A Billionaire's Redemption - By Cindy Dees Page 0,53
more closely.
“Again, please,” he murmured.
After about three more times through it, the analyst asked, “Anything?”
“Well,” he answered slowly, “it seems a little strange how forceful she sounds. Don’t get me wrong. She’s nothing if not an assertive woman. But I would have expected her to sound a little more...cowed...by the experience of being kidnapped and held against her will. She’s not accustomed to much of anything happening against her will.”
Of course, maybe he’d been spending too much time around sweet, gentle Willa Merris. By comparison, Melinda was about as soft and feminine as a Mack Truck. As soon as the thought crossed his mind, though, he felt bad about it. He shouldn’t compare the two women. They were as different as night and day. And he owed Melinda a certain loyalty. They’d been married once, after all.
He added, “Maybe Melinda is playing some sort of head game with her captors. It would be her style to manipulate them as much as possible. Could she be signaling us as to what she’s doing?”
Lord knew Melinda had played plenty of head games with him during their short marriage. When he’d finally gotten wise and started calling her out on it, she’d poo-pooed his anger, saying it was part of her job as a sociologist to experiment on the people around her. They’d had quite a fight over it, as he recalled, with him insisting he didn’t want to be her lab rat, and her railing that he was being oversensitive and childish.
Most of their fights had come down to that. He’d never been enough man for her, not smart enough, not mature enough, not intellectual enough to satisfy her. He’d spent their entire marriage feeling wholly inadequate, and scrambling to play catch up with the meteoric rise of her career.
Even now, when he was a billionaire for crying out loud, Melinda accused him of being a slave to the almighty dollar and of not having achieved anything of real importance. Not like her—author of multiple books, famous lecturer, professor, intellectual and sought-after commentator.
Agent Delaney tilted her head thoughtfully. “Does she have enough psychological training to attempt to manipulate her captor or captors?”
Gabe snorted. “The woman’s brilliant. And her favorite hobby is messing with people.”
“It’s an interesting theory, Mr. Grayson.”
Gabe pointedly ignored Deputy Green’s smirk as the FBI agent called him by the wrong name again.
The woman distracted Gabe by asking, “You used the plural, captors, when referring to whoever kidnapped your wife. Why is that?”
“I just assumed...” he trailed off. “You’d have to know Melinda to understand. She’s a formidable woman. The idea of a single person overwhelming her and kidnapping her just doesn’t seem plausible. It would have to be several people.”
“She’s a fighter?” Delaney asked.
“That’s one way to describe her,” Gabe replied. “Combative. Aggressive. Self-confident to a fault. She wouldn’t go down without a fight.”
“And yet,” the analyst commented speculatively, “not a thing was out of place in her home. Not a chair overturned, not a pencil on the floor. Nothing whatsoever to indicate that there was any kind of struggle.”
Gabe nodded. “I know. That part baffles me, too. It makes no sense at all that someone just walked in, knocked her out and was able to drag her out of her home without leaving a single sign behind.”
“Can you think of anyone she might have left home with willingly? Perhaps not realizing she was being kidnapped?” the agent pressed.
“I’ve been over this and over this with the police,” Gabe answered on a sigh. “I can’t think of anyone. But then, I don’t know any of her students or colleagues. I’m fairly out of touch with her life these days.”
“And why’s that?”
Deputy Green snorted behind Gabe. Jackass. “Because we’ve been divorced for nearly ten years.”
Agent Delaney, to her credit, looked chagrined. “My mistake. You seemed so invested in her safety when you came in here....” The woman turned back to the screen without finishing the observation. Uncomfortable silence filled the room.
Deputy Green commented snidely, “Guess we know who wore the pants in that relationship.”
Gabe’s jaw tightened until he thought he was going to crack a molar. He had no illusions that Melinda had tried to wear the pants in the marriage and that had been one of the reasons it broke up. He’d wanted a partnership with her, not to follow her around like a pet puppy.
But it wasn’t as simple as walking away from her. She knew exactly how to get her hooks into people, and she’d buried hers