Chapter 213
Silence on the line. Heavy. Terrified.
“Destroyed?” The boy’s voice wavered, the tough facade cracking for just a fraction of a second.
“Yes,” Hilliard said, gripping the phone with both hands. “Listen to me. I don’t know who you are, but if Cailin is missing, we need to find her. Tell me where you are. I can help.”
“We don’t need your help,” the boy said, his voice hardening again. “We just needed to confirm you don’t have her. Now you’re a loose end.”
“Wait!” Hilliard shouted. “Don’t hang up! Tell me — are there three of you?”
“Stay away from our mother,” the boy said.
Click.
The line went dead.
Hilliard stared at the black screen, his chest heaving.
Three. The boy, the girl — and likely one more. He remembered the cryptic notification he had glimpsed on Cailin’s phone at the restaurant: Asset 1 has a fever. And then, just days ago, a spiteful anonymous text from Chloe had landed in his inbox after she was fired: Ask your precious Cali who Asset 1, Asset 2, and Asset 3 are in her contacts. She’s playing you. At the time he had dismissed it as bitter revenge, assuming they were Kegan’s clients. But now the math was terrifyingly clear.
And more urgently: Cailin was missing. The children didn’t have her. He didn’t have her. And the room had been turned over by professionals.
“Gavin,” Hilliard said, shoving the phone into his pocket. “Get the car. Now. We’re going to every hospital, every precinct. She’s injured — she can’t have gone far.”
“Sir, is it—”
“Just drive!”
Hilliard strode toward the door, stepping over the debris of his past life. He was halfway to the elevator when his phone buzzed again. He pulled it out, hoping it was the boy calling back.
It was Charla.
His face twisted. He almost let it ring out. But something — some small, nagging remnant of what he used to feel — made him answer.
“What now, Charla?” he snapped. “Did the aliens bring you back?”
“Hilliard!”
Her voice was a shriek. High-pitched, wet, and hysterical.
“Please! You have to help me! They’re putting me on a boat! There’s a man — he has a knife!”
Hilliard stopped walking. He listened to the background noise. Wind. Seagulls. The low groan of a boat engine.
It sounded real.
But so had the Ferris wheel. So had the suicide attempt with the plastic knife. So had the accident with the IV stand.
“You really don’t know when to quit, do you?” Hilliard said, his voice cold as stone. “Are you using sound effects now? Or did Gregg rent a yacht for your little performance?”
“No! It’s real! His name is Stone! He says — ahhh!”
A sharp slap rang through the phone. Then sobbing.
“Tell Gregg,” Hilliard said, stepping into the elevator, “that if he tries to extort me with another fake kidnapping, I will buy English Holdings just to liquidate it. I’m done playing these games.”
“Hilliard, please! I’m bleeding!”