“David Sacker? The pharma guy?”
“You’ve heard of him?”
“We crossed paths at a party once. He was rude to a waitress, so I slipped a laxative into his drink. Does that mean you’ve got Artemis and Isolde there?”
While it didn’t entirely surprise me that Fia had heard of David Sacker, I hadn’t expected her to know who his kids were.
“You’ve met them too?”
“No, but I’ve started using Artis make-up when I go undercover at those fancy parties. Great colours, not tested on animals, recycled packaging. And my winged eyeliner was a mess until I followed one of Isolde’s YouTube tutorials.”
Hmm. My winged eyeliner looked as if a toddler had got loose with a Sharpie unless Bradley did it for me. Perhaps I should give those tutorials a try? But not right now, clearly. We had money to steal.
“Thanks for the tip. As I was saying, Mack’s tracked Sacker’s phone to his office building. If I text you the address, can you get over there and find me something I can use to prove we’re watching him? Obviously I’ll tell him not to call the cops or the FBI, but it’d be useful to know if they show up.”
“On my way.”
“Thanks, honey.”
Fia blew me a kiss and hung up, and I moved to the next stage of the plan—receipt of the funds. Only an idiot would request a bag of cash in this day and age. There were so many things that could go wrong. Case in point: I’d been shot at during the purchase of a stolen painting years ago—essentially a ransom situation—and both the cash and the painting had vanished into the ether.
“Mack, can you set up an account to receive Bitcoin?”
I knew fuck all about cryptocurrencies other than they existed. And also that I’d accidentally become a crypto-millionaire because I went soft and let some cybergeek pay me for a job in Bitcoin back when they weren’t worth much. I’d totally forgotten about it until I unearthed the password at the back of my desk drawer years later, and when I logged in to my account, I found out Bitcoin had soared in value.
But Mack, of course, knew everything.
“You don’t want to use Bitcoin. Monero has a faster processing time and better anonymity.”
“Can Sacker buy that with a credit card?”
“Sure, if he has a high enough limit.”
He was a billionaire. Of course he had a high enough limit.
To make the ransom demand, I’d also need to use Mack’s special phone app. Anyone trying to trace the call would get bounced around the world until they finished up at a banana stand in Sri Lanka. Or perhaps an internet café in Moscow. Or the Ryongsong Residence in Pyongyang. You get the idea. And we needed to come up with a solid enough story to keep the Monteiths out of the picture. If anyone realised Artemis and Isolde had been held inside the sphere, then the Monteiths’ involvement would be all too evident.
That was Dan’s area of expertise. She knew investigations, and her attention to detail was second to none. While I thought through what the hell I’d say to Sacker once Fia had confirmed she was in place, Dan arranged the kids into groups, then mapped out an alternative reality and gave each person a role in the fairy tale. One pair would claim they’d followed Artemis, Isolde, and Brett out of the sphere once the ride had finished. The two Sacker girls would sign old-fashioned autographs on theme park maps before they left, and the “witnesses” would of course have them as evidence.
Another pair would say they’d noticed the Sacker girls strolling across the plaza—at least, they thought so. They weren’t quite sure, but after they’d checked on Instagram, they realised that yes, they’d been totally right.
Where was Brett during that time? In the bathroom. His story was that he’d been desperate for a pee for the last two rides, and he’d gone to answer the call of nature. On the way back to the plaza, he considered stopping to pick up cotton candy because Artemis had a sweet tooth, but the line was too long. Mack confirmed there was a ten-minute wait time. And when Brett came back, the girls had vanished. Once Mack finished disabling the security cameras, he’d head outside to start the ball rolling. Turned out that when he wasn’t moonlighting as Artemis’s photographer-slash-boyfriend, he was actually an actor, although he hadn’t landed any big roles yet. Today, he had to put on the performance of his life.
Two other boys would say they’d seen the girls hurrying across the plaza with a man and a woman close behind. The boys wouldn’t have a clue who Artemis and Isolde were until they saw news of the kidnapping on TV—because it surely would be on TV—and after they realised they had information, they’d do their civic duty and come forward. Had they unwittingly seen a crime in progress?
If they had, the malfeasance had nothing to do with the sphere. Neil and Kelbyn would swear blind the ride had been operating smoothly until suddenly, the lights went out. Bloody monkeys, blah, blah, blah.
We saved the most difficult roles for Trick, Vine, and Race. All three were accomplished bullshitters when the mood took them. They’d seen the girls and their abductors heading towards the east gate, which, according to Jeffrey, was the quietest. Plus the guy manning it right now was a slacker who didn’t pay much attention to anything. Jeffrey had already given him two warnings, neither of which had had the slightest effect.
Mack got one of her sidekicks to mock up pictures of our two kidnapping suspects so everyone was on the same page with the descriptions, and we showed them to the audience on my phone.
“But don’t be too accurate,” Dan warned them. “That’ll arouse more suspicions than if you don’t remember a thing.”
After retrieving Jeffrey’s gun and magazine
