Page 118 of The Deals We Make

“He owes me something,” she says, watching the man type.

“What does he owe you? Money? How much?”

She glances at me. “Eleven million dollars.”

The amount shocks me, and while I do wonder if Ti has actually stolen what she says, I also admire the fact that he stole from her at all.

“It’s a huge cybersecurity company,” the man at the laptop says. “And she’s the CEO. The company alone is estimated to be worth two hundred million.”

I dig deep beneath the thick layer of fear and find the confident reserve I often use when I meet clients, when I walked into the bank what feels like a lifetime ago. “It’s two hundred and fifty million. That article is old. And I’m not just the CEO, I own it.”

This persona is like a second skin. And pulling it on feels just as comfortable. It allows me to catch my breath, to feel like there is a chance of me gaining the upper hand.

All this is is one negotiation, with a level of game theory to assess and review all the possible scenarios.

I don’t know whether Ti did or didn’t steal this woman’s money. But I won’t be able to convince her that he didn’t if she went to all this effort to find him. So, trying to persuade her is a waste of my time. My priority, for now, is to get myself out of this alive.

I can’t rely on Ti coming to save me. He has no idea where I am or who I am with.

I need a plan of my own.

The first part of this is that I can give her what she wants.

Money.

I look around at what I’m working with. “I can free up that kind of cash if you let me use one of those laptops.”

The woman laughs. “Yeah. Right. Like I’m going to give you access to one of them so you can message your boyfriend.”

I shake my head. “I’d argue I’m probably a better hacker than Vex is. Plus, you can have someone watch me.”

Because I know once I get onto that machine, I’ll be able to send Ti clues he can’t miss.

Assuming he’s not already out on his bike looking for me.

She looks at me twice. “You know his business?”

“You think I got into the cybersecurity business because I went to some fancy grad school? I grafted. Fucking hard. I don’t know anything about eleven million dollars, but I know this: There is no way that the money you want back is just sitting in a bank account waiting around for Vex to send back to you. If it was even taken, it’s probably been spent or moved. He can’t magic that money back, even if you try to hold me as a hostage to negotiate or whatever.”

For an alleged kidnapping mastermind, she looks shocked at the idea. “He owes us.”

“Yeah. Well. He can’t give you back what he doesn’t have. So, do you want eleven million or not? Because I can take what they have and top up the difference.”

“The woman speaks sense, Marlie,” the man who searched my purse says. “It’s worth letting her try.”

“The bikers need to pay,” she says.

The man who tied me to the chair stands in front of her. “And the bikers will be on to us soon.”

She stares at the man. “And whose fault is that? Who wanted to be the fucking caricature of revenge, leaving the tracker where my brother died?”

My confidence wavers. She’s related to a man she perceives the Outlaws to have killed. Money is cold. It can drive a person to do irrational things. But the death of a loved one…I’m not sure there isn’t any length Ti wouldn’t go to for those he loved.

Perhaps this woman is the same.

“What would you do, if we let you try?”

“You can only hack a system one of two ways. A physical hack, where you manually put the virus onto the system, or a remote one, where you get them to open something suspicious. If Vex has even noticed I’m missing by now, which is unlikely because I didn’t expect him home tonight, nothing will distract him except all his systems crashing. I can send him an alert that will look like a system failure warning or a virus hack. He’ll click on it to clear it, and I’m in.”