Some indistinguishable sounds brushed Devon’s ear, and she frowned. “Monty—are you there?”
Voices. Muted and far away.
Devon paused, listening intently.
“Okay, lady, we’re trussed and ready.” The muffled words drifted through the phone. “Edward and James are gone. So it’s just us. Time to cut the crap.”
Monty.
Devon’s breath suspended in her throat.
“You aren’t letting us go. You can’t.” Monty’s voice was growing clearer, more distinct, as if a blanket were being removed from around his phone. “That speech you gave was nothing but bullshit. A bunch of carefully crafted words to get your husband to leave. I get it. You’re not planning to kill us yourself. That’s what Luis is for. Any way you slice it, we’re dying.”
“Don’t sound so outraged, Detective. Because of your ex-wife, my son is dead.”
That voice belonged to Anne Pierson.
Devon shot a frightened look at Blake.
“What is it?” he hissed.
She didn’t answer. Instead, she reached down, groping in her purse. She yanked out a minirecorder. Then she jammed the phone into the hands-free kit, held the recorder up to the microphone, and pressed the record button.
“It’s divine justice for Sally’s daughter to die, too,” Anne was declaring. “It’s not what I’d planned, but it is what’s known as an eye for an eye.”
“Meredith has nothing to do with this.”
Devon bit her lip to keep from crying out. That was her mother.
“She’s totally innocent,” Sally continued in a quiet, unsteady voice. “Let her go.”
“That’s no longer possible.”
“Christ,” Blake muttered as he figured out what was going on.
Devon responded by leaning forward and pressing the mute button on the phone.
“It was supposed to be your older daughter who was taken,” Anne declared. “She’d be kept only as long as necessary, then released unharmed, with only a warning.”
“A warning?” Monty inquired.
“To stay away from Blake. There’s no way I’d ever allow her to become a member of my family. I tried frightening her off, but that didn’t work. She’s still latched on to Blake’s arm like a leech, and digging around in matters that don’t concern her. Well, all that’s over. After today, she’ll be consumed with her own grief. And I’ll make sure it’s not Blake she turns to for comfort.”
In the car, Blake angled his head, meeting Devon’s gaze. He looked as ill as she felt.
“Let’s talk about those matters that don’t concern Devon,” Monty was saying. Clearly, he was pumping Anne for information. “What is Lawrence Vista engineering for your husband? It must be life altering for you to go to such great lengths to protect it.”
“I don’t worry about protecting the business,” Anne snapped. “I worry about protecting my family. In this case, the two are integrally tied.”
“Because it impacts both James and Edward.”
“Yes. Dr. Vista’s been experimenting with gene therapy. He’s found a way to transform top-notch riders, and their horses, into unbeatable jumpers without even a trace of his efforts showing up in drug tests. That’s an overly simplistic explanation. It doesn’t do justice to Vista’s genius. But since I’m not a scientist, it will have to suffice.”
“So Vista needed human guinea pigs to test and refine his techniques.” Monty sounded pensive. “And Edward plans to take the results all the way to the Beijing Olympics. That explains the illegal aliens and all the secrecy.”
“He and James have waited their whole lives for this.” Bitterness laced Anne’s tone. “Right on the brink of it becoming a reality, your ex-wife intruded. Edward completely underestimated the threat she posed. Between the argument she overheard at the stables and the evidence of Vista’s experimentation staring her in the face each morning, she became a liability that had to be dealt with. Immediately.”
“Sunrise’s injured leg,” Sally realized aloud.