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The line went dead.
What?
I called the number again. This time I got no answer. It went straight to voice mail. “Listen, Shayna,” I said. “I’m not sure what’s going on, but I assure you there’s nothing to fear from me. I’m a friend. I want to help. I want to—” The line went dead.
I called again. No voice mail. She had blocked me.
Why?
What was she afraid of?
My nerves prickled as I eyed my glass of water on the counter above me. I wasn’t thirsty. I wasn’t hungry.
I wasn’t…anything.
And then my phone rang. A number I didn’t recognize.
Shayna! Perhaps she’d been afraid someone was listening in, and she’d tried a different phone.
“Shayna?” I said into the phone.
“No,” an eerily familiar male voice said.
“Oh, I’m sorry. Who is this, please?”
“Ruby,” the voice said, “this is your father.”
The phone slipped from my hand and clattered onto the floor.
Ruby, this is your father.
It was him. Once he said my name, I’d have recognized his voice anywhere. Its sleaze was etched in my brain.
Show Daddy how much you love him.
Still, my cop instincts kicked in. Background noise? Where was he?
Nothing. All I heard was the deep rasp laced with evil.
Theodore Mathias. Depravity personified. Inhumanity personified. I swallowed, inhaled deeply, picked up my phone. It was already set to record all my conversations. Good thing.
“Where is she?” I demanded.
“Where is who?”
“Shayna Thomas. You got to her, didn’t you? You’re telling her not to talk to me. You’re involved in all of this somehow.”
“Involved in what?”
“Trafficking. Human trafficking. I know all about it. You’re involved in the disappearance of those two girls from the resort in Jamaica. You got to Shayna. That’s why she’s refusing to talk to me.”
“You always did have a vivid imagination.” He chuckled.
“And you always were an insane piece of shit.”
I waited, listening to his inhalations over the phone, for him to respond to my comment.
He didn’t.
