“Say your names, both of you,” I snapped.
“I’m Artemis Sacker.”
“Isolde S-S-Sacker.”
“And what do you want to say to your father?”
Isolde burst into sobs, leaving Artemis to answer.
“Just give these people whatever they want. Please. Please.”
Not bad. I turned the camera off. “The tears were a nice touch.”
Isolde wiped her face with a sleeve. “I just thought of the time when I was six and I told Daddy I wanted to be an astronaut and he told me girls didn’t become astronauts because our role in life was to grow up and find a good husband. And by good, he meant rich, because he wasn’t going to support us forever. Talk about ruining a childhood dream. The first part, not the second part. As soon as I turn eighteen, Artemis and I are both moving far, far away from that walking mannequin of misogyny.”
I gave her a tight smile. “Guess I’d better get ready to make this phone call.”
CHAPTER 9
“WHAT’S HAPPENING?” I asked Fia half a second after my phone rang. This was taking too damn long. “Time’s ticking.”
I’d considered moving everyone out of the sphere, but I’d come to the conclusion it would cause more problems than it solved. We hadn’t brought enough vehicles to get everyone off-site in one go, and a large group in the park would draw too much attention. If we split up, having pairs of teenagers wandering around loose would make it difficult to coordinate if we had to change the plan on the fly. No, the sphere was the best place for us to be right now, as long as we could keep any nosy maintenance people out. Thankfully, they were focused on the Ferris wheel, where Bradley reported a middle-aged lady had suffered a panic attack in the next capsule. He’d been helping her with breathing exercises through the glass. Jeffrey had admitted to stopping the wheel as a distraction—a simple software override—but after the monkeys got involved, it seemed that restarting it wasn’t so straightforward. Thank goodness.
Brett was outside now, tentatively raising the alarm and establishing a false timeline. If the shit hit the fan and David Sacker did call the authorities, everyone would think the girls had been abducted at least half an hour before they actually left the park.
“Yeah, I know, I know. Sacker’s on the move.” Fia spoke quietly, and I could barely hear her above the noise of traffic, voices, and a siren wailing in the background. “He walked out of his building a minute after we arrived. There was a town car waiting.”
“Shit.”
“Don’t worry—Leo and I hopped on a couple of Citi Bikes and followed. Hurrah for bad traffic. There’s been a crash somewhere near Central Park.”
“You took Leo with you?”
“I figured it’d be a good cover. He’s better at surveillance now.”
“I bloody hope so.”
When Sofia first laid eyes on Leo, he’d been following one of her targets. She’d picked him out in about five seconds flat.
“Have faith, sister. Anyways, Sacker went into a townhouse on the Upper West Side. A blonde met him at the door, and according to Google, she’s not the current Mrs. Sacker.”
“A replacement?”
“Maybe. I mean, he stuck his tongue down her throat right on the doorstep, so…”
“Thanks, that’s useful. Is there somewhere nearby you can watch from?”
“There’s a café on the other side of the road. Leo’s gone inside to order us coffee and croissants, and I’m gonna check the back of the building.”
“Guess I’m ready to step over to the dark side.”
“Good luck. I’ll put breakfast on my expense account.”
The moment of truth. Everything was in place. Now it was my turn in the spotlight, and I couldn’t afford to fuck this up. Of course, I’d give the Monteiths the money myself if it came to it, but that wouldn’t teach David Sacker the lesson he so richly deserved.
I retreated to the passage and dialled. Artemis had given me her father’s private number, so there was no secretary to pick up. Mack would run my voice through a scrambler, and the feed I got through my earpiece would let me hear what Sacker heard.
The phone rang. And rang, and rang, and rang. Tell me I wasn’t going to bloody voicemail. I mean, should I leave a message?
“Yes?”
Thank fuck. Like every good CEO focused on making others’ lives a misery, Sacker was a slave to his phone.
“We have your daughters.”
Wow, I sounded like a robot in a straight-to-TV movie. At least there’d be no doubt that this wasn’t a regular call.
“Who is this?”
Oh, please. “That doesn’t matter. What matters is that unless you do exactly what we say, we’ll kill them both.”
“Is this a joke?”
“When I hang up, you’ll receive an email with a video attachment. Then you’ll know we’re serious. The email will also contain the address of a Monero wallet.” Plus a handy virus that would install onto his device when he opened the video, but of course I didn’t mention that. “We want two million dollars by three o’clock. If you pay by two o’clock, the amount’s reduced to one and a half million. Think of it as a prompt-payment discount. Miss the final deadline, and Artemis and Isolde will die. Tell anybody about this call, and they die. Call the police, they die. Leave your girlfriend’s house, they die.”
The sharp intake of breath told me I’d rattled him with that last sentence. Good. There were roughly two hours to go until the first deadline. Enough time for him to work out how to use cryptocurrency if he didn’t already know, but not enough time for him or anyone
