Page 20 of Sigma

“What do we do?” I whisper.

“Like you said, there’s nothing I won’t do for my daughter. If it’s money they want, I’ll drown them in it. But I do think this is personal, for all that I can’t fathom who could hate us enough to kidnap our daughter like this. I don’t think whoever this is interested in our money.”

“What could they want?”

“To hurt us,” he whispers. “Just hopefully…not through her.”

“If they send someone, I’m going,” I say.

“I know.” He looks like he hasn’t slept; I feel bad that I did, as if through sleeping I’ve lessened the emotional impact of this. “I hate it, but I know.”

“I wish you were here,” I whisper.

“Me too.” He scrapes his hand through his hair. “I need to be with you. But if there’s more to the plot than merely snatching Rin, it’s safer if we’re not all in one place. This safe house is a location known only to Harris, and it’s not traceable back to us in any way. Even this phone I’m using is untraceable.”

“Which begs the question of how they knew about this place? I thought we owned this building through a series of fronts?”

“Not fronts, exactly, but a complicated web of subsidiaries. Still theoretical traceable, we just thought it extraordinarily unlikely.” A pause. “But if you’d asked me a few hours ago, I’d have said our island was nigh impregnable.”

“I’m scared, Val,” I whisper.

“Me too,” he answers. “But…I suppose I take a little comfort in one thing.”

I sniffle. “What’s that?”

“He has Rinna.”

“God help him,” I say, laughing.

“Do you think he has any clue what she’s like?”

“I remember when Duke was missing, Harris said something about how they’d be rescuing them from Duke.” I sniffle a laugh. “If anyone could come out of a kidnapping on top, it’s that girl.”

“Exactly,” he says.

* * *

A different courierbrings another note the next day, as expected, with two more words:

TO ME

* * *

After that,nothing, for two more days.

4

The Limousine

It’s 5 p.m., two days after the last note arrived.

Duke has his phone to his ear. His face his pale, jaw grinding. He extends it to me without a word.

I take it. “Hello, this is Kyrie Roth.”

“Mrs. Roth? This is Ernest, the building manager.”

“Another courier?”