Page 87 of Billion-Dollar Ransom
That was the cliché, wasn’t it? A daring escape to the closest foreign country, where they would magically discover a kindly old doctor who knew how to cure their daughter of her blood cancer and where they’d somehow make enough money doing odd jobs to rebuild their lives, complete with a modest house on the beach and nothing but sunsets and one another.
But that wasn’t reality, and Three was filled with the stark terror of knowing that their troubles were nowhere near over, and perhaps the worst still lay ahead.
“I’m calling my sister,” Four said. “At the very least, it’s somewhere we can stay for a day or two.”
“But you said Aunt Shannon hates it when you stay with her,” their daughter reminded her helpfully.
“She’s going to hate me even more when I call her at four thirty in the morning.”
Three fought back a laugh, which felt nice. You could almost be fooled into thinking this was just another family outing, full of in-jokes and spilling tea about various relatives. But he heard no phone call being made, and after a few seconds, Three glanced into the rearview mirror. Four was staring at her phone, mouth open slightly.
“Mom?” their daughter asked. “Are you okay?”
“Honey?” Three said. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. Nothing at all. I just received a text from you-know-who.”
Three felt his stomach turn into a block of ice. Clearly, One must have discovered they had betrayed him. Of course he knew; he had eyes everywhere. And now they were living on borrowed time…
“It says ‘Release the children. Payment has been issued.’”
“What? Was that really him?”
“I’m logging onto our bank app right now,” Four said.
Three checked the rearview again and saw his wife’s astonished face. When she looked up and locked eyes with him, he knew everything was going to be okay. He couldn’t believe it. They could finally go home.
CHAPTER 97
Friday, 4:46 a.m.
THE GOOD NEWS was that there were relatively few roads coming down from the mountain. Blockades were easily set up on the northern and southern routes. And the eight Jeep Wranglers were pulled over to the side of the road without a fight.
The bad news: The drivers were completely baffled aboutwhythey’d been pulled over.
All of them were rideshare drivers. Sure, it was a little weird to receive a notice to pick up someone in the mountains at four in the morning. But this was LA, so weird was kind of the norm. Plus, the person who’d booked each ride promised them triple their rate. The long drive was more than worth it, especially when the streets were pretty much dead.
And okay, sure, it was super-weird that someone hadsummoned eight of the same vehicles to trek up to Wrightwood to pick up the same passenger—“Randy Schraeder,” according to the profile on the rideshare app—but again, this was LA. It could be part of some reality show. Who knew?
So they’d all driven here, but there was no Randy Schraeder in Wrightwood. Each driver tried calling the phone of the person who’d summoned them, and in each case, there was no reply. Weird, but who cared as long as the credit card charges went through?
But being pulled over by an assortment of LA and San Bernardino sheriff’s deputies and members of an LAPD SWAT team, shotguns and revolvers drawn, lights flashing, threats shouted, and not-so-polite orders to eat gravel and lock your fingers behind your head—now,thatwas weird.
The drivers knew nothing about money or pallets of money.
They’d found nothing at the site but a closed mountain lodge, and there was no one to pick up.
Back in the Sandbox, Nicky wanted to scream. But you’re not allowed to do that when you’re the person in charge of the task force. This failure was on her alone.
“One,” she said. “He’s always a step ahead.”
“He faked us out,” Hardy said. “I’m so sorry, Nick. But this isn’t exactly a win for him. Maybe he kept the jewels somehow, but that idiot just threw away four hundred million dollars that hikers are going to be collecting over the next decade. If the bears don’t eat it first.”
“The money’s not up there,” Nicky said quietly.
“We saw it fall out of the chopper,” Hardy said.
“We saw what One wanted us to see. Sure, he might have thrown something out of the chopper. But it wasn’t the money.”
