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The nanny cams are on the last page, helpfully labeled “iSpy.” Jade installed the app the day the cameras were screwed into the wall, and I haven’t looked at it since. Too creepy, and unnecessary since we can’t afford a nanny. The only person who ever stays with the kids overnight is my mother, and no way in hell am I going to spy on my mom. Ever.
I tap the app, and it opens onto a log-in screen. Two blank boxes for username and password, neither of which I remember. At the bottom of the screen is a key, and I hit it to search my saved passwords, but it’s not there. When Jade logged in that first time, for some reason my phone didn’t save it.
“Shit.”
Nick flips down the visor to check his hair in the mirror. He shoves the strands back in place, poking the ends under the elastic with a finger. “What’s wrong?”
“I don’t remember my log-in.” I try my email and the password Jade uses for everything, BeaBax321#, but it doesn’t work. I try the same password with her email, but I get the same result: a shivering screen, a rejection message. I’m locked out. “Dammit.”
“Let’s just go. We’ll see what’s going on when we get there.” Nick pops the visor closed, then gestures to the two-lane road we were just flying down. A long line of traffic snakes in both directions, headlights blinking in a soft drizzle. The clock on the dash turns my body cold: 6:34.
I plug my email in the screen and tap Forgot Password, then toss my cell to Nick. “Watch my inbox, will you? I should be getting a new password any second.” I steer the truck off the grass and poke the bumper back into traffic.
Nick here is a gift from Maxim, as are the two bouncers in the black SUV that had been following us until I hit the brakes, former military trained in all sorts of scary ops who rarely leave his side. Maxim loaned them to me with a toothy grin.
And then he shoved the biggest gift, thebestone, into my hands. A moving box crammed to the top with crumpled bills.You wouldn’t believe the amount of counterfeit bills that pass through a strip club. Twenties and hundreds, mostly, most of them passable as real.Go get ’em, kid.
Not the $734,296 this guy demanded, not even close. But along with my $49,000 hopefully enough bills to provide a distraction. It’s now stuffed in the nylon Nike bag under Nick’s feet.
He points me down a mostly empty side street. “Take a right.”
“I know the way. You just watch for the email.”
A minute passes, then another, while I weave my way through the streets as fast as I dare. On a normal day, at a normal hour, it’s a twenty-minute trek from here to my driveway, but this is rush hour, and it’s raining again—two sure-fire ways to make Atlanta traffic grind to a stop.
My phone pings with an incoming email, but with the acoustics of the truck and the tension in the air, it hits me like an explosion. “Is it—”
“Yep.”
I snatch my phone from his fingers, prop it against the top of the steering wheel, and do my best to drive without crashing into the car in front of me. My hands are shaking so hard they’re vibrating, and it takes me a couple of tries to hit the link, but then my phone shoots me to a web page where I type in the new password, then back to the app and I’m in.
The first camera is from the smoke alarm, a bird’s-eye view of the room. Between glances at the road, I spot Beatrix’s mess of white-blond hair, and the sight of her is a gut punch. Jade is seated on the recliner next to her, alert but calm, her spine straight on the chair. I think of Bax, gorging on pizza at Tanya’s across the street—safe, thank God—and for once I don’t want to punch her.
I search the edges of the screen, but all I see are shadows.
I swipe to the next camera and get a head-on visual from the speaker on the wall. A full view of the recliners, Beatrix and Jade, a male-sized body cloaked in black by the windows. Relief starts with a tingle at the top of my head, then courses through me in a warm and glorious rush because they’re okay. They’re still alive.
And Jade...
Even with that bruised and swollen cheek, Jade is glorious. Hair wild, eyes wilder, her back straight with righteous purpose. Her hands are solid fists on her lap, and her chest is heaving. This is warrior Jade, protective and mama lioness Jade, this is Jade at her most fierce and feral. I’ve only ever seen her like this once, after Baxter’s kindergarten teacher teasingly suggested we find him a talent so he wouldn’t always live in his big sister’s shadow. I stare at the screen, and in all the eleven-plus years I’ve known her, never have I loved her more.
Her mouth is moving, flinging angry words. I keep the car on the road and fumble for the volume button.
“...because that is not okay. I get that your daughter’s sick, but in what universe does that make any of this okay? You are trading the lives of three strangers for hers, and that’s not right.” Jade’s seething voice shatters the silence in the cab.
“Shut up.” The voice comes from somewhere off camera, low and male and gruff. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. This is none of your business.”
“Itismy business. The second you came into my garage and held me and my children at gunpoint, youmadeit my business. And you’ve already admitted Cam somehow owes you this money. It doesn’t get any more my business than that. This is my family. You’re holding our lives ransom for your daughter’s.”
The same male voice answers, and it pings something deep in my brain. “You have no idea what I’m going through. None.”
“Tell me, then.Tellmewhat I’m missing. Because whatever Cam took from you, it can’t be worth a human life.”
On the passenger’s seat, Nick gives an impressed grunt. “Your wife’s a little pistol.”
A deep voice booms from the tiny speaker. “I said, shutup. Shut up before I shove a gun in your mouth and make you.”
Jesus, Jade. Stand down for Christ’s sake.