Chapter Fifteen
FIFTEEN
Her grandfather said, “Elwin Kent speaking.”
Then there was silence. Presumably, the caller responded. The people with headphones were staring unblinkingly at each other, some scribbling notes down quickly, another hitting buttons on a computer as if he could hack the internet with the force of his typing alone.
“That is quite a bit of cash, sir. Not easy to get hold of, you understand.”
More silence, except for the typing of keys and writing of pens.
Ginny squeezed Shepherd’s hand so hard his fingers went numb.
“Do you have proof of life?”
The room collectively held their breath, Shepherd included. Until now, he hadn’t even considered the possibility that Deandra was dead. She was simply too terrifying to be killed. But there was a very real chance she’d been too much for the kidnapper to handle and he’d—
Elwin gave a thumbs-up.
Ginny collapsed against his arm. She would’ve fallen to the ground if he hadn’t reacted, removing his hand from her vice-like grip to hold her close.
She pressed her forehead against his throat, her rapid, shallow breathing tickling his skin.
Shepherd rubbed her back in small circles and thought of Lex.
“I’ll need more than twenty-four hours to liquidate that amount of capital, you understand. I could get thirty percent of that by your deadline, however.” Elwin paused. “Hello?” He hung up the phone. “Were you able to track it?”
A young bespectacled man removed his headphones and said, “Well. It looked like the call was coming in from Quebec.”
A woman in a suit put her hand on his shoulder. “We’ve got enough. Give us a few minutes to look into it, see if we can uncover his VPN.”
The police and agents left the room. Shepherd watched them leave, his mouth hanging open in shock. Ginny felt much more solid in his arms—a relief, because he no longer felt real.
“Did he …” he whispered, swallowing. “Did he just try to negotiate with the kidnappers?”
She wrapped her arms around him in a hug. “Yeah. That’s why I said you were my fiancé.”
Shepherd pulled back so he could look at her face. “What? How are those things connected?”
The corner of her mouth lifted up in a sad little grin. “I’m going to need your vote.”
Shepherd considered himself a man of above-average intelligence.
He wasn’t a genius, by any stretch of the imagination, but working in the restaurant business, you got to meet a lot of people, and he’d learned very, very quickly that most people were very, very stupid.
Still, he knew it was a dumb thing to say, “But it isn’t an election year,” and yet he said it anyway.
Bradley locked the heavy door. “We have a decision to make,” he announced.
Elwin Kent gestured to the room at large. Ginny’s father and brother took the seats in front of the desk. The women on the couch made room for Ginny. But there was no seat for Shepherd. He stood at her side and put his hands in his pockets and watched as everyone else looked at each other.
Brandy sighed. “Why is he here?”
It took Shepherd entirely too long for a man of his intelligence to figure out that he was the he to which she was referring. He laughed and shrugged. “Kinda asking myself the same thing.”
No one else laughed.
Ginny stood up and took his hand. “Shepherd is my fiancé. That makes him family. He gets a vote, too.”
The two women shook their heads in near unison. “Brandy and I had to be married before we got a vote,” Scarlett said. “That’s the rule.”
Ginny turned to her father, in some kind of obvious appeasement, but he held out empty hands. “That’s always been the rule, sweetheart.”
“He may observe,” Elwin Kent said. “He may even make an argument for or against. But he may not vote.”
Ginny’s scrunched-up expression indicated that she disagreed with the ruling brought down by the old man, but she didn’t argue it. Instead, she rolled back her shoulders. “Fine. But mom is family, and she isn’t here. I should be able to vote for her by proxy.”
Brandy scoffed. “No way! You have to be family and be here! No one let me vote when I was recovering from my BBL surgery.”
Ginny spun around, finger wagging in the air, for once not pointed in Shepherd’s face. “I’d think a kidnapping is a bit more important than a BBL!”
“And how would you know?” Brandy pushed the finger he saw in his nightmares away. “You’ve never been through either!”
Ginny tossed her hands up in the air. “Dad!” she shouted. “Help me out here! She can’t be serious!”
Brandy was on her feet. “I couldn’t sit on my ass for two weeks! But you refused to have me wheeled in here or even have the family come to my room so I could vote! This isn’t any different!”
Bradley shook his head. “Sweetheart. You know the rules.”
“There should be an exception to the rules in extreme circumstances,” Ginny said. “She’s my mom.”
When the only reaction that got out of her father was a sigh, she turned to the man behind the desk. “Please, Grandpa. She’s my mom!”
Elwin leaned back in his chair, observing her before turning his attention to the rest of them. “We don’t vote by proxy. We never have and we won’t start now. Every family member present gets one vote. But I will allow you the floor to make an argument, Virginia. The rest of you, be seated.”
Once more, the women made room for Ginny on the couch, while Bradley took a seat next to his son. Shepherd hesitated. He bent his knees, thinking about sitting criss-cross applesauce on the floor. Ginny cleared her throat and patted the arm rest next to her.
Gratefully, he leaned a single butt cheek against it. He didn’t need a BBL.