Chapter 16: The Highest Bidder
Chapter 16: The Highest Bidder
My phone rang in my pocket. The ringtone was loud, piercing through the suffocating silence of the bank vault.
"Answer it," Vanessa whispered, her face completely expressionless.
My hands were shaking so violently I almost dropped the screen. I pressed the speaker button.
"Claire?" Ethan’s voice came through, but it was muffled, tight with panic. "Claire, don't come home. Vince... he has a gun. He has Noah."
"Ethan!" I screamed, but before I could say anything else, a cold, heavy voice took over the line. It was Vince, the contractor we had paid five thousand dollars to protect our son.
"Mrs. Bennett," Vince said calmly. "Your sister paid me double. The boy is fine for now. But if Vanessa doesn't walk out of that bank with the pouch and a clean drive out of the state, I’m going to clear the perimeter. Do you understand what that means?"
I looked at Vanessa. She was standing there, holding the remote control, watching me break apart from the inside out. The same daughter who had apologized on the floor was trying to crawl back out, but I fought her down.
"Let him go, Vince," I said into the phone, my voice dropping to a dangerous, desperate whisper. "Whatever she promised you, I’ll triple it. I have the accounts. I know where the rest of the funds are."
"Don't listen to her!" Vanessa snapped, stepping forward. "She’s an accountant, she’ll track the transaction before the ink dries! Vince, hold the boy until I call you from the border."
"Marcus," I whispered to the security guard beside me. "Shoot her."
Marcus didn't move. He kept his eyes fixed on Vanessa’s hand on the remote. "If she presses that button, it’s an encrypted signal, Mrs. Bennett. It could trigger an explosive or a dead-man switch at the house. I can't risk the kid's life."
Vanessa laughed—a loud, shrill sound that made my skin crawl. "See? Smart man. Now, Claire, give me your car keys. You and your little shadow are going to stay in this vault until the bank closes at five. By then, I’ll be in Idaho, and maybe—just maybe—I’ll tell Vince to leave the boy in the woods."
She reached out her hand for the keys.
I looked at the stacks of cash in her pouch. I looked at the yellowed documents. And then, my eyes caught a small, white logo printed on the back of the ledger she had pulled from the box. It wasn't an investment firm. It was a local logging registry from 1994.
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An idea—cold, precise, and statistical—formed in my mind.
"You don't have the codes for the Panama accounts, do you, Vanessa?" I asked, my voice suddenly turning ice-cold, completely stopping her in her tracks.
