Living On The Edge. Susan Mallery
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“Tanner Keane.”
“At last. Hold on, Mr. Keane.” There was a second of silence followed by Adams saying, “Christopher, it’s Mr. Keane. Pick up in the library.”
Tanner waited through the quiet. Then he heard a click and Hilliard was on the line.
“Keane? What the hell is going on? Where’s my wife?”
Ex-wife, Tanner thought, wondering who was playing what game with him.
“I have her with me. She’s safe.”
Blaine breathed a sigh of relief. “Thank God. I should have listened to you before, Christopher. You said Mr. Keane was the best. Is Madison all right?”
“She’s perfectly fine. Anxious to see you both.”
“Good, good. Well done.” Blaine cleared his throat. “All right, then. Christopher, I’ll leave this to you. I need to get back to the lab. I have a meeting, some work…”
His voice trailed off as if he’d already left but had forgotten to hang up the phone. Seconds later, the receiver had been replaced.
Tanner had tried to think of ways to get Blaine off the phone, but it turned out fate had been kind. Now it was just him and Hilliard.
“You must have been worried,” Tanner said.
“Of course. We’ve all been sick. That other company I hired—what a bunch of incompetent asses.”
“I’m sorry you had to go through that.” Tanner leaned back in his chair and prepared to begin the game. “What was the name of the company? The first one you hired.”
“Why do you want to know?”
“People ask me about the competition. I don’t want to recommend someone who can’t do the job.”
Hilliard chuckled. “I doubt you recommend anyone, Keane.”
Interesting. So Hilliard wasn’t going to tell him. Which made Tanner wonder if Madison had been right—maybe there hadn’t been a first company. Maybe Hilliard had simply waited to hire Tanner to make things look more desperate. That would help Blaine come to terms with such a steep ransom.
“How is she? Really, I mean,” Hilliard said. “Madison was never very strong emotionally.”
“Relieved. They beat her up pretty badly.”
“What? No. They wouldn’t have.”
Tanner nodded slowly. Not exactly the normal response of a worried and grieving husband.
“Why would they do that?” Hilliard ask. “They wanted ransom money, not to hurt her. I didn’t think kidnappers hurt their victims. I want those people found. I want them punished for what they did to my wife.”
It wasn’t much of a recovery, Tanner thought, but then maybe he was reading too much into the conversation. Still, it was interesting that Hilliard characterized his wife as emotionally weak. From what Tanner had seen of Madison, she was tough. She’d been through hell, possibly at the hands of her ex-husband, and she was still holding it together.
“Not my line of work,” Tanner told him. “You’ll have to find someone else for that job. Oh, I almost forgot. About the ransom…” He paused deliberately, giving Hilliard time to sweat.
“Yes? It was paid.”
“No. Once I had Madison, I sent my men to intercept it.”
There was only silence. Tanner waited. If Hilliard wasn’t involved and if he hadn’t done it for the money, he wouldn’t care one way or the other.
“Where is the money now?” Hilliard asked, his voice carefully neutral.
But Tanner had been in the business for too long to be fooled. The other man was angry and frustrated. He’d wanted the ransom delivered. Dammit all to hell, he thought grimly. Madison was right. Her ex was in this up to his eyeballs. But how? And why?
Questions to be answered later.
“I’m having the ransom delivered to Mr. Adams at his office. I’ve notified his banker, as well, so he’ll be there to take possession of the money. It’s a lot of cash to have lying around. I wouldn’t want anything to happen to it.”
“You’re very thorough,” Hilliard said, his rage barely concealed.
“That’s what you pay me to be. Speaking of which, you owe me the second half of my fee.”
“Yes. Of course.” Hilliard sucked in a breath. “Where is Madison? Are you having her delivered to her father’s office, as well?”
“That’s a funny thing,” Tanner said, enjoying the moment. “She’s pretty shaken, as you can imagine. Right now she just wants to lay low for a while.”
“What, exactly, does that mean?”
“She’ll be my guest for a few days.”
Hilliard swore. “You can’t do that. You’re just as bad as they are. I suppose we’ll be getting a ransom demand from you, as well.”
“I’m not holding your wife against her will, Mr. Hilliard. This is at her very specific request.”
“I want my wife back immediately. It’s what you were hired to do. If you don’t return her, I’ll go to the police.”
“In your position, that’s what I’d do, as well,” Tanner told him.
“You can’t do this.”
“I just did.”
Tanner hung up the phone and wondered what would happen next. If he and Madison were wrong and Hilliard wasn’t playing a game, he would go directly to the police. But Tanner doubted that was likely. There was something going on—something that had cost Hilliard twenty million dollars.
Christopher did his best to lose himself in work, but it was impossible. Rage interfered with his concentration. How could things have gone so badly?
He knew Madison was responsible. The bitch had been nothing but an impediment for the past three years. He’d married her expecting someone beautiful and brainless to decorate his world. Instead she’d gotten a job, gotten involved and made his life a living hell. She had opinions, damn her.
His phone rang. He wanted to rip it out of the wall, but he forced himself to answer it.
“Hilliard,” he said.
“Ah, Christopher. So glad I caught you.” Blaine Adams rambled on about problems with a circuit board.
Christopher tried to concentrate and offer reasonable suggestions when what he really wanted was to ask the old man how he could be so stupid. Didn’t he realize what was going on in his own company or with his own daughter? Better for Christopher that he didn’t, but how could one person be so unaware?
“Oh,” the older man said when they’d finished the mini brainstorming session. “A very nice young man stopped by earlier with the ransom money. That Mr. Keane said it would be delivered here, and it was. My banker has already taken possession of it. You were right to hire that Mr. Keane. A fine man.”
“One of the best,” Christopher said between clenched teeth. “I’d heard Keane was efficient.”
“And so he was. Now Madison can concentrate on relaxing and getting over this horrible ordeal. You’ll be there for her, won’t you, Christopher?”
“Of course. You know Madison is my life.”
“Yes, yes. It’s a pity she got so headstrong and left. I’m sure it was nothing but a misunderstanding. I’m counting on you to win her back. Show her your soft side. She’ll need that over the next few weeks. Unfortunately my little girl has too much of her mother in her. Little can