Page 82 of The Change
“Definebother,” Harriett replied with an arched brow.
“Never mind.” Jo wasn’t in the mood for Harriett’s sense of humor. “Someone broke into my house around three in the morning. He was there for Lucy. He tied her up and—” Her voice cracked. She stopped, pressed a finger to her lips, and willed herself not to cry. Then she finished the story.
“Lucy will be fine, Jo. You have my word.” Harriett’s voice had softened and her face appeared younger, as though she were channeling some long-ago version of herself. “When I was her age, I lived through something terrible, too. I survived, and so will she. Lucy has three things I didn’t: good parents, a loving home, and me. You didn’t kill the intruder, did you?”
“No,” Jo replied. She’d wanted to. The urge had been almost impossible to resist. But she hadn’t.
Harriett nodded. “That’s okay. It’s my job to make him suffer,” she said. “But I assume you got a few good licks in?”
“Yeah. I hurt him.”
“Badly?” Harriett sounded hopeful.
“Very,” Jo said. “I don’t think he’ll be using his face for a while.”
“How did it feel?”
Jo hesitated. “Better than sex.”
“Excellent.” Harriett flashed the gap between her teeth. “It’s important that Harding gets the message.”
“The message?” Jo asked.
“That we’re not going to take his bullshit,” Harriett said. “He knows we’re onto him. There’s a mole in the police department. Someone must have told him we found the photo.”
“You figured that out quickly.” Jo was impressed. It had taken her all morning to reach the same conclusion.
Harriett grinned. She’d extracted the information from Chertov in less than five minutes, but Jo didn’t need to know that.
“But why send a guy to my house? Why not to yours—or to Nessa’s?”
“I would imagine the detective’s car parked in front of Nessa’s house might have deterred them.”
Jo’s brow furrowed. “I’m talking about last night.”
“So am I,” said Harriett.
“Oh,” said Jo, her eyes widening as she realized what that meant. “How do you—” She stopped. “Did you have something to do with that?”
Harriett shook her head and rolled her eyes. “You two seem to think I’m responsible for everything. All I do is stand back and let nature take its course.”
They knew. The second she opened the door, Nessa could see there would be no need for a confession. Whether by gossip or witchcraft, Jo and Harriett already knew she’d slept with Franklin. Jo had too much on her mind to make any wisecracks, and didn’t catch the wink Harriett gave Nessa as she breezed by.
“Can I get you guys some coffee?” Nessa offered awkwardly.
“No, thank you,” Jo said before rounding on Franklin. They’d all known something bad would happen. She didn’t know if he could have stopped it. What she did know for sure was that he hadn’t tried. “Someone in your department tipped off Spencer Harding. He sent one of his thugs to my home last night. The man went straight to my daughter’s room.”
“What?” Nessa felt ill. She turned to Franklin. “You didn’t tell me everything.”
“We don’t know for certain that Spencer Harding was behind the break-in,” Franklin offered stoically.
“The man who broke into my house zip-tied Lucy’s wrists and crammed a stuffed pig into her mouth. What do you think would have happened to her, Franklin? Rape? Torture? Would we have found her months from now in a trash bag by the side of the road?”
“Oh my dear Lord.” Nessa’s eyes filled with tears as Franklin shuffled uncomfortably.
“You don’t want to think about it, do you? Well, that’s too fucking bad, Franklin, because it’s all I’m going to think about for the next thirty years.”
“Now, Jo—”
