He holsters his gun and steps aside. “It’s clear. No one’s in here. But you need to see this.”
I move past him and freeze for the second time since walking into the house. A phone lies in the center of the bed, outlined in a blood-red circle. Above it, painted in all caps on the duvet, is an order.
DIAL THE NUMBER.
“What the hell is going on here?” Gunn asks.
I ignore him and snap up the phone. When I do, I realize that despite the demanding words bleeding all over the comforter, I don’t know what number to call. I’m missing something. I scan the bedspread again and spot the business card. It’s lying where the phone was a second earlier. I grab it and stare at the ten digits stamped on the front in black ink—a phone number. That’s it. Nothing else.
Gunn takes a step closer, the crease between his eyes now so deep it might as well be a canyon. “You need to level with me right now, Grant. What’s going on?”
“Listen to me,” I hiss. “I’ll explain everything in a second. But I have to make this call first, and the person on the other end of the line cannot know you are here. Because if they do, they’re going to hurt someone very important to me.”
It stings as I say it. Gunn shouldn’t be here. There could be cameras in the house. Avery’s abductors could be watching us right now. Hell, they could be hidinginthe house for all I know. Or secondsaway from shooting my wife. There are too many variables to consider at this point, and the only one I control is still clutched in my hand.
“Put it on speaker,” Gunn says as I punch in the number.
“Not a word,” I reiterate, glaring at him. “Not a sound.”
He nods, and I hit the call button.
The phone rings twice before a voice fills the line. It’s deep and gruff, mechanical, two words spilling through the speaker like gargled rocks.
“You’re late.”
Chapter6
GRANT
“Where is she? Where’s my wife?” The words burn up my throat with hot urgency.
No reply comes. My pulse thumps hard in my ears. “Answer me!”
Officer Gunn raises a hand and levels it with his chest, then lowers it an inch. The message is clear.Stay calm.
When the response finally comes, it’s distorted, full of static. “Why are you late?”
I grit my teeth, my rage rising. This is the asshole who ripped my wife away from me at gunpoint along with my unborn child—a baby that’s no less than a miracle. The same man who shot my tire and gave me the impossible task of getting back here in one hour. And now he’s asking why I’m late? If I could reach through the phone and strangle him, I would. But Gunn is right. I can’t do anything that will further endanger Avery. So, I force myself to dial it back a notch. “You made it difficult. Put my wife on the line.”
“You aren’t the one in control here. You don’t give the orders.”
“What do you want?”
“Four million.”
“What?”
“If you want to see your wife again, you will transfer four milliondollars to the account listed on the back of the card in the next five minutes.”
My knees buckle. It feels like I’ve been punched. So, itisabout money. “I … don’t have access to that kind of cash.”
“Agreed, you have access to three point nine million, to be exact.”
I stand there reeling, fighting for balance. He shouldn’t know this. No one should. A while back, Avery and I had decided to transfer most of our retirement into Bitcoin and Ethereum. It was a risky move, but we’d both agreed crypto was the future of finance—a decentralized system not controlled by massive institutions that can fail at any moment. A bet that cryptocurrency was not only safer than the stock market, but here to stay and would allow us to retire years sooner than we would be able to otherwise. A bet that had already gone wildly in our favor.
And someone found out.
I swallow hard and flip the card over. There’s a QR code printed on the back.
