Chapter 24
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
After Ian told Courtney to go home, she reluctantly took his advice. She was trudging up the stairs to her apartment when her phone finally pinged a response from the kidnappers, this time from the first phone number.
Money tonight by sundown or else. For every minute late, she loses a finger.
The words were a gut punch. After reading the message, Courtney found that her lungs could no longer hold air and her legs had trouble keeping her upright. She was as unsteady as a newborn calf. She slid down the wall, landing seated on a step, all the while reading the text over and over again. On the third pass, she noticed there was an audio message as well. With a shaking finger, she clicked play. What she heard next put sheer terror in her heart. The clip began with a continuous thumping and the sound of breaking glass. And then Dana’s muffled voice screaming, “Stop it, stop it, stop it!”
They were torturing Dana, and there was nothing she could do about it.
From her spot on the stairs, she made a phone call to Ian but got his voicemail, so she retraced her steps and went back to the house. Her legs couldn’t move fast enough.
Ian and Kristy were no longer in the sitting area, so she went to the wing that they called home and knocked on the door. It seemed to take forever for Ian to answer, and when he opened the door he looked irritated. “What now?” he asked.
“I heard from the kidnappers. They won’t wait until tomorrow. They want the money tonight or else they’re going to cut off her fingers.” She knew it sounded like babbling, but she couldn’t help herself. “And there’s an audio clip of Dana screaming.” She pulled her phone out of her handbag, but he tapped his fingers against her wrist to stop her.
“Courtney, relax. These are common scare tactics. They have to know we can’t conjure money out of thin air. They’re counting on you panicking. Let’s not fall prey to that.” He smiled in a kindly way. “If she’s not back by tomorrow, we’ll go to the bank and get the money.”
“It can’t wait. She’s being tortured.” Courtney held up the phone. “You have to listen to this. The police might be able to trace their location from my phone.”
He shook his head. “Tracing a call takes time. Even if we went to them now, they wouldn’t be able to do it by nightfall. Now go and get some rest and we’ll talk tomorrow.”
Courtney didn’t think that was true at all, but it was beside the point. “I don’t get it. Your sister is in danger, and you’re acting like it’s nothing.” She found the audio clip, turned the volume up, and played it for him. “Do you hear that? She needs our help.”
Ian frowned. “Courtney, you’re being na?ve. They obviously used an AI voice generator to clone her voice. You said it yourself—the first guy who called didn’t even sound like a kidnapper. Take a few deep breaths. Relax.”
“I’m not going to relax,” she said, indignant. “We need to do something now !” Her voice rose, reverberating off the walls in the hallway.
He shook his head. “You’re just getting everyone in the household riled up, and for what? I won’t have you upsetting Kristy and Brayden. This is the last time I’m going to say this. Go home and get some sleep. We’ll talk in the morning.”
He closed the door in her face.
Courtney leaned against the closed door, blinking away tears of frustration. This situation gave her flashbacks from an unhappy childhood where her feelings had been discounted and she’d been accused of being overly sensitive. Her emotions had been shoved down so often and for so long that she’d learned to accept being powerless, but not this time. Dana was relying on her. She was going to handle this herself.
And later, when Dana was safely home, she would explain everything that had happened and convince her to remove Ian from her house and her business.
Courtney wiped her eyes and went to find the other members of the household. Ronald and Martha were in the kitchen doing meal prep for dinner. “Here to help?” Ronald asked.
“No, I’m here to ask for help,” she said. “I need to come up with Dana’s ransom. The kidnappers want it tonight or they’ll kill her. I need you to give me all the cash you have.”
They exchanged a look that made her think they were questioning her sanity. Ronald cleared his throat. “I think I have all of twenty dollars, Courtney. I don’t know how much that helps, but you’re welcome to it.”
She turned to his wife, who shook her head. “I have about the same amount. Give or take.” Martha glanced at Ronald. “We have the change jar. How much would that be?”
“About sixty dollars?”
So about a hundred, most of it in coins. “You don’t keep money on hand?” Courtney asked, crestfallen.
“No, do you?” Martha said, wiping her hands on a dish towel.
“I have about a thousand dollars in my fire safe at home.” Courtney pointed toward her apartment as if they could see through walls. “Emergency money.” Keeping it close by gave her a sense of security. She was always thinking of worst-case scenarios: power outages, end times, the kidnapping of her best friend. The usual. “If I go to the ATM, I could get a few hundred more. You could do that too.” She put her hands together in a pleading gesture.
“We don’t keep that much in our debit account. Even if we emptied it and added it to what you have, it still wouldn’t be enough,” Martha said, pointing out the obvious.
“I know, but I thought if we pooled all our money, we could put it out there with a note promising the rest tomorrow. It might buy us some time.”
Ronald put a kindly hand on her shoulder. “Courtney, it’s going to be okay.”
“This isn’t your problem to solve,” Martha added. “Ian’s in charge. Let him handle it.”
She took a deep breath. Giving in to their reassurances was tempting, but doing so would be letting Dana down. She took out her phone and let them hear the audio clip. “This is why I can’t let it go. She’s being tortured.”
Neither one spoke for a minute or so, and finally, Martha said, “I can see why you’d find that alarming. But it doesn’t necessarily mean she’s being tortured. There could be a simple explanation.”
“Ian thought it wasn’t her at all. He said it could have been done with AI.”
Ronald nodded. “There ya go! That’s probably it.”
Martha added, “You go get yourself a good night’s sleep. I bet Dana will be home before you know it.”
Courtney felt like she was losing her mind . “Why is no one taking this seriously but me?” She didn’t wait for a response, but stormed out of the kitchen and went in search of Antonio. He wasn’t in the gym, so she went to his bedroom and knocked. When he didn’t answer, she did something she never would have done in the past.
She opened the door.
His bedroom suite, located next to Dana’s, was empty. The bed wasn’t made, but otherwise the room was spotless. She went into his bathroom and found the counter curiously empty of the usual accessories: shaving supplies, toothbrush, toothpaste. None of it was there. The shower held only one lonely bar of soap. No shampoo or bodywash in sight.
There was no man alive that tidy. Something was up.
She checked the bathroom drawers and found them empty except for a hair dryer, a brand Dana liked because it emitted red light that was supposed to encourage hair growth. Most likely it had already been in the drawer when Antonio moved in. With a sinking feeling, she went back into the bedroom to investigate further. Her suspicions were confirmed when she opened the dresser drawers and closet and found all of them empty.
There was no trace of Antonio left. He was gone. She knew that if she checked the garage his car would be gone as well.
She thought back to the last time she’d seen him. It was when Officers Johnson and Holloway had arrived. Antonio had darted out of the room to avoid being questioned. Sometime between then and now, he’d packed up and left.
The logical conclusion was that Antonio was somehow involved in Dana’s abduction. Courtney had never been a fan of Antonio, but even so, she never thought he’d do anything to harm Dana. If anything, it was the other way around. If Dana felt you didn’t have her back, she lashed out with words and actions that could wound. Had Dana and Antonio ever argued? Not in front of her. Their relationship, if you wanted to call it that, just seemed to have run its course. Judging by Dana’s lack of enthusiasm, Courtney had anticipated that Antonio was at the end of his stay. Nothing out of the ordinary there; boyfriends came and went on a regular basis, but Dana had been kidnapped, which changed everything. Courtney didn’t want to believe he was involved in her abduction, but she couldn’t rule it out, and his absence cast guilt in his direction.
She would have called one of his friends in order to track him down—if she knew any of his friends. Did he even have friends?
Antonio had always been a mystery.
Her next stop was Dana’s bedroom. She’d been in this room before, but not often. Generally, when they hung out or worked, it was at Courtney’s apartment. Dana seemed to prefer it that way, probably because it gave her the option of leaving when she grew bored or became tired of writing.
Silently, Courtney prayed that Dana had a stash of money somewhere in the room. If she couldn’t come up with the ransom, her next stop would be the police station.
She quickly went through everything in the bathroom, then checked all the drawers in the dressers and nightstand. After that, she searched every inch of closet space. So many clothes, bags, and shoes. She was meticulous, checking pockets and emptying handbags. Next, in the interest of being thorough, she looked under the bed and the mattress. No money anywhere. She’d left the desk for last. Like Dana’s bedroom furniture, it was contemporary in design, sleek, and made of teakwood with chrome handles. Her laptop sat on top next to a printer. Courtney left the laptop and pulled open each of the three drawers. The first was empty, the second contained a stapler and some sticky notes, and the third held a flash drive and a key. The card on the key was from the furniture store Sublime Furniture, and it was attached by a tasseled cord. Stamped on the card were the words Mahogany desk - #10 of 250.
A limited-edition desk, one of two hundred and fifty made.
Ian’s desk.
Dana had paid for all the furniture in the house, so it wouldn’t be unusual for her to have a copy of the desk key. Still, combined with the flash drive, it seemed significant. Courtney took both items out of the drawer and took a seat. She opened up Dana’s laptop and entered the password. After inserting the flash drive, there was another short delay before it displayed the contents, and when it did, she wasn’t sure what she was looking at.
Dana had taken photos or screenshots of dozens of documents. Bank statements. Copies of money transfers. Real estate listings. Deeds to different properties. Two condos in Florida and several in Wisconsin—a lake house in Wild Rose, a twenty-acre plot of land just outside of Madison, and two other random businesses in the central part of the state.
Courtney puzzled over this. Dana had never indicated wanting vacation property in Florida or Wisconsin. When she traveled, she loved to stay in upscale hotels where she could be pampered by the staff and mingle with other high-class guests. Courtney returned to scrolling through each page until she found a commonality. All of the transactions were done in the name of Dana’s company, Dana Broderick LLC, and then transferred to another company, Broderick Inc.
Weird. She made copies of all the documents and then tucked them into her bag to look at later.
Courtney picked up the key and held it loosely in the palm of her hand. She had a feeling the answer to all her questions was somewhere in Ian’s office.