Chapter 65 - The Call from New Hampshire
I emerged into the overcast afternoon air near the Praça de Londres. The sky over Lisbon had turned the color of bruised slate, heavy with the promise of rain. I purchased a cheap burner phone from a corner kiosk near the plaza, paying in cash, and found a quiet table in the back corner of a traditional pastelaria.
Before I could dial Marcus Lind, my original phone—which I had powered back on only to retrieve Davies’s emergency contact—vibrated violently in my handbag.
The caller ID showed Caleb’s mobile number.
I hesitated for three rings before sliding the screen to accept the call. "Caleb."
"Mom? Mom, thank God," his voice broke over the speaker, high and trembling on the edge of hysteria. "Where are you? Davies’s office won't tell us anything, and two men just showed up at our front door."
My grip tightened on the cheap coffee cup in front of me until the ceramic clicked against my ring. "Did you let them in?"
"No! But they had legal paperwork—or what looked like legal paperwork. They said they were representatives of an international asset recovery trust. They asked if you left any locked boxes or safe-deposit keys at our place before you went back to Portugal."
"Where is Tori?" I demanded.
"She’s upstairs with the kids. She’s terrified, Mom. She started screaming at them through the Ring doorbell, and one of the men just held up a photograph of our living room window from last night. They were watching the house, Mom! What the hell is going on? What did Dad do?"
"Listen to me, Caleb," I said, my voice hardening into iron. "Take Tori and the children right now. Pack one bag for each of them. Do not use your car; call a taxi to the downtown grocery store and take the bus to your sister-in-law’s cabin in Vermont. Do not use your credit cards. Do not post anything on your phone."
"Mom, we can't just leave our house!" he cried out, the familiar, petulant whine creeping back into his voice. "Tori has a brand partnership video due tomorrow, and Leo has soccer practice! You need to fix this! This is all because you ran off to Portugal instead of helping us!"
The sheer, staggering idiocy of his response nearly made me laugh aloud in the quiet café.
"Caleb," I said, cold and deadly quiet. "A man who wants forty million dollars doesn't care about your soccer practice. If you stay in that house until sunset, you will not live to see tomorrow morning. Take your family and run, or bury them yourself. I am hanging up now."
May you like
"Mom, wait—!"
I terminated the call, popped the battery out of the phone, and snapped the SIM card cleanly in two before dropping both pieces into the dregs of my cold espresso.
