Chapter 6: On Call

I played the recording for the first time at noon, in a hospital on-call room the size of a closet.

Lachlan had a ten-minute break between a gallbladder and a ruptured spleen.

He'd found me in the lobby with the stolen phone in both hands and walked me through two sets of doors without a word.

The room held a bunk bed, a desk lamp and a poster about hand washing.

He locked the door.

"Play it," he said.

I pressed the file.

A man's voice, thin and bored, said, "This is the girl's fiance. You've had thirty seconds to think. Two million dollars. Tonight."

Then I heard Preston.

I knew his voice the way I knew my own handwriting.

"I'm not paying two million for a girl who'll come back used," Preston said.

"Do what you want with her, and don't call me again."

A pause.

Another voice, older and tired, came from behind him, and my body went cold.

"Preston, the company can't be seen paying," my father said. "Hang up."

The line clicked.

The room was silent except for the air vent.

Lachlan put his hand over mine on the phone and turned it off.

He didn't say anything for a long time.

He just stood there breathing, and when I looked up his jaw was set so hard a muscle jumped in it.

"They knew," I said. "They knew the whole time where I was. They had thirty seconds, and they spent them on a sentence."

"I'm so sorry."

"I thought maybe they had been scared. I thought maybe they hadn't known what to do."

"Mina."

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