minute he’d met Special Agent Willow and took an instant, instinctual dislike to the man. But now, well, he had a renewed respect for him, even if he didn’t agree with his methods.

Relaxing his stance, Zack settled in a nearby chair to listen to Willow resume his questioning.

Chapter Six (#u2a1c38af-01b6-5eb4-ab53-c0061eda44d8)

Three weeks.

It had been three weeks—twenty-one long, tortuous days—since Kaylee had fled the never-ending questions of the task force in Naples and had gone home. Or, rather, she’d gone back to her parents’ home, in Miami Beach. And since she still couldn’t deal with the thought of being alone and vulnerable in her apartment in downtown Miami, she was here to stay, for the foreseeable future.

Thinking back to the barrage of questions, day after day, from Special Agent Willow and detectives from both Broward and Collier County, she shivered and rubbed her hands up and down her bare arms. The only one not to pepper her with endless questions was the man who’d become something of a guardian angel the whole time she’d been in the hospital—Police Chief Zack Scott.

He’d made no secret of his disgust over what had amounted to daily interrogations, where she was treated more like a criminal than an innocent victim. Zack had taken up for her, pushing back against all the pressure and siding with the therapist who insisted that Kaylee needed time to heal. The more they questioned her, the more her mind had shut down, muddying her memories.

It wasn’t long before the only thing she could remember about her ordeal was being rescued by Zack. The therapist said it was her mind’s way of protecting itself from the trauma that she’d suffered, and that if the police didn’t stop their questions, they might permanently destroy the very memories they were trying to recover. Which meant that any potential Kaylee might have for helping them find Mary would be lost. That was the only reason she’d agreed to do what her parents, and her doctors, kept begging her to do—go home.

So here she was, starting day twenty-two standing in the kitchen watching her mother put a pork roast and seasonings into a slow cooker for tonight’s dinner. Later her mother would combine black beans, onions, garlic and green peppers in a pressure cooker. And once the roast and beans were ready, she would dish them over white rice with plantains and warm, crusty bread on the side. It was a traditional Cuban dish that Kaylee loved.