Page 29 of King’s Ransom

She was catatonic, frozen.

‘Miss Kimura!’ Hooper yelled.

‘Trey . . .’ Audrey said. ‘She’s freaked out—’

‘Fifty seconds . . .’ the Tech Detect said, once again our timekeeper.

Hooper turned to check on the insurance guy, McCade. ‘Well?!’

McCade held up his hand while he kept whispering into his phone.

‘Fuck.’ Hooper swung back to Ms Kimura: ‘Miss, it’s your boss’s son, damn it! The media is already arriving downstairs! When they find out you let that bodyguard die, they’ll be all over you, but if you let a six-year-old boy fall, you’ll never live it down!’

While Hooper may have been an asshole, it was hard to fault his logic here.

But I was having doubts.

I stepped back from the edge of the shaft, rejoining Heidi and Bill.

‘This is wrong . . .’ I said softly.

‘What do you mean?’ Bill said.

‘This isn’t about money,’ I said. ‘Twenty million, forty million. This guy doesn’t want money.’

‘What does he want?’ Heidi asked.

‘Forty seconds . . .’ the Tech Detect said from behind me.

‘Something else,’ I said. ‘Why bring five accomplished detectives here? He’s already watching us—somehow. He wants to see us at work, see us struggle with his riddles. He wants to see us suffer. Which means—’

I paused in mid-sentence.

‘Even if we pay, he’s gonna drop that boy.’

At the edge of the shaft, Audrey had managed to calm Hooper down and get the harried Ms Kimura to focus.

Audrey said, ‘Okay, take it easy. We can get the money back later. What’s the passcode for your boss’s bitcoin wallet?’

Audrey threw me a helpless shrug. With the insurance company dawdling, it was the best option.

‘Thirty seconds . . .’

My eyes swept from Audrey to Ms Kimura to Quinn McCade to the small boy in the shaft, hanging upside-down above the deadly drop.

And I made my decision.

‘Heidi, Bill. Follow me.’

I ran.

Back through the small crowd of people, shoving my way through them with Heidi and Bill behind me.

I came to the spiralling staircase and bounded down it two steps at a time.

I came to the lowest floor of the three-level apartment and raced to the elevator doors there.

Mimicking what the superintendent had done earlier, I heaved apart the doors, flicked the release switch in the upper rim and pulled the doors fully open.