Page 92 of Billion-Dollar Ransom

WHAT WORRIED NICKY Gordon most was the lack of guarantees about the safety of the kidnap victims.

There had been zero signs of life since the family members had been taken a day and a half ago.

The children seemed to vanish into thin air.

There wasn’t even visual evidence that Tyler Schraeder and Cassandra Bart had been taken; Nicky and her team were relying on the word of Mexican police.

And the only clues that Boo Schraeder might still be alive were her personal effects found at Tim Dowd’s borrowed hideout, and that was highly circumstantial.

Those personal effects could easily have been taken from her corpse.

Nicky wondered if this entire plot was even about the money.

Perhaps it was about hitting Old Man Schraeder right where it would hurt him the most: his family and his fortune.

The captives might have been killed immediately.

The kidnappers might set the money on fire and upload a video of it to YouTube; the jewelry might be destroyed or dumped into the Pacific.

Schraeder had made plenty of enemies over the decades.

But deep down, Nicky knew the truth.

Of course this was about the money.

“What’s going on out there, Penney?” Mike asked. “We can’t see a damn thing.”

“The chopper is blocking our visuals too,” Jeff said. “I can’t risk sending anyone out for a look. And it’s tough to hear anything over the engines.”

“No,” Nicky said. “Nobody move. Just watch them.”

They didn’t have to watch long. Soon the Bell 407 ascended into the night air, leaving behind on the airstrip… absolutely nothing.

The chopper went dark and sped toward the San Gabriels.