Page 80 of King’s Ransom

‘What do you mean, especially me?’ I said.

‘I got strict orders. No-one goes in till Special Agent Mills is debriefed. Only exception is direct family, and Hoop made it very clear that that ain’t you. He told me to make sure you definitely didn’t go in. So, let me put this as delicately as I can, four-eyes.’ (126.) ‘Fuck off.’

I wasn’t even looking at the young agent as he said this.

I was just staring past him at Audrey in her bed.

That she was alive and recovering was the only thing I needed to know.

There was no point engaging in an argument I couldn’t win.

I left the hospital and went to the motel to sleep.

22 December

By the following morning, the story of Aristo King’s kidnapping was absolutely everywhere.

It was all over the TV, press, radio and social media.

Sometime overnight, someone in an adjoining building had uploaded to X a long-range photo of Merritt Garrett hanging from the window washer’s harness with Cassandra King in his arms.

That shot turned him into an out-and-out hero.

And so, over the next day, Garrett went on Good Morning America, MS NOW, CNN and SiriusXM. He even did a special recording of The Joe Rogan Experience podcast.

I saw a couple of these interviews on the waiting-room TV. Garrett looked uncomfortable in the spotlight, unused to receiving so much raw praise and adulation—it reminded me a little of my own awkward experience with the media—but I thought he did really well, all things considered.

The trending topics online were:

billionaire kidnap foiled

tower of terror and

merritt garrett detective hero.

‘Jesus,’ Heidi said, ‘you’d think Garrett solved the whole damn thing by himself.’

I said, ‘He did figure out the Sleepy Hollow connection from the Ambien in the hollowed-out book. That was clever.’

It was around midday, the day after our wild day, and Bill and Heidi had joined me at the hospital.

‘Sam, you leapt across an elevator shaft and jumped out of a building onto a helicopter,’ Heidi said. ‘You deserve some recognition.’

‘You also figured out the first riddle pointing to the elevator,’ Bill said.

I shrugged. ‘Thanks, guys, but it’s not about credit. It’s about solving the case and we did that. We played our part—’

I cut myself off, seeing another figure from our long day appear on the TV, being interviewed by Fox News.

Special Agent Trey Hooper.

Having figured out—all by himself, he claimed—where Katya King had been hidden, unlike Merritt Garrett, Hooper was absolutely delighting in his fifteen minutes of fame.

And it seemed the FBI’s press office was helping him in any way it could.

He appeared on three times as many shows as Merritt Garrett, something that only happened when you had a team of publicists working for you.

‘Such an asshole,’ Heidi said.