Chapter 6 - The Ultimatum
“Daniel?” I said, forcing my voice to tremble with feigned submission, following Hayes’s urgent hand gestures. “Where are you? The police are here. They’re tearing the house apart. Lily is hurt, Daniel! Why did you do this to our daughter?”
“Shut up!” Daniel snarled through the receiver. The sound of rain lashing against a car windshield was clearly audible in the background. “She had a rash, Sarah! That’s all it was! A minor skin irritation! If you had just waited for me to get home, I would have handled it! But you had to run to the hospital like a paranoid idiot! You brought the cops right to my doorstep!”
“She has chemical burns, Daniel!” I cried out, and this time, the emotion wasn't faked. “You were manufacturing illegal chemicals in the basement where our child sleeps!”
“I was building our future!” he screamed. “You think your comfortable life, your mortgage, your private school tuition for Lily paid for themselves? I did what I had to do! And now the feds have locked my accounts!”
Detective Hayes wrote frantically on a legal pad: *Ask him what he wants. Keep him on the line for sixty more seconds.*
“Daniel, please,” I said, steadying my breath. “What do you want? Where are you going?”
A sinister chuckle echoed through the phone. “I have a secondary stash of bearer bonds and cash in a private locker at the marina. Two hundred thousand dollars. But the key is in Lily’s diaper bag—the one you took with you to the hospital.”
My eyes widened. The pink canvas diaper bag, which I used as Lily’s overnight bag for spare clothes and toys, was sitting on the armchair right beside Lily’s bed.
“You’re going to bring that bag to me, Sarah,” Daniel demanded, his voice dropping into a menacing whisper. “The marina parking lot in Edmonds. Slip B-4. You have forty-five minutes. If you bring the cops, or if I see a single flashing light, I swear I’ll release the toxicological shipment records with your signature forged on the importer manifests. You will go to federal prison right alongside me, and Lily will grow up in state foster care.”
“Daniel, no—”
“Forty-five minutes, Sarah. Come alone.”
The line went dead.
Detective Hayes ripped the headset off her technician. “Did you trace it?”
“Cell tower bounce off Highway 99 heading north toward Edmonds,” the tech confirmed. “He’s within twelve miles of the marina.”
I looked at Detective Hayes, terror coursing through my veins. “He forged my name on his shipping manifests? He wants to drag me down with him?”
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“He’s bluffing to control you, Sarah,” Hayes said firmly, gripping my hands. “Daniel is unraveling. He’s cornered, his money is cut off, and he’s making reckless demands. But we are not letting him get away with this. We have the location. And we are going to end this tonight.”
***
