“We’ve had five different moms, though,” Isolde said. “Daddy’s last Stepford Trophy Wife was shallower than a puddle of dog pee, and the current one won’t say boo to a goose.”
“Isolde!”
She shrugged. “Am I lying? Anyhow, we won’t say anything. If you can get Daddy to part with his cash, you deserve a medal.”
I always did like a challenge.
Plus I’d had a few sneak peeks into the minds of billionaires during my time. A million dollars might be a lot to a regular person, a life’s work, but to the super-rich, it was just a really good party. A thousandth of their wealth. The equivalent of a hundred bucks, give or take, and most people would pay a hundred bucks if they thought it would ensure their family’s safety. Even my darling husband might consider forking out the cash. Of course, he’d hunt the blackmailers down later and ensure they saw the error of their ways, but I was pretty sure Sacker wasn’t a closet mercenary, so I wasn’t too worried about the aftermath.
“And you?” I asked the guy next to Artemis. “How do you fit in?”
The three of them looked at each other, and again, Isolde answered. “Brett is Artemis’s boyfriend. Except Daddy says he’s a pleb, so Artemis had to hire him as our photographer just so she can spend time with him without getting yet another lecture.”
Wow. The Sackers made my family look almost normal. And considering one of my three fathers was a genocidal maniac, another was a slightly offbeat drug lord, and my mother practically lived in rehab, that was saying something.
“Tell us what to do, and we’ll do it,” Artemis said, resigned. “We won’t let a girl die.”
CHAPTER 8
SO FAR, WE had Mack and Bradley on the outside. Jeffrey didn’t have administrator access to the security camera system, but his boss did, and his boss kept the password written on a Post-it note stuck to the bottom of his computer screen. So now we had the password, and Mack had access to everything. She’d just raised an alarm for a leak over at the underwater exhibit, and now people were busy searching for that as well as the escaped animals. Bradley was watching the plaza plus keeping an eye on the kids. Mack checked in on the trio and reported that all was quiet outside and Josh and Tabby were chattering about shots and barrels, which meant they were either following in their mothers’ footsteps or taking up drinking. I wasn’t sure which was more concerning.
But we still needed somebody else. Somebody in New York to watch David Sacker. Somebody with the ethics of a sewer rat and an ability to blend in. I pulled out my phone.
“Hey, honey.”
Fia groaned. “Uh-oh.”
“You remember when my darling assistant called to invite you on a trip today, and you said you couldn’t go because you’d booked a minibreak in New York? Was that true?”
“We got one of those last-minute deals. I was worried Bradley might check.”
“Excellent. Can you do me a favour?”
“What kind of a favour? I’ve had no sleep. Some idiot crown prince in the hotel’s presidential suite set off the fire alarm at three a.m. when he tried to roast a sheep in his bathtub.”
“What the fuck?”
“Yeah, I know. And its buddy got loose in the hallway. Where would he even find a live sheep in New York?”
“Brooklyn.”
“Seriously?”
“There’s a poultry store. It sells goats too.”
“How do you even know that?”
“I needed the sheep for an April Fool’s joke. Don’t worry—we found them good homes afterwards.”
Dan chuckled in the background. “That was a great April Fool’s joke.”
My husband had been due to have a meeting in our Manhattan office with James Harrison—in his pre-presidency days, obviously, because the Secret Service would undoubtedly have confiscated the sheep otherwise—so Dan and I snuck in early, turfed the meeting room, and turned the flock loose. Of course, there were hiccups. One of those woolly bastards escaped out of the elevator and ran amok on the third floor, and even now, assholes still emailed me pictures of myself wrestling with it in the control room. Plus Dan had nearly died laughing and I’d had to pay the cleaners overtime because—newsflash—sheep pooped, but everyone agreed it had been a magnificent prank.
“I’m not even going to ask,” Fia said.
“Better that you don’t.”
She sighed. “What is it that you want me to do?”
“Okay, so it’s a long story, but we’ve sort of kidnapped two teenagers and now we need to get their father to pay a ransom. We want him to know we’re keeping tabs on him.”
“Wait, wait, wait. Isn’t that exactly the opposite of your job?”
“On any other day, yes, but the kidnappees are on board with the plan, and their daddy’s a greedy prick. We’re thinking of this as doing our civic duty.”
“I thought Bradley was making you go to an amusement park?”
“Yup, that’s where we are. Except Bradley’s stuck on the Ferris wheel because he inadvertently helped some monkeys make a break for freedom.”
I heard a sleepy voice in the background. Leo, Fia’s boyfriend.
“Who’s that, gorgeous?”
“Just Emmy.”
“Are we still going to MoMA today?”
“Later, but I need to pop out and help with a tiny bit of extortion first.”
A pause. “Am I having a nightmare?”
“We all are, but don’t worry; I’m sure it won’t take long. Right?” Fia asked.
“Absolutely,” I told her. “If he doesn’t pay up before the park closes, we’re fucked.”
“Unlike me,” she pointed out. “You owe Leo and me another dirty weekend.”
“And I’ll gladly send you
