“You’re bluffing.”
“Take a look at the video. Do you really want to be the man responsible for his daughters’ deaths? You make a million bucks a week. We’re talking ten days’ earnings here. Are they not worth that much to you?”
“Now, listen to me…”
I hung up. There wasn’t anything else to say, not at the moment, so I strode back to the platform. When all heads turned in my direction, I nodded once. It was done. Artemis stiffened for a second, then sagged sideways against her sister. Isolde just grinned. For sure I’d misjudged her initially—under the airbrushed make-up, she was a rebel, and I liked that.
“What do we do now?” Jeffrey asked.
“Now? We wait, and we hope Jimbo and his buddies keep your colleagues busy for long enough that they don’t decide to take a closer look at the sphere.”
At least we could take an educational tour of the universe in the meantime. I stared at a map of the Big Dipper for a moment, then began to pace.
CHAPTER 10
NOTHING HAPPENED FOR a full two minutes. That didn’t surprise me. If I were Sacker, the first thing I’d do would be to phone Artemis and Isolde. Which would be pointless because their phones were turned off, but that’d take, say, thirty seconds each to get through to voicemail and leave his daughters messages. Perhaps he’d send a couple of texts as well? If he thought logically, he’d call Brett, who would tell him the girls were missing. Brett was also part of our early-warning system. If Sacker spoke to him, we’d get a clue where his head was at.
After questioning Brett, Sacker might need to throw on some clothes—depending on how far he’d got with his mistress—and then he’d check his email. Mack’s bomb had landed in his inbox thirty seconds after I hung up—his private inbox, not his work one.
“Sacker’s taken the bait,” Mack told me. “He’s on a Windows laptop. Just finding my way around now.”
I lived my life firmly in the grey zone, that blurry line between black and white, between wrong and right. I didn’t always abide by the law, but today, I’d wandered a little too close to the dark side for comfort. It left me twitchy. Perhaps it was fitting that this drama was unfolding in the gloom of the sphere? With just the emergency lighting on, the place looked more like a warehouse than outer space.
Isolde fell into step beside me. “Do you think Daddy will pay?” she asked.
“Honestly? I don’t know.”
“I don’t think he will. He cares more about his bank balance than he does about us.”
“Maybe he’ll surprise you?”
Isolde made a face. “He doesn’t do surprises. Order is the name of the game. If it’s not on his calendar, it doesn’t happen.”
“We’ve got vision,” Mack announced. “Check your phone. Still working on sound.”
Without thinking, I swiped up and was greeted by the sight of David Sacker in a hastily tied silk robe, seated in front of his laptop at what appeared to be a dressing table judging by the bottles of perfume and moisturiser at the edges of the picture. Mack had taken over his webcam. Which on any other job would have been great, but he wasn’t alone. A half-naked blonde was leaning over his shoulder, her long hair brushing the keys. And of course, Isolde saw her.
“Ah, shit,” I muttered. “Sorry.”
She just shrugged. “Like I said, he’s ruled by his schedule. We’re due a new stepmom. It’s been two years since he married the last one.”
“You’re not upset?”
“Not really. They’re basically interchangeable. The only problem is keeping up with the names. Hey, Artemis—we’re getting a new stepmom.”
Artemis groaned. “Another one?”
“Sure looks that way, although you can hardly tell the difference between her and Shandi.”
“Shandi? He’s married to Carissa at the moment.”
Isolde rolled her eyes. “Right. Carissa. I bet the new one’s twenty-five. They’re always twenty-five. In ten years, he’ll be scouting our friends for hook-ups.”
“Can you just stop talking?” Artemis asked.
“Why? It’s the truth.”
Mack spoke up again. “Sacker just googled ‘What is a Monero?’”
“That’s got to be a good sign, right?”
Last month, Bradley had read a book on Chinese spirituality, and before he even finished the first chapter, he’d been gushing about cosmic duality and feng shui. In between rearranging my furniture and planting a six-foot-high statue of Buddha next to the helipad, he’d lectured me on the concept of yin and yang—the belief that two sets of opposing yet complementary energies govern the universe. Dark and light. Sun and moon. Male and female.
Negative and positive.
After today, I was starting to believe in it because as soon as we got one tiny bit of good news, the bad news followed.
“Uh-oh,” Mack said.
“What?”
“They just caught Jimbo.”
Ah, crap. Our unwitting partner in crime would soon be back in monkey jail. And it was harder for us to follow the goings-on in the park now because Mack had shut down most of the cameras.
“We oughta create a website called ‘What is a Monero?’ with really, really simple instructions.”
“I could get Agatha to do it, but Sacker’s a CEO. Surely he should be able to follow one of the basic how-to pages that’s already out there?”
Yeah, so CEOs weren’t necessarily smart. I’d found that out through years of experience. Case in point: Sacker still hadn’t called Brett.
“Possibly.”
“I’ll get Agatha to write out instructions just in case. If he looks like he’s having trouble, we can email them.”
This was the part of the job I hated the most. The waiting. Where events were out of my control and there was little I could do to alter the outcome. Isolde headed back to her sister and they set about changing their appearances for the trek across the park. Dan and Carmen were still drilling the kids through their stories, and I caught Ana’s eye. Nodded towards the
