Page 10 of I Am Salvation

Chapter Three

Dragon

I retrieve my cell phone from the pocket of my jeans and stare at the number scrawled on the paper. The blue ink is smudged slightly from where I gripped it too tightly. I enter the number, hit the call button, and hold the phone to my ear. Each ring seems to slap at me—a reminder of my sister’s abandoned room, her missing smile, that last Christmas morning we spent together.

The ringing stops.

Then a pause.

Finally—

“Who’s this?”

Do I say who I am? The package was addressed to me. Well, not addressed so much as it just had my name affixed to it.

“I’m the person who you gave this number to.”

Tense silence.

Then a voice.

“Ah, Griffin’s brother.”

Her name in his voice sounds like a curse. Though I expected something like this, shivers slide down my spine, and I tighten my grip on the phone, my knuckles turning white.

“What do you want?” I rasp out.

Another pause. “To talk.”

My heart thunders. “About what?”

He chuckles coldly. “About Griffin, of course.”

The room seems to tilt. I know it’s in my mind, but still I grab the edge of Diana’s counter to steady myself. “Where is she?”

“Are you going to stop investigating?”

I clear my throat. “Already done.”

Not true, but Alayna assured me she would be more discreet. Or maybe she already was discreet. Maybe whoever this is just assumed I was investigating. After all…whoever it is knows where I live, which means they know the penthouse is owned by Diana Steel.

Maybe they think I’ve got access to Steel cash, so they assumed I’d hired someone.

Oh, God… If they think I have access to Steel money, they’re going to want me to pay for information.

“Good,” the voice says. “Keep it that way.”

“And then what?” I ask, my grip on the phone so tight that my fingers begin to ache. “You tell me where Griffin is? That she’s safe?”

A low laugh, chilling me to the bone, echoes through the line. “Safe is relative.”

That’s the final push. The last straw. My blood comes to a boil.

“What does that mean?” I shout.

“Calm down,” the voice says.

Is there a familiarity to the voice? Is it the same voice that called me from the other numbers? Something nudges at the back of my mind, but I can’t place it. I force myself to take a deep breath before speaking again. “Tell me where she is.”

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