by Elise Noble
“Does anyone have family waiting for them outside?” I asked the teenagers. “People who’ll start looking for you?”
One kid raised his hand. Guess the other parents all took the sensible option and stayed at home, which was where I’d be if Bradley hadn’t been channelling Joseph Stalin.
“My parents are here, but I can text them,” the kid said. “I’ll tell them I went to see the dinosaurs. Bet my mom’s in the bar, anyway.”
I thought with fondness of the Steampunk Saloon, my cocktail sitting abandoned on the table. Suck it up, Emmy.
Okay, what would I rather do? Save a girl’s life while sticking it to Pharma Daddy, or send three desperate yet not particularly awful men to jail and have a bunch of youngsters hating my guts? Including Race, Trick, and Vine if their judgey expressions were anything to go by.
There wasn’t really any contest, was there?
“Did you make any kind of contact with David Sacker?” I asked Jeffrey, just to check.
“Today? No. I wrote him begging for help a month ago, but he never wrote me back.” Bastard. “Who are you people?”
“That doesn’t matter.” I let out a sigh. “All those in favour of stealing a million bucks from Mr. Sacker, raise your hands.”
Every damn hand went up, including Artemis and Isolde Sackers’. Boy, their father really must be a piece of shit.
Could we do this?
I looked at my girls, and the crinkles around their eyes told me they were all grinning.
Yes, it seemed we fucking could.
CHAPTER 7
FIVE MINUTES LATER, everyone except Jeffrey Monteith sat around us on the platform. He still seemed kind of shell-shocked by developments, but I’d sent him into the control booth to monitor what was going on outside. His job now was to buy us time.
Kayleigh Monteith was being treated at Richmond General, and Mack had verified Jeffrey’s story by calling Dr. Beech, our favourite ER doctor and a man who could easily be bought for donations to whatever charity project he happened to be running that month. After a promise from Blackwood to send a gift basket for his next fundraising raffle, he dug around in the computer system and found the information we needed. Kayleigh Monteith’s situation was desperate. Her family had already sold everything they owned to fund medical expenses, and their insurance plan didn’t cover a cutting-edge drug like Cytoblin.
It was her last chance.
Neil Robinson, it turned out, was her boyfriend. Kelbyn had shown us a photo of the three of them together in happier times. A pretty brunette standing between two grinning men, her arms around them both. Even though he was meant to be posing for the photographer, Neil’s focus was on her, his smile for his girl rather than the camera. Young love. Once again, I was struck by the injustice in the world.
Now Neil huddled beside Kelbyn, hugging his knees to his chest and looking as if he might vomit at any given moment. Artemis didn’t seem much better. She was nestled between the legs of the guy who’d been sitting next to her on the roller coaster, and he was doing his best to keep her calm. Isolde? She appeared a little more gung-ho. She’d already suggested increasing the ransom to five million bucks, one million for each time their father had told them that their new make-up business was a frivolous waste of their time. And that was just so far this week.
“We need a plan,” I muttered. “I’m used to catching kidnappers, not being one.”
“Simple,” Carmen said. “Just think of every slip-up the pendejos you caught in the past made and avoid doing all of those things.”
“Gee, why didn’t I think of that?”
Okay, okay, I had to start at the beginning. We had two key objectives. One: get Pharma Daddy to cough up the cash, and two: make sure nobody in the sphere got caught.
To achieve the first, we’d need to go in fast and hard. No wiggle room allowed. And for the second, everybody needed to understand their role, remember their story, and agree to take the secret to the grave.
I addressed the last point first. Me and the girls still had scarves across our faces, but everyone had seen Race, Vine, and Trick. Probably knew their damn names too. I couldn’t risk today’s actions coming back to bite them on the ass later, nor did I want the Monteith family to get any nasty surprises a year or two into the future.
“Before we cross the line from morally dubious into abso-fucking-lutely illegal, everybody has to understand one thing. You. Cannot. Talk. About. This. To anyone. Not to your buddies on a drunken night out. Not to a girl you’re trying to impress. Not to your parents or your siblings or your second cousin twice removed. After today, we’ll be bound by a secret that could land us all in prison if the truth comes out. If anyone thinks they can’t handle that, then now’s the time to say so. It’s not too late to call this off.”
I gave them space to consider, no pun intended. The silence stretched into a full minute, and finally one guy near the back of the train spoke.
“If we can save a girl’s life, then we should do it. Not to get kudos, but because it’s the right thing to do.”
“Drugs are too expensive,” a girl said. “My brother’s insulin costs six hundred bucks a month.”
“President Harrison should fix that,” somebody else chipped in. “Then we wouldn’t have to turn vigilante.”
President Harrison was trying, believe me. We’d had several conversations about it over the years, but first the right people had to get control of the senate, and that was a whole other story.
“Anybody want to back out? Speak now or forever hold your peace.”
Nobody spoke. I took a careful look at Artemis, Isolde, and their friend. This would affect them more than anybody, and I crouched down so I could look them in the eyes.
“Are you okay with this? You’ll have to lie, not just to your family but to the cops. We’ll prepare you as best we can, but it won’t be easy.”
Artemis spoke up for the first time. “People look at us and think we’re spoiled. That we’ve only made it in the world because of who our father is. But we made it in spite of him. When we were kids, we used to pray together every night that God would send us new parents who loved us. Who cared enough to spend time with us. He didn’t deliver.”
“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 anywhere you want. Now, here’s what I need you to do… Mack’s pinged David Sacker’s phone, and he’s—”
“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 confirm
ed 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 from beneath the track—we didn’t want to leave those behind—Carmen helped Dan to put the kids under pressure, asking questions interview-style to find any weaknesses. And while they did that, Ana did what came naturally and scared the bejeebers out of Artemis and Isolde. They didn’t need to fake their fear when I started recording them.