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That mission accomplished, I get to work on my laptop. First things first, I patch the FBI into Reed’s on-going FaceTime call on my phone, as promised. Once that’s done, I start pulling together information about Greg Smith to send to Deputy Director Leach.
“I’m done talking about this,” Greg suddenly barks, cutting Reed off mid-sentence. “The price is five mill in Bitcoin, transferred to me by midnight, or she’s dead. If I don’t hear from you in time, I’ll kill her. That’s not a bluff, Reed. Trust me on that. In fact, it’s taking all my self-restraint not to kill her now, just to teach you a lesson for fucking with me.”
“Don’t do that,” Reed says—and it’s the first time he’s let a bit of panic seep into his tone. “Think about what you’ll be able to do with five million bucks in the bank. Where you’ll be able to go. Take it from me, being rich makes you feel like a god. You can do whatever the fuck you want.”
“I already do.”
“Well, then, you’ll be able to do it in grand style.”
I hold my breath as the black-ski-mask-covered figure on the screen fidgets, and then exhale deeply and says, “You’ve got till midnight. Don’t fuck around or you’ll find out I’m not bluffing.”
The call ends abruptly.
“Fucking hell,” Reed murmurs, letting out a long exhale.
Before I’ve pulled myself together enough to reply, the phone in Reed’s lap buzzes with an incoming call.
“This is Reed,” he says. “Yes, Peter is here, too. Hang on.”
Reed pushes a button, and Deputy Director Leach’s voice comes through on speaker phone.
“You did great, Reed,” she says. “You kept him talking long enough for us to confirm his location is the same one Peter sent to us. The Seattle team is leaving now, partially by helicopter and partially by car.”
“Don’t let him hear the helicopter,” I call out. “He said he’d kill Hannah if we contact law enforcement."
“The pilot will touch down at a safe distance. We’ve got this, Peter. This is something we train to do. Reed, an agent will contact you shortly on this line to talk about the game plan for later—for when you call him to say the transfer is ready. It was great thinking to demand to see Hannah’s face while pressing submit. It’s also a good thing you said you need time to liquidate some things. That will buy us some time to get into position.”
“Should I transfer the five mill he wants into Bitcoin?” Reed asks.
“Do you have that kind of cash available?”
“I’ve got that much and more, sitting in an account.”
“Or I could spoof the transfer,” I pipe in to say. “I’ve still got access to his laptop, remember? I can make it look like he’s receiving the money, when he’s not. He won’t know the difference.”
“Let’s not fuck with that, just in case,” Reed says. “Even if I have to make the transfer for real, I’ll get my money back at some point, won’t I?”
“I’d say the chances are ninety-nine percent,” Deputy Director Leach says.
“Then let’s do it for real,” Reed says. He looks at me. “Nothing’s infallible, Henny. This situation proves it. Let’s not take any chances.”
Tears spring into my eyes. “Thank you.” I can barely get the words out over the lump in my throat.
Reed asks a few questions about the tone he should strike during his next call, and while he and the Deputy Director talk, I slump in my seat, put my face in my hands, and try not to fall completely apart.
“Yep, sounds good,” Reed says. “We’ll wait to hear from you. Thanks.” When he ends the call, I’ve still got my head in my hands. Reed says, “She’s gonna be okay, Henny.” When I don’t look up or respond, he touches my arm and says, “Peter, listen to me. They know what they’re doing. She’s gonna be okay.”
“How could I have been so stupid and arrogant?” I choke out from behind my hands. “So careless with the one person who matters most to me in this world?”
“You weren’t careless. He’s a nut job. A conspiracy theorist. This is a case of a broken clock being right twice a day.” When I don’t reply, Reed adds, “Nobody—not even a genius like you—could have foreseen he’d connect all those weird dots.”
“I should have foreseen that as a possibility. I should have factored that into my calculations.”
“Henny, no. He’s a whack job who connected dots that weren’t even connectable.”
I lift my head and wipe my wet cheeks. “What if he kills her before they get there? Or they get there, and he kills her because we called law enforcement?”
“They’re experts at this kind of thing. Let’s choose to trust them.”
“Experts aren’t infallible. I’m an expert hacker and look how badly I fucked this up.” A sob lurches out of me. “If anything happens to Hannah, I won’t survive it. If he kills her, I won’t deserve to live another day.”
