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Graham Webb, president of Yorke & Webb Import Services, reminded his eight-year-old daughter, Abigail, not to go too close to the water.
“I know, Daddy,” she grumped at him.
“Okay.”
Then, after offering him a smile, she ran out of the house to play on the narrow stretch of sand encircling his home on Lake Beulah.
His living room window afforded him a clear view of the lake, although woods on each side of the property did restrict the visibility to a stretch of beach a few hundred feet wide. Abigail knew better than to wander out of sight of the house. Graham had made that clear to her and kept reminding her whenever she came to stay with him.
Now he watched her through the window to make sure she obeyed him, which she did. The early evening was too cool to swim, and apart from a woman walking her dog along the shore, the beach was empty.
Satisfied that Abigail was playing safely, Graham grabbed a martini from his home bar and then scrolled through the latest earnings reports on his tablet computer.
His company, an import and distribution service that worked with all the major players in the pharmaceutical industry, continued to fare well in the current rocky economic landscape.
He glanced outside again. The day was calm, the lake still. He took a satisfying sip from his drink and then went into the sunroom, the place in the house that gave him the clearest view of the lake. He peered out the window one more time to make sure Abigail was safe.
The woman with the dog had stopped beside his daughter, and Abigail was kneeling beside the terrier, gently petting him. The dog looked well enough behaved, sitting obediently at the woman’s feet, and Graham’s attention went back to his tablet.
After checking the day’s stock market report, he started evaluating if he should sell some of the shares he had in the tech giant ChipEvolution. He was finishing up when his cell phone rang and he glanced at the screen.
His ex-wife’s number.
Oh, she’d better not be calling to try and take Abigail home early. They had joint custody, alternating weeks, but Erin had pulled this stunt before, demanding that she pick up Abigail early, trying to get an extra weekend with her.
The phone rang again.
As he tapped the cell’s screen to answer the call, he glanced out the window once more and saw that the beach was empty. No woman. No dog. No Abigail.
As he brought the phone to his ear, he headed to the door to check on his daughter. “Erin, I told you not to—”
“Stay in the house.” A man’s voice cut him off.
“What? Who is this?”
“Stay in the house, Graham. I want to talk to you and I want your undivided attention. Believe me when I tell you that you would not want to step outside right now.”
The words hit him like a slap in the face and sent a terrifying chill worming through him. “Who is this?”
“This is the man who can get to your ex-wife’s phone. This is the man who can get to your daughter whenever he wants to.”
Abigail!
Graham rushed toward the door but as he grabbed the handle, the man commanded him again not to do it: “Stay in the house. We have your daughter and believe me, if you step out that door you will never see her again. And you would not want to.”
“You have my daughter?”
“We do and—”
“I swear to God, if you touch her, if you hurt her—”
“It would be best at this point not to threaten me, Graham. She’s safe. For now.”
Graham went to the kitchen window to try to see the strip of beach from another angle, but his daughter was nowhere to be seen. “Let me talk to her!”
The man ignored him. “Listen carefully. Tomorrow morning a shipment of pharmaceutical products is going to arrive at Logan International Airport. You’re going to approve the paperwork personally and oversee the loading process onto the semis for distribution. I know that you aren’t always involved in signing off on arrivals like this, but in this case I would like you to expedite the order. If you call the police or contact the authorities we will know. And we will harm your daughter in ways that I would rather not like to describe.”
Graham peered out the window at the vacant beach. “I don’t understand what any of this has to do with my daughter. Let me talk to Abigail!”
“Just take care of things tomorrow and we will never bother you or your daughter again.”
“So you’ll let her go? Tonight? Right now?”
“We’ll do what we deem necessary to encourage your cooperation.”
“I’ll do it, I…” His thoughts shifted for a second from Abigail to his ex-wife. He might not like her, might not like how much she’d gotten in their settlement, but she was Abigail’s mother, and if anything happened to her it would shatter their daughter.
This guy has Erin’s phone.
“Erin. Is she alright?”
“She is. But if you don’t do as I asked, we will make use of her to hurt Abigail. We’ll make the girl watch and the things we’ll do would not be ones that—”
“Okay, okay. Stop. I’ll do it. I swear.”
“Alright, we’re counting on you being a man of your word. You are a man of your word, aren’t you, Graham?”
“Yes, I’ll do it. Don’t hurt them, please.”
And then the line went dead and Graham bolted from the house toward the beach.
“Abigail!” He rushed across the lawn toward the water’s edge. “Where are you?”
He was almost to the sand when he saw her walking his way along the shore from his right.
“Abigail!” There was both anger and worry in his voice, the tone a parent can’t keep from using when a child has wandered away and then been found again. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah.” She sounded a little frightened. “I was just petting the dog.”
Beyond her the beach was vacant.
“You’re sure you’re okay?”
“Of course, Daddy.”
“You know better than to wander off. To go out of sight.”
“I’m sorry.” She lowered her head. “It’s just… She told me I could come and see her other dog too.”
“Where did she go?”
Abigail turned, looked behind her, and saw the empty beach. “I don’t know. When we got over there she got a phone call and told me she needed to go and that I’d better head back home so you wouldn’t worry about me. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to—”
“She didn’t touch you, did she? Did she touch you?”
Abigail shook her head and brushed away a tear. “Don’t be mad, Daddy, I didn’t mean to.”
“Come here. I’m not mad, baby.” He encircled her in his arms. “I’m not mad.”
On the way to the house she told him that the woman was nice and that she was “normal-looking” and had red hair and that she’d said she would see her again soon, “if your daddy decides that’s what he wants.”
Whoever these people were, Graham was not going to gamble with his daughter’s life. And as harsh as his feelings toward Erin were, he wasn’t going to take any chances that she would be hurt in the ways he was imagining. All these people were asking him to do was oversee the transfer of a shipment. There was nothing illegal or unethical about that.
He took Abigail inside and locked all the doors, although he had a feeling that if the people who were behind this wanted to get in, locking a door wasn’t going to make any difference.
And, for fear of what they would do to his daughter and his estranged ex-wife, he decided that tomorrow morning he would do exactly as the man on the phone had demanded.
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