I think about my children in the next room, my husband on the phone, how if this man pulls the trigger now, they will hear everything. The gunshot, my insides splattering onto the wall. This will be their last memory of me, the exact moment they heard me die.
He pushes harder.
“He wants the money today, Cam. All of it. By seven.”
A long pause filled with exhaled air, hard and sharp like Cam had been gut punched.
“Okay. Okay. I’ll figure something out. I don’t know what, but I’ll do it. Hold on, babe, I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
“Please hurry.” A shuddery spasm traps in my throat, a sob struggling to escape.
“Jade, just…hold tight, okay? Take care of the Bees, tell them I love them. I will be there as soon as humanly possible. I love y—”
Click. With a rubber-tipped finger, the man pushes End.
C A M
4:19 p.m.
The air in the truck’s cab reeks of sweat and terror. The light up ahead flips to yellow, and the sea of traffic in front of me glows eerie red, brake lights as far as I can see. I screech to a stop behind a white SUV, slam the steering wheel with the heel of my hand, my whole world turning crimson.
A masked man. A gun. My wife tied to a fucking chair.
The call was coming from inside the house.
And the kids are, what—splayed on the carpet on the playroom floor? Strapped to one of the recliners, a sock stuffed into their mouths? The horrible, awful vision slips like black smoke across my mind, and I pound the wheel and howl into my car because I don’t know. I don’t know if they’re bound and gagged, if they’re conscious, if they’re even really alive. For now, Jade said when I asked if they were okay, and as much as I believe my wife, I know one thing with one hundred thousand percent certainty: never believe the asshole with the gun.
Calm down, Cam. You can’t save any of them if you drop dead of a heart attack. Calm down and breathe.
But it’s hard getting any air with this Mack truck sitting on my chest. My heart is a clenched fist, punching a fast, erratic beat against my ribs. I’m on the verge of blacking out—an all too familiar sensation these days, like floating out of my body and watching myself die from three feet above.
Only you don’t die from panic attacks or atrial fibrillation or whatever the hell else the ER doc told me these episodes could be. You only feel like it.
The light turns green, but traffic doesn’t move, and I lay on the horn. The woman in the SUV takes her sweet time, pausing to wag a bird over her shoulder before she shifts her foot to the gas. The car eases forward, and I ride the brake and her bumper. I glance over both shoulders, edging closer to the lanes on either side, but I’m closed in by wall-to-wall traffic, and it’s not going to loosen anytime soon. Atlanta’s notorious rush hour is just getting started.
Calm down.
Think things through.
Don’t come to me with a list of problems, I’m always preaching to my staff. Bring me the solutions. Identify the issues, evaluate your options, tackle the items one by one. This is what I am constantly telling them.
Now it’s my turn.
Problem number one: I don’t have $734,296 in cash. I don’t have that anywhere in a nearby universe. Cash flow may be the lifeblood of the restaurant business, but that doesn’t mean I have piles of it lying around. Whatever cash I have on paper, none of it is liquid.
And contrary to popular belief, the restaurant business doesn’t run on cash, not since an Atlanta bartender was killed in a late-night burglary a few years back. Overnight, every sit-down restaurant in town instituted a no-cash policy—Apple Pay or cards only. Even with the tip jars at the bars, even if I raided the valet stands, there’s no way I can come up with that kind of money, not before the 7 p.m. deadline.
Which brings me to problem number two: just under three hours for this mission impossible, and that includes driving time in bumper-to-bumper traffic. I’m still a good four minutes away from the office, and the banks close in—I glance at the clock on the dash—forty-eight minutes.
The vise around my chest twists tighter, sending a surge of adrenaline to my heart. It bangs against my ribs in an almost painful pulse, brisk and erratic. The last time I felt this way, an ER doc whipped out the heart paddles.
The lane to my left opens up, and I swerve into it and gun the gas, blowing past the SUV.
Problem number three: no police.
Honestly, this is the only one of his demands I can get behind. The idea of a bunch of armed cops swarming up the lawn, busting through doors and crawling through windows… I’ve seen enough movies to know how that scenario ends, and the thought of something happening to Jade and the kids makes my double-beating heart explode into quadruple time. Whatever made this guy decide today was the day to force his way into my house and hold my family at gunpoint, it’s not because he has any other options. His back is against a wall, and he’s obviously desperate. I don’t want to think about what will happen to Jade and the Bees if I fail.