“They, who? Who wanted to get her?”
“Sheldon’s thugs, I guess,” Elisa said. “Or Gil’s. Same thing, at this point.”
“Did you believe her?” he asked.
“Not at first. But then she offered to show me the proof, and I was having doubts about Gil anyhow. Things had gotten…well…bad.”
Nate waited patiently for more.
“It didn’t start out like that, when we first got together,” she explained. “He was so charming at first. Full of compliments. Smart, funny. He convinced me that he was crazy about me. I was so naïve, falling for it. Then my dad died, and Gil found out about the money.”
“The money,” Nate said. “What about it?”
“The Roarke fortune,” Elisa said wearily. “That I wasn’t going to inherit it. At least, not very much of it. My dad was very stern and rigorous in his personal philosophy. He didn’t want my brother and I ruined by extreme wealth. So he gave away almost all of his money to charitable causes.”
“Ah. I see.”
“Gil was just furious,” she went on. “He felt cheated. And after that, the gloves came off. And it got really bad, really fast.”
“What a prick,” Nate murmured.
“Pretty much,” she agreed. “He started trying to bully me into doing some strange estate planning moves. Things that benefited only him. And he started telling me all the many ways that I disappointed him.”
“Disappointed?” he said, incredulous. “You?”
She let out a hollow laugh. “I resisted being molded by the master sculptor, and that frustrated the hell out of him. I was angry at him, and hurt. And curious. So I watched it. Erasma had the key to decrypt the file.”
He waited. She kept looking down at her lap, swallowing. He reached over and seized her hand.
“It was awful.” Her voice was small. “The girl couldn’t have been more than fifteen, and he was hurting her. Hitting her, saying vicious, horrible things to her.”
“I’m sorry you saw that,” Nate said. “I wish you didn’t have it in your head.”
“Me, too. After that, I didn’t need any more convincing. Erasma gave me the flash drive, and she wrote down the decryption key for me. I called a friend of mine in the police department, a guy I knew from college. He was on a task force to combat human trafficking. I told him about the flash drive, and I arranged to meet with him, and then I went straight home to pack. I was going to run away, even though it was my house. I was that scared of him.” Her voice trailed off. She looked like she was steeling herself to say the rest of it.
“I got a call, while I was packing,” she whispered. “A woman on the task force who worked with Willis. She told me he’d been shot to death, right in his home. It was then I knew he’d talked to the wrong person. Someone Gil owned.”
He squeezed her hand. Her fingers tightened around his.
“I’d just finished packing, and the housekeeper had already left for the day,” she said. “And I was watching the security monitor from my bedroom. I saw a stranger walk right into the house. Gil was gone, arguing a big case. So I headed for the panic room. I thought I could wait out the intruder until the police got there.”
“You had a panic room?” Nate said. “Wow.”
“Yes, my dad was into that. He made a huge pile of money in his lifetime, but it never made him feel safe. And the older he got, the more paranoid he became. He installed panic rooms in all of his houses. He always wanted a safe place to retreat to, just in case someone attacked him in his home.”
“I see,” Nate said. “Go on.”
“The guy had already gotten to the top of the stairs as I was coming down,” she said. “So he was closer to the panic room than I was when I got there. I just slipped behind a curtain near the staircase. It was dark outside, so he didn’t see me. Then this guy goes right to the keypad by the door, and enters the code. No hesitation at all.”
Nate nodded. “I see. Who else knew the code?”
“After Dad died, it was just me, my brother, and Gil. No one else.”
“So you concluded that Gil sent the guy after you?”
“Yes,” she said flatly. “The panic room door opened. I ran down the stairs, my shoes in one hand, my purse in the other, right out the front door. I must have sprinted ten blocks before I even remembered that I was barefoot. I must have looked totally crazy.” She blew out a breath. “And I was. I really was. Marrying that monster. Drinking his poison for three years.”
She was shaking. He wanted to hug her, but the console divided them.
“I was so rattled, I didn’t realize my mistake until hours later,” she said.
“What mistake?”
“The decryption key.” Her voice was bleak. “I left it behind. It was lying on my open suitcase as I was packing. Gil must have found it when he got back. So even if Gil didn’t have Josh, I couldn’t just show that to the police or the press. First, I have to break the encryption.”
“Eric can break it,” Nate said.
“Good. My first thought was to try to contact Erasma and just get the key from her again, so I called the number she gave me. But the girl who answered told me Erasma was dead. She’d stolen a car, evidently, and driven it off a cliff, into the ocean. Just hours after she’d come to me. They got her, like they got Willis.”
“I’m so sorry,” he said gently.
She nodded. “Then I saw the interview on TV, in the lobby of a hotel where I was staying. It was Gil. He had Josh with him. He’d told the police that there was a home invasion. That I’d been abducted. He tried to reason with my captors on TV. Urging them to let me go, have a heart. The whole time with his hands around Josh’s neck. His twisted way of telling me to keep my mouth shut, or Josh dies.”
“Shithead,” Nate said.
“Yes,” she agreed. “So that’s it. I’m in limbo. I have the flash drive, but I don’t have the key. If I could get it decrypted, I could destroy him and Sheldon both. But if I make any move against him, he’ll hurt Josh. So, nothing. I’m paralyzed.”
“Where’s the drive?” he asked.
She rattled a bauble that was attached to the zipper of her jacket. It was a Hello Kitty padlock, the kind a little girl might use to close a jewelry box.
“Right here,” she said. “Always with me.”
Nate was silent for a long moment. “Our best plan is to get Eric’s techs to decrypt the drive while we work on breaking Josh out of wherever Gil’s got him.”
She shrugged. “That sounds great. I fantasize about that every single night. But I don’t know where Gil is keeping him. It could be anywhere.”
“You’ve gone to the police?”
“Only that one time, with Willis,” she said. “I learned my lesson. I don’t want anyone else to die. The minute Gil gets the slightest hint of suspicious interest, Josh’s head is on the block.” She took off the glasses and rubbed her eyes. “I just don’t see any way out of this. Josh knows too much. Gil can’t let him go. Me being in the wind is the only thing keeping Josh alive, if he’s alive at all. When Gil finds me, we both die.”