Men were dangerous. But women… Women were vicious.
Gideon grunted awake as twenty-three pounds of beagle landed heavily on his bare chest. Gritty eyes flying open, he blinked up at Lucky’s anxious face.
“What the hell, dude?” he asked gruffly, rubbing the dog’s back with one hand and his eyelids with the other.
The sudden, urgent knock at the door sent Lucky into an explosion of barking and baying, and explained the beagle’s urgency in waking him up. Sensitive canine hearing would’ve caught the sound of approaching footsteps. Or perhaps, Gideon acknowledged, he’d been in the midst of a night terror he couldn’t remember now, and the beagle had woken him from it. Either way, Gideon was sliding out of bed instantly.
“Coming,” he called out as he caught up his black pajama pants from the footboard of the bed. Eva appeared on the opposite side, pulling on her robe.
They ran to the door together.
The detective standing in the darkened hallway was hard-faced. “They’ll be calling back in a minute.”
Gideon felt the last vestiges of sleep leave his mind in a burst of rage. “You let them hang up?” he snapped, brushing past and racing down the hall.
“They weren’t going to wait for the call to be traced,” the detective bit back, jogging behind him.
Eva took up the rear.
“When did they call?” Gideon asked. The sky was a pale blue backdrop for the soft orange glow of the sunrise, making the interior lights garish and harsh in contrast. He glanced at the clock on the wall to confirm the time—just past six in the morning. In the living room, Victor was in discussion with one of the detectives. There was a proliferation of coffee mugs on almost every horizontal surface.
A tech sitting at the dining table with a laptop answered his question. “Two minutes ago.”
“What did you tell them?”
“Nothing.” Looking up at him through bedazzled hot pink glasses, the female tech looked too young to be served alcohol. “As soon as I said hello, they said they’d be calling back in three minutes and that you’d better be the one to answer.”
His frustration hardly eased.Ishould’vebeen the one to answer.
Eva joined him with a wriggling and barking Lucky in her arms.
The tech slid a piece of paper across the table. The font was oversized and easy to read. “Run through that real quick before they call back.”
Gideon picked up the document and scanned it.
“Let me handle Lucky,” Victor offered as he joined his daughter.
“Thank you,” Gideon said, taking his wife’s hand as soon as it was free. Victor snagged a rope toy from the basket by the terrace doors and stepped outside.
“It was a woman’s voice on the phone,” the tech told him, her leg bouncing as she tapped her foot rapidly. “But I’d bet money it’s being disguised by an AI modulator.”
He released his breath in a rush.Calm down. You may not be in control, but you don’t have to give that away.
Eva jumped violently when their home phone rang, the sound magnified by the equipment installed by the police. Gideon pressed a quick, hard kiss to her temple and moved behind the tech, who hit a button to answer the call on speaker.
“This is Cross,” he snapped, his fists clenched at his sides.
“Good morning, Gideon,” a cheery female voice answered, frightening in its banality. “Sorry to wake you. I’m truly amazed you could even catch a wink at a time like this. Very impressive.”
“Put Ireland on the phone.”
“But how can you be sure it’s actually her?” Suddenly, the voice changed to Ireland’s. “There are so many ways to mimic a voice these days.”
Eva’s gasp mirrored his own dismay.
His rage was icy. “If you can’t provide proof of life, there’s no reason to believe you’re anything but a fucked-up prankster.”
“True that.” The voice was once again generically female. “So, which would you prefer? Finger, toe, ear, or eyeball? She does have such pretty eyes. Like your eyes, aren’t they? Perhaps you’d like an extra?”
