Page 18 of Billion-Dollar Ransom

“AGENT GORDON? I think we have the kidnappers’ demands.”

Nicky looked up from the flurry of field reports arrayed on her laptop. She was confused. Why was Hope Alonso, a twenty-eight-year-old junior agent who served as Nicky’s personal assistant, giving her this news?

“Let’s hear it,” Nicky said.

“We haven’t played it yet,” said Hope. Nicky found the junior agent to be timid but super-observant.

She reminded Nicky of her younger self. She too had been wide-eyed, quiet, taking in as much as she could without getting in the way.

Until the day she realized that staying quiet in the back of the room practically guaranteed you’d remain in the back of the room.

“ Played it? What do you mean?”

Hope handed Nicky an old-school cassette tape. Affixed to it was a narrow white label with one neatly typed word: SCHRAEDERS .

Nicky hadn’t held a cassette tape since grade school, when a shy boy she barely knew made her a mix of his favorite songs.

“Where did this come from?” Nicky asked. “And do we even have a machine that can play this thing?”

“An unhoused person hand-delivered it to the reception desk,” Hope said. “The Schraeder name immediately raised a red flag, and that person has been held for questioning.”

“Who is it?”

“White male, approximately fifty years old, no identification. Says somebody paid him two hundred fifty dollars to bring this to the lobby. We’re waiting on prints.”

Nicky nodded. Her immediate impulse was to march downstairs and question the deliveryman, then trace his steps back to the mastermind behind this triple kidnapping. But that wasn’t her job now; Nicky needed to stay on the sixth floor and focus on the big picture.

“Tell Agent Rodriguez I’d like him to question the deliveryman.”

“Right away,” Hope said. “As for a player, I have Nancy down in the AV room looking for a working device. She’ll bring it to the main conference room as soon as she finds it.”

“Good. Call everyone back into the Sandbox—and contact the mayor’s office so we can patch her in.”

“Right away, Agent Gordon.”

This was what her boss and mentor would have done. Still, delegating felt strange to Nicky. Why was it that the more power you had to wield, the more impotent you felt?

Nicky stared at the cassette, wondering if it offered any clues beyond the message encoded in ferric oxide powder on magnetic plastic.

The brand was Maxell and the tape could record sixty minutes of material.

The cassette itself was clear with no fancy design elements, very unlike the garish Day-Glo Memorex cassette that kid in grade school had given her.

Nicky idly wondered if she still had that mix tape somewhere in storage at her parents’ house. The songs had actually been pretty good, she recalled.

But this wasn’t a third-grader with a crush. These were kidnappers who had pulled off an audacious and meticulously timed series of abductions in three different locations. Why deliver your first message with a piece of decades-old technology?

Ah, but that was the point, wasn’t it? Turn back the clock to when tracking people was a lot more complicated.

Before traceable IP addresses. Before high-definition cameras recording in every conceivable location.

But what did it ultimately mean? Was it merely about staying under the FBI’s radar, or were they making a larger point?

Nicky was lost in some theories when Hope Alonso gave three quick knocks on the door frame.

“They’re ready for you, Agent Gordon.”