Page 104 of Keep This Promise
“Keep them talking for as long as you can. Ask questions. If they don’t answer, ask it again until they answer, okay?”
“Okay.” I touch the green button and force myself to say, “Hello?”
The voice on the other line is garbled, disguising who it could be. “We have your daughter.”
“Is she alive?”
“You have something we want, and if you return it, we will return her.”
My hands are shaking, and I want to scream, but I remain calm—for Eden. “Is my daughter alive?”
There’s a pause. “She is alive.”
Oh, thank God. “I want . . . to hear her voice.”
“You have something that belongs to me, and I want it back.”
The fear that I have tried to control rushes forward. “Please, I don’t have anything but Eden. Please, she’s sick, and she needs to come home. She has diabetes and could die. God, please just tell me what you think I have, and I’ll give it to you if I have it! I swear it. I just want my daughter home. Please.”
Holden wraps his arm around me, keeping me still. “No need to get hysterical. Your husband took what was mine, and I want it back.”
God, it’s because of me. My breath comes in short bursts and then Holden turns me to look at him. He mouths the wordbreathe.
We inhale and exhale together, and I nod. “Tell me what it is. I don’t know how to look for something if I don’t know what it is.”
The voice laughs quietly. “Find my money, and you get your daughter.”
Then the line goes dead.
ChapterThirty-One
HOLDEN
“She’s asleep. I gave her a sedative,” I explain to the group in the house.
After the phone call, she was hysterical. She kept screaming for Eden and begging for us to call them back, give them every penny we all have. Kate showed up shortly after the phone call, and she was a huge help. Even then, it took us fifteen minutes to get Sophie calm enough to listen to us, and then it was another ten minutes to convince her to take the medication to help her sleep. She is no good to any of us in that state.
“She just needs to rest,” Kate says, gently squeezing my arm. “She’s been through a lot in a very short time.”
I nod. “I know. It’s a lot for all of us.”
“How are you holding up?”
“I don’t know how to answer that.”
She nods in understanding. “Honesty would be a good start.”
I inhale slowly, trying to settle my rioting thoughts. “I’m not okay.”
“I didn’t think you were.”
“This whole thing, I just don’t know what to make of it. Why take an innocent little girl? Why put her life in danger for money? And . . . Sophie has nothing.”
“People do horrible things when they’re desperate. Do you know anything about who her husband was involved with?”
I shake my head. “We know nothing, Kate. Just that Eden is missing, and we have a clock we’re racing to get her before she could die. I will never be able to live through it.”
She sighs deeply. “I’ve been where you are. The fear of not knowing but still having to be strong no matter the outcome. Be there for each other and lean on your friends because they’ll help you through. When I—” She forces a smile. “It’s hard, no matter what the outcome is, but being optimistic is best here.”
