Deceived (33 page)

Taylor shivered. “Hurry.”

Joe called. His voice, over the car’s intercom system, was gravelly with sleep. “What’s urgent?”

Brandon explained the text. He added, “Taylor’s with me. We’re almost to Cold Storage and River Road. George Bartholomew is on his way, as is Sebastian. Two Black Raven agents are with me as well.”

“I’m on my way.”

As they approached Cold Storage Road, they hit a stretch where there were no streetlights. Brandon’s headlights barely made a dent in the inky night. He turned on the high beams as he slowed the car. “After I get a flashlight out of my trunk, I’m coming around to your side. Whatever happens, stay with me, and I mean touching me. Do not step away from me. No matter what.”

“I don’t see her,” Taylor said, her eyes scanning the tall levee that bordered the Mississippi River, where all she could see was darkness.

Brandon parked. He left the headlights on. She stepped out of the car when he opened her door. With Brandon on one side and a Black Raven agent on the other side of her, they climbed the levee, as Sebastian pulled up. His headlights gave the dark night more light. The other Black Raven agent walked ahead of them, using a flashlight to scan the area. Damp grass hit Taylor midway up her calf. On the levee’s crest, light slid across pale flesh of a body in a fetal position.

“Oh, my God,” Taylor said.

Without slowing his stride, Brandon dialed 9-1-1 and requested medical assistance. Taylor would have broken into a wild run, but Brandon’s grip on her forearm kept her close. Together they hurried to where Andi lay, nude, her long hair tangled in the grass. Andi’s eyes were rimmed with black bruises and swollen shut. Her nose was swollen and crusty with blood. Her wrists and ankles were bound together with multiple ties of rope and electrical tape.

“Andi,” Taylor said. Her insides clenched in panic. “Is she alive?”

Brandon was behind Andi. Taylor saw his eyes widen. He hesitated, then reached over Andi, and pressed at her neck. “Her pulse is faint. Talk to her. Tell her she’s fine.”

“Andi. I’m with you,” Taylor said. “You’re safe now. We’re taking you home.”

Andi moaned. Her eyes opened into bare slits, and Taylor leaned over her, smoothing her hair back from her forehead. She held Taylor’s gaze for a second, then shut her eyes. Brandon used his switchblade to cut away at the layers of twine and tape that bound her ankles and wrists. As Taylor moved around Andi to let Brandon cut the bindings, she saw Andi’s back, where smears of black ink formed letters that were randomly accentuated by festering, oozing circles of burned flesh. “Her back. Brandon. Dear God. What the hell happened to her?”

“Taylor,” Brandon said, “Get that tape off of her mouth. She’s having a hard time breathing through her nose.”

Taylor stared at the lines and holes that spanned from Andi’s buttocks to her shoulders. As her eyes adjusted to the dim light, she read the three lines of text.

“Pay my demand by July 4th or more children will suffer for the sins of their fathers.”

“Taylor,” Brandon voice was calm. “Don’t worry about her back. It’s nothing. She’s going to be fine. The tape. Get it off of her.”

Taylor met Brandon’s hard, worried gaze. He had seen Andi’s back, because that’s where he had been when they first approached Andi. His serious gaze told Taylor that he knew that the injuries to Andi’s back were most definitely not nothing, but Taylor understood that Brandon was trying to keep Taylor, and especially Andi, from panicking. In her work at the district attorney’s office, she had handled an assault that had involved cigarette burns. The photographic exhibits of the burns and the scars they’d left on the victim had been unforgettable. Cigarettes were the only weapon that Taylor knew of that could make such a precise circle, and more than a hundred burns dotted Andi’s skin, accenting each of the black-inked, crude letters.

Brandon continued, his voice soothing. “I’m almost done with her wrists and her ankles.” As Taylor eased the tape off of her mouth, Andi gasped a rugged, rough breath of air, then gagged.

“Taylor. Talk to her,” Brandon said, as Andi tried to breathe, and, when Brandon had finished cutting the ties that bound Andi’s wrists and ankles, Andi reached her arms for Taylor, choking with pain as she did so.

“If she’s been bound for a while, movement hurts.”

“It’s going to be all right,” Taylor said, holding Andi at her shoulders and trying to avoid scraping the burns on her back. “You’re fine now. Fine. We’re with you. I won’t leave you.”

From where they were on the levee’s crest, Taylor could see the distant city skyline. A ship glided by on the water. “You’re all right,” Taylor said, careful not to let her arms touch too firmly on Andi’s back. “Breathe easy.”

George arrived, then Tony. George ran to Taylor and Andi. He studied Andi’s back. He went pale. He stayed close to Taylor, who stared into her father’s eyes. Taylor whispered, “What is this about?”

George shook his head. He reached for Taylor, pressing one palm against her back, the other hand on her shoulder. If she hadn’t been holding Andi, Taylor would have slapped her father’s hands off of her. She couldn’t bear his touch. She tolerated it, though, focusing on calmness, for Andi, because if she started screaming at that moment she wouldn’t stop. She glanced over her father’s shoulders, to where Brandon was watching the two of them. When her eyes found Brandon’s, he turned away.

Andrew arrived. He took one glance at his daughter, then looked at George. He said, “This is your goddamn fault.”

George stood. He stepped away from Taylor and Andi and turned to Andrew. “Do not forget that you have been with me every step of the way.”

Joe arrived at the same time that an ambulance sped to the edge of the levee. Taylor absorbed their words. It was all she could do to resist demanding an explanation from George and Andrew. Keeping Andi calm was more important. She’d fight for an explanation later. She focused on Andi, laying in the levee grass with her, holding her, and repeating, “You’re fine. You’re going to be all right. Help is on the way.” With Andrew kneeling at her side, Taylor stayed as close as she could to Andi as the paramedics assessed the injuries. She heard, “Third degree burns,” “Possible broken ribs,” and “Broken nose.” The first morning light was a pink strip on the horizon as the paramedics moved her, chest down, face to the side, on the stretcher. Andi was conscious then, with her hand gripping Taylor’s hand. Taylor saw Joe turn towards George.

Joe yelled, “Extortion? The Hutchenson letter? I asked you that. Last night. I asked you, not eight hours ago. You said
no
. You goddamn arrogant son of a bitch.”

Once again, it took all Taylor had to keep from joining Joe in his argument with her father. There’d be time for that later. Andi was more important, she reminded herself. She held Andi’s hand and watched her friend slip into unconsciousness as they lifted her into the ambulance. One of the paramedics turned to Taylor and Andrew. “There’s room for one.”

Andrew was pale. His hands shook. “I’ll go.”

Brandon handed his car keys to one of the Black Raven agents, who drove Taylor to the hospital.

Minutes turned into hours in the hospital. Due to the level of pain and shock that Andi exhibited when conscious, and the fact that Andi had seemed unable to tell them information about what had happened, the doctors decided to keep her sedated. Taylor breathed slightly easier when she learned that there were no signs of rape. At eleven, in a private room, with two HBW security guards and one Black Raven agent outside the door, Andi lay face down, asleep, with her back exposed.

The emergency room doctors had done preliminary cleaning of her back, but a physician who specialized in burns, with two nurses, began a painstaking cleansing process, using magnifying glasses, a syringe of fluid, a sharp, needle-like instrument, gauze swabs, and gel. The doctor finished at two-thirty, layering salve on Andi’s back and applying a thin, cellophane-like dressing. The ink was gone. Where there had been letters and words, now there were only round burns.

The doctor gave Taylor and Andrew a tired glance. “Most of the burns are third degree. She must have suffered excruciating pain. As long as we can fight infection, she will heal.”

Taylor sat on one side of Andi’s bed, with Andrew on the other. Without medical personnel surrounding her, Andi slept easier. Andrew was ashen and he seemed much, much older than his age. At times, he reached for Andi, to touch her, as though to make sure she was still alive. Taylor remembered, just yesterday, what Brandon had told her.
Start with Andrew
.
Ask Andrew questions
.

Taylor whispered, “The words on her back.
Pay my demand by July 4th or more children will suffer for the sins of their fathers.
What does it mean?” Heavy blue eyes looked into hers. He stayed silent.

“Andrew,” she said, “Please don’t treat me as my father would.”

He sighed as he glanced at Andi. “I will never forgive myself. I should have stopped the madness years ago.”

Dread built in her chest. Taylor drew a deep breath. He continued, “We received a demand letter last week. Someone threatened us with public exposure of the Hutchenson letter unless we pay his demand.”

Taylor cringed. “Joe asked my father about that last night. My father didn’t admit it.”

“I know.”

Taylor asked, “How much was the demand?”

“Twenty-five million.”

Taylor’s heart raced. With that kind of demand, the extortionist must think that the Hutchenson letter was worth something, that the letter was more than a hoax, that it represented more than the conspiracy theory that her father claimed it to be. She drew a deep breath.

“Your father really did write that letter, didn’t he?”

Andrew nodded. “Yes. I was there when he did so. He was in his sound mind and he wrote of events that actually happened.”

Her world shifted, but instead of feeling the dread that had come the day before with Rorsch’s words, she felt fury. Fury with her father for lying to her. Fury with herself for believing the lies.

“You and my father chose to conceal it.”

Andrew nodded. “Alicia was on the board then as well. She was also determined to keep it under wraps.”

“Does Claude know about it?”

“Claude knows about the Hutchenson letter now, but he did not know until last week, when we received the extortion demand.” Tears streamed from Andrew’s eyes as he looked at Andi. “I will never forgive myself for letting this happen to her.”

She hesitated. “Will you admit it, now? Publicly? That your father’s letter is the truth?”

He held Taylor’s gaze. “Yes. It is the only way to stop this madness.”

For long minutes, Taylor couldn’t see anything but her father’s sneer, the night before, as he lied and said that Brandon’s father had prepared the letter. She paced around Andi’s hospital room, thinking.

Truth was the antidote to a lie. In this instance, truth would be more powerful than an antidote to a lie, because it occurred to Taylor that the Hutchenson letter only had value if it was concealed. If it was no longer concealed, the value would disappear. Once the value disappeared, the threat would as well, and the extortionist would have no power. An idea, one that she kept to herself, formed.

“Don’t tell my father that I know the truth. Not now.”

Her phone rang with a call from Joe. She stepped out of the room and nodded to the Black Raven agent, who walked down the hallway with her. After Taylor gave Joe an update on Andi, he gave Taylor information about Collette. “I put a rush on toxicology reports that the coroner already ordered and, on a whim, ordered a test for some additional street drugs.” He cleared his throat. “She tested positive for a whole slew of prescription drugs, but she also tested positive for GHB.”

Taylor knew of the date rape drug from her time with the D.A.’s office. She drew in a deep breath. “Collette wouldn’t have taken that.”

“People usually don’t take that voluntarily,” he said. “There’s nothing else that we’ve found at her house, but I thought that I’d let you know. The perp could have started her off with that, then she wouldn’t have resisted as he forced her to swallow the rest of the drugs.”

As Taylor remembered something that she had forgotten, her hands shook. “Joe. Call the paramedics who arrived at Collette’s house. One of them said someone was there when they got there. I didn’t pay attention, then. In fact, I forgot about it. Until now. Maybe he was just a neighbor, but, wouldn’t a neighbor have stayed? This guy was there when I got there, he led the paramedics up the stairs, and he,” she paused, “watched. Then he disappeared. I didn’t see him. The paramedic’s description might help.”

“Whoever he is, he’s attacked your two best friends,” Joe said. “He’s extorting your father. He watched you at Collette’s house, and he contacted you last night about Andi. Listen to Brandon and the Black Raven agents. Be careful, Taylor.”

Taylor broke the connection with Joe, shut her eyes, and focused on breathing. She needed to be calm, but anxiety made each breath difficult.

One minute. Two minutes. Three.

She had a plan, she would try like hell to stick with it, and the night would come and go. She had a plan, she reminded herself, as she called her father. He sounded concerned for her and also for Andi. “I’m fine and Andi is resting,” she said. She shut her eyes. “I wanted to let you know that I will attend the gala and give the speech.”