The Evil That Men Do by Dave White Page B

let her emotions take control.
Take a deep breath
.
    Jackson started to approach her, but Susan held out her hand to stop him. He did.
    “Is Franklin okay?”
    “He’s alive, if that’s what you’re asking.”
    “I want to talk to him.”
    “No, I don’t think so. We have business to discuss, you and I.”
    The voice sounded so familiar.
    “What do you want?”
    “Money. Your husband owes me one hundred thousand dollars.”
    Her grip tightened on the receiver and her knees were weak. “One hundred thousand? Why?”
    “That’s not important to you. All you need to do is get me the money.”
    “How am I supposed to do that?”
    “Yeah. Not my problem. All I know is if I don’t get a phone call to 973-555-1980 in twenty hours, you are going to be a widow. I hope you wrote it down.”
    “You’re insane.”
    Again the voice laughed. “If you call the police, Franklin is a dead man.”
    She heard the click of the line being disconnected. Slowly, she lowered her own phone back into the cradle. One hundred thousand dollars. Where was she going to get that? She couldn’t get into Franklin’s bank account without his signature.
    Susan felt Jackson’s hand on her own, callused and rough.
    “What did they say?” he asked.
    Taking another deep breath, she told him.
     
     
    Bryan Hackett’s cell phone buzzed. Not the anonymous prepaid one he used to call Susan, not the one he used to call Delshawn, but his private phone. Only one person knew the number.
    “I told you not to call me this week.”
    “I’m sorry,” Jill said. “But I just checked the messages at home. It’s your old job. They really want you to call them. Something about the explosion in New York City. I can’t believe you don’t have the money yet.”
    He hung up. Hackett hadn’t expected this to be as big a deal as it was. The city had enough feds to investigate the explosion. But they wanted him to call? He was a former member of the New Jersey State Trooper Bomb Squad.
    Could his employers have figured out who was actually behind the bombing?
    He was going to have to take some time to think about this before he called them. At least the night to sleep on it.
     
CHAPTER 20
     
    TWENTY HOURS
    “I don’t know how I’m going to get the money,” Susan said.
    Donne held her, and expected to feel her tears on his shoulder. There weren’t any. Her voice was steady.
    More proof he didn’t know his sister as well as he thought.
    “We have to call the police.” He pushed her back from him and looked into her hazel eyes.
    “No,” she answered. “They’ll kill him.”
    There were two schools of thought on kidnapping. Pay the ransom and hope for the best. Or don’t pay at all. Not paying a ransom at all was a solution for major kidnappings, and it was the only way to stop them. Donne had read about kidnappings in other countries, and the governments contended that if all ransom paying stopped, then the kidnappers had nothing to gain. That was fine in the abstract, but not so convincing when a loved one’s life was on the line. Their best bet was to get the money, pay up, and hope.
    “You can get the money from your joint account. I’m sure he’s good for it.”
    “It’s one hundred thousand dollars, Jackson. We don’t have that. Most of our money is invested. In the house, in the restaurant, in stocks. Franklin also has a private account I don’t have access to.”
    “For what?”
    “It’s for the restaurant. Any money used on repairs, to pay the mortgage on the building. It’s not that he doesn’t trust me,” she said, as if sensing Donne’s skepticism, “but he insists it’s easier that way. I could forge the signature.”
    “They would know. If you get caught…” Donne paused. “It’s illegal.”
    “It’s my husband, Jackson! We have to try.”
    “There has to be another way. The banks aren’t even open.”
    “It’s all I have.”
    “If the bank catches you, if they stop you and you get held up, we’ll