Rob Cornell - Ridley Brone 02 - The Hustle Read Free

should have hung up. Fanning crazy flames never ended well. “Know what?”
    “Where she is.”
    “Where who is?”
    A couple deep breaths. Deeper than any before. “Your daughter.”

    The heat worked pretty well in my office. I could thumb my nose at winter through the window while wearing a short-sleeved T-shirt. But the fire crackling inside of me would have done the same with the thermostat down to thirty. I gripped the phone so tightly my knuckles ached. “What the fuck are you talking about?”
    “Your daughter,” the man repeated. His breath had evened out. He didn’t sound like a masturbating perv anymore. But the creak in his voice didn’t make him sound any friendlier.
    “What about my daughter?”
    “I know where she is.”
    “Bullshit. How?”
    “How doesn’t matter. Ask me why.”
    I’d be damned if I played his games. I didn’t ask him anything. But I bet he could hear my own hot breathing through the phone now.
    “You don’t want to know why?”
    I still didn’t answer. Fuck him. This was a load of shit. Some con. After all, it was no secret that I had inherited a fortune from my song-writing parents. Composing chart-toppers helped them support their true love—the High Note . Not too many people knew about my daughter, though. A local police detective named Palmer; my daughter’s mother, Autumn; and Sheila, an old friend of the family. But Autumn was in prison and Sheila had run off to parts unknown after I ousted her for stealing booze from the bar to support her secret drinking habit.
    I couldn’t see Palmer letting something like that slip, or use it for his own scheme.
    Which left one other possibility. This guy on the phone was somehow connected to the adoption ring my daughter was sold through.
    “I can hear your wheels turning,” the caller said.
    “Who are you?”
    “Ask me why.”
    “Fuck you. Tell me who you are or I’ll hang up and my next call goes to the cops.”
    “Wow,” the guy said, drawing it out so he sounded stoned. “You are dumb.”
    The caller had caught me in the middle of an empty threat. He held the dice in this game and he knew it. I had a choice. Play along and see if he really knew something. Or cut him short and spend the next week wondering if I’d made a mistake. I chewed up and spit out my pride. “Okay. Why?” I asked, though I couldn’t quite remember what I was asking about.
    “Because,” the caller said and for a second I thought that was it. Then the creepy breathing started again. “I know where your daughter is because I’m the one who bought her.”

Chapter 3
    “Are you listening?”
    “I’m here,” I said through clenched teeth. I wanted to crawl through the phone line and strangle this bastard on the other end. I’m the one who bought her. Like she was an easy chair on sale at Art Van .
    “I don’t want her anymore. She’s too…old…for me.”
    My intestines tied themselves into knots. I stared at the ink blotter on my desk. A doodle I had drawn on the calendar of a cartoon detective in fedora and trench coat stared back at me. I thought I had drawn him with a goofy look of suspicion. Now he looked angry, accusatory. I picked up a pen and scribbled his face out. “What have you done to her?”
    “Nothing but loved her.”
    I kept scribbling with the pen until it tore through the paper, ripping apart the detective’s head. “You sick fuck. If I find you, I’m going to—”
    “Cut my dick off? I’ve heard it before. My dick is still intact and works perfectly.”
    “I won’t go anywhere near your dick.” My hands trembled. The pen shook loose from my fingers and rolled off the desk. The air smelled stale and tasted dry. “I’m going to shoot you in your sick fucking mouth.”
    “Does that mean you’d like to meet?”
    My throat closed. I didn’t know what this guy was aiming for. Did he want to torture me? Make me torture myself with the blanks he left for my imagination to fill about what he had done to