Page 99

Fondly,

Maggie

She read it over, nodded, then sent it.

Then she thought: Why should my family get it secondhand?

And she then forwarded it to her parents and to her cousin Emma.

She then went to the My Free Texts page, punched in the California telephone number it had assigned to her, then her password.

The conversation string of text message bubbles was still there, along with a new bubble. She read it.

He wants me to bring him a page from the book as proof?

How stupid does he think I am?

“A place of my choosing”?

How absolutely magnanimous of him.

She read the message again.

I need to give him something, though.

She took the camera inside the cabin. She pulled from her backpack the notebook that was the ledger on the girls. She turned to a page that had a list of the girls’ names and the cities where they were working. At the top of the page there also was a crude doodle of a woman’s crotch.

She took a couple of photographs of that page, then repeated the process of sending it to her laptop.

Sliding the notebook inside the backpack, she had to work it around the thick brass-zippered bank pouch. And then she had an idea.

She pulled the pouch and the plastic bag that was imprinted in gold with Lucky Stars Casino & Entertainment from the backpack. Then she removed a handful of the hundred-dollar poker chips that were in the bag and fanned a wad of the hundred-dollar bills from the pouch. She took shots of the chips on top of the cash and bank pouch.

At My Free Texts, she attached one of the images of the ledger page to her reply and wrote:

HERE IS YOUR PROOF. NOW GET ME MY MONEY. I WILL TELL YOU LATER WHERE THE PUBLIC TRANSFER WILL TAKE PLACE.

She sent it, and a minute later was about to sign out when a new bubble popped up:

267-555-9100

THANK YOU VERY MUCH.

BUT I AM AFRAID THAT I DO REQUIRE PHYSICAL PROOF. PLEASE.

THIS IS A GREAT DEAL OF MONEY INVOLVED.

We are not meeting, she thought, even if it were physically possible.

Not now. Not ever.

Maggie, after attaching an image of the poker chips and cash, fired back:

PROOF? THIS IS ALL THE DAMN PROOF YOU NEED.

GET ME THE $200,000 AND YOU GET THE ACTUAL BOOKS.

[FOUR]