Un-Kidnap Me Billionaire Alpha Age Gap Romance - Hazel Parker Page 0,2
was most certainly not “girl.”
“But then her boyfriend came down after sleeping in late and started asking where Kaylie was. They were really stupid, Scott, they didn’t call the police for a full day—”
“Stick to the facts, please,” I said.
“But—”
“Talk to your therapist on your own time. Give me the facts and nothing more.”
I was pretty sure Mother Charleston would cuss me out before the end of the call. It wouldn’t be the first time. But everyone always stuck around.
“The local police didn’t do anything, Scott. It was horrible. They kept saying she was rich and pretty; she’d probably gotten bored and gone somewhere else. We pushed them so that they started doing something of an investigation, but I didn’t have any faith they’d actually do anything. So, I…I put out a press release.”
Overtly, I displayed no reaction to this.
But inside, I wanted to knock some damn sense into this woman. The last thing you did when you found out a public figure had been kidnapped was put it on blast. That was a good way to give the captors all the leverage they needed to extract as much money as possible.
And while I didn’t think he was the one behind all this—not yet, at least—anyone worth half a mind would know full well that ransom for someone famous would fetch a hell of a lot more than ransom for some relatively unknown hot girl. And nothing quite shouted, “She’s important!” like a fucking press release.
“That same afternoon, I got a call from a robotic voice. It said they had Kaylie, and they wanted ten million for her return.”
Mother Charleston started to sob. I held the phone a few inches from my ear. This could have been his work, but there wasn’t enough to go on yet.
“When did the voice call come to you?”
“Three days ago.”
That was enough time that they could have taken her anywhere in the world. Most captors who wanted ransom and not something else—primarily to send someone into the sex trade—would not take the person far, because it would make handing off difficult. But still, it went without saying sooner was better.
“And have the police given any other update since?”
“They’re still skeptical. We haven’t heard back from the voice, so they doubt the legitimacy of the call. But I got the FBI involved.”
“And did the caller say to not get anyone else involved?”
The silence on the other end of the line was all I needed to know. On the one hand, such threats were often easily ignored—and thus, not surprisingly, disregarded accordingly. But someone who had the balls to capture a public figure of this magnitude and ask for eight figures’ worth of ransom was not someone who was to be taken lightly.
That was probably why they hadn’t said a fucking word since the end of the first call. As soon as the FBI got involved and the captors found out, they knew they could play hardball. And more hardball meant a higher ransom figure.
No wonder they fucking offered me $10 million to rescue little Kaylie. They probably feared having to pay an extra five or ten million dollars to their captors after reaching out to the FBI. And they would have been in the right to worry about it.
“Scott, you’ve got to help me,” Mother Charleston said, her sobbing reaching a nearly hysterical level. “I don’t even know if my daughter is alive anymore. You are truly my only hope. I didn’t even know you existed before someone tipped me off to reach out to you, but…oh, fuck, Scott, please!”
I let her have her moments wailing. Parents and clients like this just needed a moment to wail.
“Will you do it? Will you rescue my daughter?”
The question wasn’t hard. She might have been annoying as hell, and I could imagine her daughter being a pain in the ass, but there was a simple counterpoint. Ten million dollars went a long fucking way towards quelling a lot of concerns.
“Yes.”
Chapter 2: Kaylie
I sat on the balcony of my Cayman Villa, sipping on a nice margarita as the sun set in the distance. It felt as if I had just spent the day tanning out on the beach, the whole time never moving more than five feet away from my boyfriend, Cameron.
But at this moment, I wasn’t thinking about what I had done that day or what I would do that evening. I wasn’t thinking at all.
Because Cameron’s thick hands rested on my scalp, giving me the most relaxing