Page 78 of From the Embers
Two lines typed in black ink. Nothing special yet completely earth-shattering.
$5 million to buy her back
Followed by a twenty-six-digit number of some sort.
That was it.
No instructions or explanation.
Just one demand and five lives that would never be the same.
I’d seen Eason broken and shattered.
I’d seen him bleeding and blanketed by fire.
I’d seen him hollow and emotionally demolished.
But as he fell to his knees, his hands shaking, the unimaginable setting in, the man I loved was obliterated.
She was gone.
When the police arrived, they separated me and Eason for questioning almost immediately. Anger was Eason’s next response. For over two hours, I listened to him raging in the kitchen. The absolute agony in his voice matched the pain inside my chest.
They asked me questions, but I only had so many answers.
We’d been asleep. The house had been locked up tight. Yet someone had walked right in and taken our little girl.
Security footage from the camera on the front of the house showed nothing. No car pulling in or out of the driveway. No shadowy figures approaching under the shade of darkness. There was nothing on the side cameras, either. The only lead we had came from the back of the house, which showed a three-second clip of a person dressed in black, wearing a ski mask and gloves. We couldn’t even make out if it was a man or a woman before the wires were cut, disabling the camera altogether.
Then there was Asher, who swore up and down, unwaveringly, that he’d woken up to see his dead father carrying Luna down the hall.
After several hours of questioning us separately, we were no closer to finding Luna. Eason was a mess, completely inconsolable, and I felt like I’d done a backslide into the past where everything hurt and nothing made sense. Finally, they brought us back together in the living room. A female officer sat with the kids in the playroom, and as much as it destroyed me to hear Asher’s muffled cries, this wasn’t something he needed to be a part of.
“My baby is out there somewhere with God only knows who. Why the fuck are you standing in my house right now talking about ifs?” Eason boomed.
“Just breathe,” I urged, stepping into his side. His heart was beating so fast that I could feel it pounding against his ribs. “Just let him talk, okay?”
He stabbed a hand into the top of his hair and the muscles on his neck strained, but he closed his mouth long enough to let the detective continue.
“What I was trying to say was we have an entire team working on finding your daughter. I know Agent Garrett was here earlier from the Bureau and spoke with both of you separately about possible suspects and the hazards of paying the ransom.”
I closed my eyes and stared down at the floor, Luna’s honey browns on the backs of my lids. For Luna, I would have paid any amount of money in the world to end the nightmare. Neither of us had five million just sitting around. But, with enough time, I had faith I could gain access to it. I could sell the house, clear out every bank account, retirement account, and investment portfolio I had. Selling Prism alone would have netted me ten times that.
But with our chances of finding her after the twenty-four-hour mark dwindling by the second, time was the one thing we did not have.
Even if we could come up with the money, Agent Garrett and his team were strictly against paying the ransom. They said there was no guarantee the abductors would give her back and sometimes it just made them greedy and violent, demanding even more.
So Luna was gone.
Someone had taken her.
And we were at a stalemate with no way to get her back.
I would have rather been back at the fire.
I would have rather been back inside the fire.
I would have rather been on fire than not knowing if we would ever see our little girl again.
And based on the agony carved in his face, Eason would have said the same.
“So, what do we do now?” Eason asked, his anger ebbing into helplessness.
Detective Hoffman hitched up his navy slacks, his badge showing on his hip. “We are working closely with the FBI to bring your daughter home. But I’m going to be honest with you. We don’t have a lot of information to go on here. We have a couple theories we’re looking into though. The first being that this is something related to your newfound celebrity status. Maybe a stalker or someone of the likes. The fact that the note was left on your piano is telling. And if both girls were asleep in the same room, it would definitely explain why they only took your daughter and left the Winters girl behind.”
