Chapter 2 - The Bailout
I dropped the phone onto the sterile hospital floor, my entire body trembling with fresh terror.
James immediately dropped to his knees to pick up the shattered device.
He looked up at me with profound concern in his dark brown eyes.
He asked me who had just called and why all the color had drained from my face.
I stared at the man I had married, suddenly searching his familiar features for any sign of betrayal.
I lied and told him it was just a spam call that startled my already fragile nerves.
I needed time to figure out if the anonymous voice was telling the truth or just playing a cruel prank.
The emergency room doctor discharged me an hour later with a fresh prescription for epinephrine.
James drove us home in absolute silence, his knuckles turning white on the steering wheel.
The moment we walked through our front door, the heavy silence of the house felt suffocating.
I locked myself in the master bathroom and turned the shower on extremely high to muffle my sobs.
I sat on the cold tile floor and tried to process the impossible idea that my husband wanted me dead.
It made absolutely no sense because James was the one who had saved my life at the restaurant.
If he wanted the three million dollars, he could have just let me stop breathing.
I washed my face and decided I was letting a prank caller destroy my marriage.
I walked out of the bathroom to find James aggressively pacing the length of our bedroom.
He was screaming into his phone, demanding answers from whoever was on the other end.
He hung up the call and turned to me with an expression of pure, unadulterated rage.
He told me that his mother had already been released from police custody.
Someone had posted her half-million dollar bail entirely in cash before she even saw a judge.
The precinct refused to tell James who the mysterious benefactor was.
Panic clawed its way back up my swollen throat.
Linda was out on the streets, and she knew exactly where we lived.
James promised me he would install new security cameras and change all the locks in the morning.
He went downstairs to double-check the deadbolts on the front and back doors.
I walked over to the bedroom window to pull the heavy blackout curtains shut.
A sleek black luxury sedan was parked idle on the street directly across from our house.
The streetlamp illuminated the driver's seat just enough for me to see the silhouette of a woman.
It was Linda, staring directly up at our bedroom window with a chilling, motionless smile.
She raised her hand and slowly tapped a small, dark glass vial against the driver's side window.
Before I could scream for James, the screen of my replacement tablet lit up on the nightstand.
An email notification popped up from a secure, encrypted server.
May you like
The subject line contained my full social security number and my mother's maiden name.
The body of the email contained a single, terrifying attachment labeled as my husband's secret bank records.
