My Husband Dismissed Seven Ransom Calls as AI novel · Chapter 16 of 24

Chapter 16: Safety Awareness Day

The main auditorium held three hundred people, and they were all looking at Janelle.

She stood at the podium in her navy cardigan, with her blonde bob smooth and her pink lanyard straight.

Behind her, a screen showed three words in big white letters: HANG UP. CALL BACK.

Two television cameras stood at the back.

Pip slept against my chest in a sling, and Beth sat on my right with her phone already recording.

Ansel sat three rows behind us, where I had told him to sit.

He had not said a word since he came in.

"This is personal for me," Janelle said into the microphone. Her voice was warm and a little shaky. "Last month a family I love was targeted by exactly this crime."

My hands went cold.

"A criminal used a computer to fake a mother's voice, and he almost fooled a good man into paying for a lie. I was the one who stopped it. I told him to hang up."

The chief of staff, seated on the stage, nodded with approval.

People in the rows around me whispered, and somebody began to clap.

Beth leaned in and said, very low, "Lora. You don't have to."

"Yes," I said. "I do."

I stood up with my daughter on my chest.

My stitches pulled, and my knees felt thin.

I walked down the center aisle with three hundred heads turning.

Janelle saw me when I was halfway to the stage.

For one second she had no face at all.

Then her smile came back, all at once.

"Elora!" she said into the microphone. "Everyone, this is Elora Erickson, Dr. Erickson's wife. She's been through so much. Come up, honey."

She held out her hand.

I did not take it.

I climbed the steps on my own, and I stopped at the microphone, and I said, "May I?"

I had practiced the sentence in the mirror for two days.

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