Page 11 of Billion-Dollar Ransom

THE ESCALADE KEPT pace with the fourteen-year-old girl until she finally stopped and turned to glare at the woman behind the wheel.

“Shouldn’t you be engaged in a deadly shoot-out down by the San Pedro docks or something?” the girl asked.

FBI special agent Nicole “Nicky” Gordon glared right back at the girl. “They canceled all the deadly shoot-outs for today. So I decided to give you a ride home instead.”

“That was very kind of the international drug-dealing community,” the girl replied. She remained a few feet from the Escalade.

“Come on, what are you waiting for?”

“Leave me alone, stalker!”

Nicky flinched, then cracked a wide smile. It was a silly game they’d played since… well, forever. “Will you get in already, you goofball?”

Nicky’s daughter, Kaitlin, opened the door, flung her loaded backpack into the rear seat with expert aim and gracefully spun herself into the passenger seat.

She was a natural athlete, like her mother.

Though in terms in height, Kaitlin favored her father.

When Nicky hugged her daughter these days, she had to be careful her forehead didn’t slam into the kid’s chin.

Nicky steered the Escalade away from the Girls Academic Leadership Academy—GALA—hoping to get ahead of traffic.

But who was she kidding? This was LA. There was no getting ahead of anything, not at this hour.

She checked the time on her dash—3:31 p.m. If the traffic gods smiled on her, they could make it to the Santa Monica Pier by four thirty or so.

Although this appeared to be an impromptu Hey, I was just in the neighborhood pickup, Nicky had been planning it for a while now.

She headed west on Olympic. So far, so good.

“How do you feel about dinner at the Old Maid?” Nicky asked as if it were the most casual of questions.

“Mom.”

“Yes, honey?”

“Just tell me what’s going on. I don’t need a bribe.”

Of course Kaitlin had immediately seen through the ruse.

“The Old Maid” was their nickname for the Mermaid on the Pier, a favorite of Kaitlin’s since she was a toddler.

The early black-and-white Dennis Hopper movie Night Tide was largely shot in that location, which thrilled them both when they’d caught it late one night on cable.

They had a running joke about killer mermaids swarming the place and pistol-packing Nicky saving the day.

“Nothing is going on,” Nicky said.

“Didn’t the FBI teach you special agents how to lie?”

Nicky fought hard to suppress a smile. “I’m not lying. Nothing’s going on… yet .”

“Mm-hmm.”

Nicky had been planning this conversation for weeks, but she still found herself at a loss for words. This wasn’t how she’d imagined it playing out. And she very much needed to sell Kaitlin on this in the right way, because she couldn’t do it without her daughter’s support.

How would you feel about your mom becoming the first female director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation someday?

Granted, the position was an appointment of the highest level, subject to the political needs of the sitting president and requiring the support of the US Senate.

But according to John Scoleri, her boss and mentor at the LA field office, there was a specific career path that could maximize her chances.

“Take the right steps within the Bureau,” John had told her, “put yourself at the center of a few high-profile cases, and you can get on a very short list.”

Nicky Gordon had secretly dreamed of becoming director, but she’d never said it out loud.

It spoke to Assistant Director Scoleri’s powers of intuition that he’d figured it out.

Maybe it was just a motivation tactic. But she knew this about him: He wasn’t a bullshitter.

If he said this was the way, he could back that up.

But this incredibly tempting career path came with a heavy price.

It meant starting on that track right freaking now .

It meant hopping from one field office to another all across the country and dragging along her daughter (who absolutely adored GALA and her many friends at the school).

It meant spending countless hours on high-profile cases and precious few hours with Kaitlin during the most challenging years of her adolescence.

It meant putting herself in the public eye, which in these polarized times often blew back on family.

And Kaitlin was Nicky’s entire universe.

To do this, Nicky would need not only Kaitlin’s approval but her total and enthusiastic buy-in. She could not go down this path alone.

So try putting all of that into words when you’re weaving around Teslas and BMWs on Olympic Boulevard.

“Mom?”

“Okay, so there’s this opportunity at work—”

Right at that moment, Nicky’s cell, mounted on the dash, whirred with a message from the LA field office. Of course. Of course! Just saying the word work seemed to have conjured it into being.

“I’m sorry, sweetie,” Nicky said as she tapped the screen. “Give me one sec.”

“Great, keep me in suspense,” Kaitlin said.

But Nicky was busy deciphering the short message, which was basically Bureau code for All hands on deck, report to the office immediately .

These types of messages were reserved for serious incidents, like terrorist attacks or mass shootings or attempted coups.

And this one promised to be shocking. Just the family name alone—the Schraeders.

The Old Maid would have to wait.

“What happened?” Kaitlin asked, reading the troubled look on her mother’s face. “Some kind of national disaster?”

“More like three at once.”