Page 88 of Save Her Life

“If you tell me where the gold is, and we confirm that it’s where you say it is, then yes.” Not that she had any idea how she was to pull all that off in time to benefit Jennings’s encroaching deadline.

Nolan was punching one fist into the palm of his other hand. But violence and action were the go-to tactics inhisnegotiation toolkit. Another thing they’d never agree on. Her phone rang, and chills ran through her. “It’s Lonnie,” she said to Nolan and Patton. “I need to take this.”

Patton made a gesture as if to say,By all means.

Sandra muted the video and answered Jennings’s call.

“Time’s up,” Lonnie said. “Tell me why I shouldn’t put a bullet in her head right now.”

Olivia was crying in the background, and it tore at Sandra’s soul. But Patton was watching.Remember it’s Natalie,not Olivia, Natalie…“Because you want the gold.” She could have pointed out that he was calling fifteen minutes early, but there was no advantage to stating the obvious. Jennings would have called early intentionally to shake her.

“Then you know where I can find it?”

“I’m in the process of finding out.” She dared to look at Patton, who was saying something. With the sound off, she couldn’t know what. She’d never been great at reading lips.

“Screwprocess of. Find out.”

Olivia cried louder. “Mom!”

“Please, just one more hour. That’s all I’m asking for.” Silence grew on the line. She was hoping to extract understanding from a madman. He’d waited thirty-three years for the gold, so what was another hour? But was she insane to think she could trust Jennings to be reasonable?

Jennings eventually said, “I will call you back in one hour,” and hung up.

“What did he say?” Nolan asked, rising from his chair, but he sat back down when she drilled him with a glare. She couldn’t answer that without Patton asking who else was in the room.

“Darrell,” she said after unmuting the connection, “Lonnie’s going to kill Natalie if he doesn’t know the location of the gold in one hour.”Natalie, not Olivia…She had to immerse herself in the fabrication.

Darrell smiled. “I still don’t buy that he has Natalie. He wouldn’t do that or even know where to find her.”

Where the hell was the deepfake video? But just as she thought it, her phone chimed with a message. She confirmed it was what she was after. “Here’s the thing. You want proof, Darrell? Lonnie sent through a video. Here it is.” She hit play, without even having a chance to vet it first, and held the screento the camera so Patton would get a good view. She could only watch from a tight angle.

Natalie was strapped to a chair. She had a gag in her mouth, and her eyes were large and frightened. An arm moved in the frame and removed the gag. “Dad, please, do what he asks! He’s going to kill me!”

Then the arm was back, and Natalie was sideswiped across the face. Natalie cried out again, and the video went black.

With the video finished, Sandra set her phone on the table. “You saw it with your own eyes. Lonnie has her, Darrell.” She was doing all the mental coaching she could to remind herself that the dramatization was staged. It was so well done that she’d inserted Olivia’s face there instead, and to see the restraints, the gag, the frightened eyes, the slap… It was almost too much.

“I can’t believe he’s doing this.” Darrell’s face morphed from shock to outrage. “I’m going to kill that son of a bitch!”

“As FBI, I can’t condone that, but I understand why you’d feel that way. But I can bring all this to an end, save Natalie, and arrest Lonnie.”

“And you swear I’ll get immunity?”

“You have my word.”

“Fine, I’ll tell you where to find the gold.”

Sandra listened as he laid out precisely where to go. It was an old fishing cabin in the middle of a wooded area in a Washington park, and she remembered seeing it before. “I sure hope you got that right because Lonnie’s running out of patience.”

“Trust me. It’s there.”

She disconnected the video chat with a promise to update Darrell.As if.

“We have the location. Let’s go.” Nolan popped up from his chair and pushed it into the table.

“All we need to do is hand this information over to Lonnie when he calls.”

“You honestly trust that guy to give us our girl back on your word alone?” Nolan shook his head. “No, we need to get that gold in our hands, and then we have something to bargain with.”

---