Chapter 13
VAUGHN
It’s three in the morning, and Riley has been asleep for barely two hours. I checked on her just a moment ago, saw her lying in her bed, so peaceful, so vulnerable… but I’m getting sidetracked.
Now I’m sitting at the kitchen table, laptop open, satellite router activated. The bluish glow of the screen is the only light source in the room.
Griffin’s message from tonight blinks in the messenger.
Blackstone has hired private investigators. Three teams. He’s losing it. No police or media yet. He wants to handle this internally. You might have 48 hours before he goes public.
Forty-eight hours. If Richard Blackstone involves the police—or worse, the media—this operation becomes significantly more complicated.
A missing casino heiress from Las Vegas is a headline every local station would love to sink their teeth into.
And headlines mean attention, and attention is the last thing I need.
As long as the investigators cross-check the cameras of the places I visited with Riley, it won't take long for them to find the Elvis chapel where we got married.
And once they have a court order for the marriage records from that night, Blackstone will know my name.
I expected this eventually, but I want to stay one step ahead of him for as long as possible.
I have to contact him. Now.
My first thought was to let Riley speak to her father herself.
To show him she’s alive, that she’s okay.
But I dismissed that idea quickly. First, Riley would find out there is indeed a connection to the outside world in this house.
Second, she’d scream into the phone, cry, beg for help—and Blackstone would have every word analyzed, every background noise evaluated, every hint of her location exploited.
Third, and this is the real reason: I can tell her what to say, but ultimately I can't control what she actually says.
And in this game, control is everything.
So I do it myself.
I open the voice app on my laptop, a program I wrote myself years ago. It distorts the voice in real-time, modulating pitch and frequency so that no voice analysis in the world can identify the speaker. I’ve tested it multiple times. It works.
Then I open the VPN. Not just any VPN—it’s six of them, daisy-chained through servers in Romania, Singapore, Iceland, Brazil, South Africa, and Japan.
The connection slows with every layer, but it also becomes untraceable.
Even if Blackstone hires the best guys at the NSA, they won't be able to trace the call.
Not in forty-eight hours. Not in forty-eight years.
I dial Richard Blackstone’s private cell number. Not the one on his business card. The one only twelve people in the world know. I’m the thirteenth.
It rings three times. Then he picks up.
“Who is this?” His voice sounds like he hasn't slept in two days. Good.
“Good evening, Richard.” My distorted voice rings through the laptop speakers like the hum of a broken machine. Metallic, genderless, inhuman.
Silence on the other end. Three seconds. Five.
“Where is my daughter?” he whispers into the phone. Richard Blackstone, the man who gives speeches to business partners without ever lowering his voice, is whispering.
“Riley is fine. She’s safe.”
“If you touch a single hair on her head—”
“Save the threats. They bore me.” I lean back. My tone remains controlled. “I’m not calling to negotiate. I’m calling to tell you how things are going to go.”
“What do you want? Money? How much?”
Of course. Money. That’s all men like Blackstone understand. Every problem has a price. Every person can be bought. The world is a balance sheet, and at the end of the day, all that matters is the bottom line.
“No money,” I say. “I want you to listen. Your daughter got married two days ago in Clark County, Nevada. The certificate is registered. The marriage is legal.”
Silence. Longer this time. I hear his breath, heavy and irregular.
“That’s not possible,” he says.
“If you say so. Riley also signed a postnuptial agreement that awards her husband fifty percent of her entire fortune in the event of a divorce. Including all inheritances and holdings.”
It takes a brief moment for him to grasp what I just said.
Then he explodes.
“Who the hell are you?” he roars, so loud I briefly worry Riley might wake up. The microphone quality distorts under the volume. “You think you can just—my daughter—you’ll pay for this, you—”
“I’ll be in touch again in three days,” I interrupt. “Until then, here is what you will do: no police, no media, no more private investigators. If I find even the slightest hint that you’re having us searched for, the conditions will become significantly more unpleasant. For you. And for Riley.”
“I will find you. I will—”
“In three days, Richard. Good night.”
I end the call. My pulse is up, but my hands are steady. The conversation lasted exactly one minute and forty-two seconds. Too short for a trace, even if he had been prepared.
I close the voice app, disconnect the VPN chain, and open the messenger.
Call made. Blackstone informed. Marriage, contract, conditions. Expect irrational reaction within the next 24 hours. Griffin, hold the legal flank. Valentino, increased vigilance.
Then I open my phone’s photo gallery. I scroll through the shots from today until I find the picture I took earlier.
Riley, at the kitchen table, her head tilted slightly to the side.
She’s not looking at the camera, but at the table.
Her face is tired but peaceful. The white T-shirt.
The wet strands of hair. No makeup. No staging.
I took the photo when her gaze was lowered. She didn't notice.
I upload the image to an anonymous server, add a timestamp, and send the link through three different relay servers to Richard Blackstone’s private email address. No message. No text. Just the photo.
A father missing his daughter will open this image and see that she’s alive. That no one has harmed her. It will simultaneously calm him and drive him insane, because it proves someone has his daughter and there’s nothing he can do about it.
I delete the image from my phone, clear the browser history, disconnect the satellite router, and stow everything behind the stack of blankets in the closet.
Then I pour myself a glass of water and sit on the worn-out sofa in the living room.
It’s just before three-thirty in the morning. The house is silent. Through the windows, I see the stars, clear and countless, like every night out here. In the distance, a coyote howls, a thin, wailing sound that crawls over the hills and sinks into the sand.
The next few days will be difficult.
Not because of Blackstone, who will react predictably—anger, then fear, then frantic action.
That’s how men like him work. No, the next few days will be difficult because of the woman sleeping behind the third door on the left, who will look at me tomorrow morning with a gaze that will hold both contempt and hope.