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“Jamie is gone?” I ask.

“Yes!”

“Natalie, what happened? Where are you? What do you mean?” I ask the string of questions as calmly as possible. Usually, I am the calm in the crisis. I have been through my fair share of emergency situations. But this…this hits differently. It’s a cocktail of fear and panic, and anger that goes so deep it’s foreign to me.

“I…I don’t know. I got home from the convention center and Brittany is hurt and Jamie is gone,” she sobs. “Someone broke in.”

And just like that…my brain starts to connect the dots. Dots that have been there all along. Ones that everyone could see and yet no one would have ever wanted to believe.

“Stay put,” I tell her as I rush to my car. “I’ll be right there. Don’t go anywhere.”

I end the call and call Tuck, hoping he is still in the building.

“Need me already?” he asks with no context at hand.

“Emergency, Tuck. Meet me at my car now,” I tell him, and I can already hear movement on the other end of the line.

“Security code?” he asks, probably assuming it has something to do with the building or my personal safety.

“Silver,” I tell him. It means there is a dangerous person or persons involved. “And an Amber Alert.”

“Ash?”

“Someone broke into Natalie’s condo. Jamie is gone.”

When we arrive, the ambulance has left, but the complex is still crowded with officers. A Miami-Dade missing-persons detective is coordinating the scene, and an FBI child-abduction agent is already on the way. Yellow tape blocks the open door while the crime-scene team works inside.

I pull Natalie into me, and she breaks hard enough that I am holding her up.

“Someone has him, Ash. Someone took him,” she sobs.

“I know. We are going to get him back.” Tuck checks in with the scene commander and offers our security records and staff. He stays outside the tape until the detective brings him into the briefing.

“I don’t understand who would have done this,” she says. “Or why?”

“Natalie,” I say, sitting her down on a bench. Then I crouch in front of her, holding her shaking hands in mine. “I want you to think for a moment. To take some things into consideration.”

“We don’t have any enemies,” she says. “At least, not that I know of.”

“What about Brittany?” I ask, wanting to exhaust all the possibilities before saying what I think is going on. “Does she have anyone out to get her? A boyfriend or ex or–”

Natalie shakes her head. “Brittany hasn’t been in a relationship for years. And her last boyfriend is married with kids now. It was amicable. She went to the wedding.”

I nod. Well. Consider that box checked.

“Natalie…” I say again. “Listen to me. We held a meeting today…with Janice Brunswick.”

“Okay…”

“Janice returned with independent counsel and negotiated a written cooperation agreement with the prosecutor. She admitted that she turned a blind eye to irregular transfers out of fear and probable threats.”

“Marcus, I don’t see how this is relevant to Jamie,” she says impatiently, but I just nod.

“The money was and is being transferred into falsely labeled accounts overseas…in Reese and Garrett’s names,” I say.

“Jesus,” she lets out. “So it was her. It was her all along.”

“We tried to get ahold of them and Reese’s phone was disconnected. Either that, or she blocked everyone, including your father,” I go on.