Page 19 of Lone Star Target

Chapter Seven

----- ? ----

Kit stared at the message, and while it was a huge gut punch, she not only read it, she took out her own phone and clicked a photo of it.

The text was from an unknown number, probably another burner, and the message was crystal clear.

“Understood,” she read aloud. “When I have Malley, I’ll make the ransom demand for a million. As soon as your sister pays, I’ll silence both of them for good.”

“A million,” she repeated, and she looked at Jace. “Yes, I have that much, and yes, I would have paid the ransom.”

He cursed and was no doubt about to launch into an argument of why that would have been a bad idea. But she had her own argument about that.

“I would have paid it in such a way that it could hopefully be traced by Ruby’s techs, and then I would have tried to escape,” she spelled out.

Escape. From something her own brother had set up.

Her nerves were already zinging all over the place, and that certainly didn’t help settle them any. It was hard to tamp down the sickening dread of knowing that her brother had orchestrated Jace’s and her murders. And according to the time and date on the text, he’d been informed of those arrangements the night before. So, before he’d even come into her office and drank the poison.

Did the timing for that fit?

Maybe.

“If Trevor was going to have us kidnapped, then why do the poison ploy?” she came out and asked.

“It’s possible he wasn’t responsible for that,” Jace said, and then he quickly tacked on that, “You don’t pay a ransom for me, understand?”

His nerves had to be zinging, too, but he sure as heck wasn’t showing any signs of it. “Moot point,” she finally countered. “Because neither one of us is going to be kidnapped.”

She hoped.

Since she didn’t want the cops or someone else trying to open the elevator before they were done, she checked for other messages on the burner.

None.

And the burner wasn’t set to save copies of sent emails. Maybe though that was something the police lab could dig out.

Kit went onto the second phone, and like the first, it contained a single text with no record of a reply. According to the date and time stamp, this one had come before the ransom one.

“Holding area is complete,” it read. “No one will hear her scream once she’s inside.”

That sure didn’t help her nerves, but thankfully it pissed her off. Rather than voice any of that anger, Kit took a picture of the message and moved to the third phone. Repeating the pattern, it had one text, no replies.

“Understood,” Jace read aloud this time. “Your son isn’t to be harmed.”

That was both comforting and confusing. “Then, who just tried to kill Brandon if the plan was to keep him out of this?”

Jace lifted his shoulder. “Maybe Trevor changed his mind when he realized Brandon had taken the phones.”

That was possible, but Kit found it nearly impossible to wrap her head around the possibility that Trevor would allow someone to hurt Brandon. Then again, it was hard to wrap her mind around any of this.

“Are you all right?” someone called out, and then someone knocked on the elevator door.

“It’s one of the cops,” Jace explained, and he took the bag from her and released the door so it’d open.

One of the uniformed officers was standing there, and he seemed to take a breath of relief when he saw them. “Uh, Detective Malley,” the cop said. According to his nametag, he was Mark Summers. “I mean, Mr. Malley.”

“Jace,” he offered. “Did you find the shooter?”

---