Page 96 of Billion-Dollar Ransom

THREE HEARD THE scream of police sirens and worried it was the LAPD or FBI trying to locate them. Maybe One had already sold them out.

But the sirens faded into the distance, and both Three and Four breathed a quiet sigh of relief. They were safe. For the moment, anyway.

Now the question was: Where in Los Angeles could they possibly leave these children in the middle of the night?

Police stations were open, but Three and Four weren’t going anywhere near one of those. Way too risky. Malls were closed. Restaurants were too. Even if they found a twenty-four-hour diner somewhere, they couldn’t just put Cal and Finney in the hands of strangers.

“What about a fire station?” their daughter asked. She’d overheard them talking, even though they’d been quiet—they were all in the same car, after all. Keeping secrets was just not possible. And their daughter was very sharp.

Three and Four looked at each other and grinned.

Once again, saved by their super-brilliant kid.

A fire station. Yes! That would be perfect.

By the time the firefighters dragged the story out of the children and the local cops were summoned, the three of them would have put a comfortable distance between themselves and the station.

They could make it to the 210 and head east as fast as possible.

They found a station a few minutes away, Arcadia Station 106. Three suggested just letting the kids out and telling them to walk up to the entrance, giving the three of them the maximum time to get away.

Four told him no way, they couldn’t do that to these poor children. “What if they were our own kids?”

So they told their daughter to hang tight for a quick moment while they said their goodbyes. Three got out of the car but refused to get any closer to the fire station; Four was fine with that. As long as she was able to give them hugs.

“Don’t worry,” Cal said. “We won’t tell anyone who you are.”

“You tell them the truth,” Four said. “About anything and everything. I’m just happy you’ll be going home again.”

“Will your daughter be okay?” Finney asked.

“She will,” Three said, though he didn’t sound terribly convinced. He knelt down to Finney’s level and gave her a tight squeeze. Her return squeeze was even tighter.

Cal received a manly handshake from him. “Guess we’ll have to wait for that Mastermind rematch, huh?” Three said.

“You really enjoy losing, don’t you?” Cal replied, and Three couldn’t help laughing. He patted Cal on the head. Hell of a kid.

Four wrapped both children up in a hug for so long that Three started to get nervous.

“I’m very sorry to have put you both through all this,” Four said. “I hope you believe me when I tell you that we really had no choice.”

“You are nice people,” Cal said. “But you are also lousy kidnappers.”

“Agreed, little man,” Three said.

Then it was time to part ways. Three climbed behind the wheel of the car; Four waited to get in until they were at the door and knocking. Which, truth be told, drove Three out of his mind a little. But he understood. That was his wife for you.

The moment she climbed into the back, Three hit the gas. The screech of tires almost frightened him. Way to not draw attention to your vehicle, dumbass. “Sorry,” he said.

Three didn’t speak again until they took the Huntington Drive on-ramp to the 210.

“Where do we go now?” he asked. “Mexico?”

That was the cliché, wasn’t it? A daring escape to the closest foreign country, where they would magically discover a kindly old doctor who knew how to cure their daughter of her blood cancer and where they’d somehow make enough money doing odd jobs to rebuild their lives, complete with a modest house on the beach and nothing but sunsets and one another.

But that wasn’t reality, and Three was filled with the stark terror of knowing that their troubles were nowhere near over, and perhaps the worst still lay ahead.

“I’m calling my sister,” Four said. “At the very least, it’s somewhere we can stay for a day or two.”

“But you said Aunt Shannon hates it when you stay with her,” their daughter reminded her helpfully.

“She’s going to hate me even more when I call her at four thirty in the morning.”

Three fought back a laugh, which felt nice.

You could almost be fooled into thinking this was just another family outing, full of in-jokes and spilling tea about various relatives.

But he heard no phone call being made, and after a few seconds, Three glanced into the rearview mirror.

Four was staring at her phone, mouth open slightly.

“Mom?” their daughter asked. “Are you okay?”

“Honey?” Three said. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. Nothing at all. I just received a text from you-know-who.”

Three felt his stomach turn into a block of ice. Clearly, One must have discovered they had betrayed him. Of course he knew; he had eyes everywhere. And now they were living on borrowed time…

“It says ‘Release the children. Payment has been issued.’”

“What? Was that really him?”

“I’m logging onto our bank app right now,” Four said.

Three checked the rearview again and saw his wife’s astonished face. When she looked up and locked eyes with him, he knew everything was going to be okay. He couldn’t believe it. They could finally go home.