Girl, Stolen(34)

“What happened to the phone?”

Roy shrugged. “Insurance. I don’t want her getting loose and calling anyone. Now she can’t.” His eyes were bloodshot and his hands shaky.

Griffin wondered why his dad hadn’t just unplugged it and stuck it on a high shelf, but there was no use asking. “What if I need to call someone?”

“You can use that mobile I got.” He looked over Griffin’s shoulder. “Is she sleeping?”

“Yeah. In the middle of the night, she seemed like she was running a fever. I went through the stuff in the bathroom and found an old prescription of Mom’s to give her.”

At the mention of the bathroom, Griffin had been sure his dad would remember to ask what had happened to the shower curtain. Instead, he just looked startled. “Your mom’s? Really?”

His dad never talked about his mom anymore. But after Griffin came home from the hospital, he would sometimes find his dad crying and holding something that used to belong to his mom – a bracelet or a sweater. She had left a lot of stuff behind. They had had a big fight about what had happened to Griffin. It must have been the last straw, because she had taken off with her purse and her car and some pictures of Griffin and that was it. Gone so good that she never looked back.

“Mom had the prescription filled a few months before she left, but she only took about half the pills.”

Roy nodded and lifted the cup of coffee to his lips. Griffin couldn’t read the expression on his face.

They heard the front door open and then the sounds of TJ and Jimbo coming in.

“What’s the word?” Jimbo asked when he walked into the kitchen. Today he was wearing an extra-long stocking cap and padded ski pants. “Have you talked to them?”

“I got off the phone with the dad about twenty minutes ago. He says they can’t raise that kind of money. Not in cash. Not that fast.”

“I’ll bet we can speed things up,” Jimbo said. “Let’s send him a finger.”

Griffin couldn’t tell if he was joking.

“Or an ear,” TJ added. He definitely wasn’t joking.

To Griffin’s intense relief, Roy shook his head. “We do that and they’ll decide she might be dead already and hunt us down with guns blazing. We start chopping off body parts and they’ll figure they’ve got nothing left to lose.”

“Did they say how much they could give us?” Griffin asked. He kept his voice soft, hoping to influence the others to talk more quietly. He couldn’t imagine what it would be like for Cheyenne if she woke up and heard them talking about lopping off her fingers or ears.

“A million.” Setting down his coffee cup, Roy scrubbed his face with open palms. “I told him I would call him back.” His voice was glum, even though a few days ago he would have been over the moon about the prospect of getting a million dollars.

“That’s still a lot,” Griffin said. “That’s like $250,000 apiece.”

Roy shook his head. “You’re still a minor, and you still live under my roof. I’m going to watch after your share.”

TJ and Jimbo exchanged a look. “Do you really think that’s fair?” Jimbo asked. “You get a cool half million, and we get only half of that?”

Roy straightened up, and Jimbo and TJ automatically took a step back.

“Hey, I’m the one who is taking all the risks here. She’s on my property, and it’s my voice that’s getting tape-recorded every time I call. And I’m the one figuring out the logistics.”

“Logistics?” TJ echoed. It was clear the word wasn’t quite familiar.

“The plans. When I call back, I’ll tell the dad to be ready to make the drop at three this morning. Then, at three, I’ll tell him to drive someplace. But when he gets there, we’ll tell him to take another phone we’ll have waiting and ditch his first one. I’ll have one of you there watching to make sure he does leave his phone. The new phone will have outgoing calls disabled. So he won’t be able to tip anyone off. And then I’ll call him on the new phone and tell him to make the drop at Ironwood Road.” Ironwood Road was a long stretch that linked together two other equally desolate roads. It was quiet no matter what time of the day or night it was. At three in the morning in the middle of winter, it would be dead. “And I’ll have one of you watching Ironwood Road before he even knows that’s the drop site. Then we’ll grab the money and leave the bag in case they put something in it, like a tracer or those exploding dye packs they use on bank robbers. Then we’ll come back here and split up the money and go our separate ways.”