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Alex didn’t move. She was frozen in place, stiff with fear so powerful she had to squeeze her thighs together to stop her bladder from emptying. In a matter of seconds she had gone from worrying about spending a night out with girls she didn’t know to suddenly being locked inside her flat with two thugs, one on each side of her.
Laverne smiled, revealing terribly crooked teeth. “Empty Eyes, who disappeared into thin air. But we found you, didn’t we?”
Drew walked from the door and held his phone out for Alex to see. She stared at a picture of herself. It was the image most commonly used in news stories about her, taken from one of her social media accounts that she had long ago deleted.
“Your hair is shorter and you’re not wearing glasses. But it’s you. I can’t fucking believe it,” Drew said.
Suddenly, Laverne’s Swiss-German accent made sense. And so did the idiom that had given Alex pause when she spoke with this girl in the mailroom. Ass in hat. Drew had used the same saying at the bank.
“You deposited a million dollars in the bank in Zürich on Wednesday,” Drew said. “Here’s the deal. Verne and I want a cut, or we’re going to out you to the whole world. You think you’re safe just because you ran to England to attend university? You’re gonna give us some of that money you got away with, or we’re gonna post everything we know about you on every true-crime site we can find. We’ll tip the media off, too. If you think the American tabloids are bad, wait ’til you see what we can do over here.”
A sudden flash of light blinded her and Alex held up her hand to shield her eyes. Laverne had snapped a photo with her phone.
“Oh, shit!” Laverne said, laughing as she stared at her phone. “It looks just like the picture of her coming out of the house the night she shot her family.”
Drew looked at the photo and cackled. “Holy Christ, it does. Like a fuckin’ ghost come back from the dead.”
Laverne looked at Alex. “I could upload this photo right now and within a day social media would blow up. The tabloids would come next, and Empty Eyes would be back in the news. Here, America, the whole fucking world.”
“I think you’re assuming I’m more popular than I am,” Alex said.
“Not popular, mate. Infamous. And I don’t think. I know. I follow this stuff, and people would go batshit to learn that Empty Eyes washed up in a little university town in England. In a day or two, paparazzi would line the sidewalk outside this flat, because I’d post your address everywhere I could.”
“How much?” Alex asked.
The question seemed to stun them. Drew and Laverne glanced at each other. Alex sensed their surprise at having gotten this far so quickly. Negotiations were likely meant to happen later in the night after they’d worked her over a bit with either more threats or actual violence. Alex wasn’t going to allow the night to go on longer than necessary. She was looking to end it as soon as possible, and she knew exactly how to get it done. But in order to do so, she needed to get to her bedroom. To her closet, and to the box that sat on the top shelf.
“How much?” Alex asked again.
Drew and Laverne spoke in fast German. A quick exchange that sounded like an argument.
Now it was Alex who laughed. “Amateurs,” she said, stepping closer to them. “You’re like a couple of freshmen at the senior prom. You two followed me all the way from Switzerland and probably had this planned for the better part of two days. Yet, now that you’re here in front of me, you don’t even have a number?”
Alex walked deeper into the apartment, closer to her bedroom.
“You probably didn’t think you’d get this far, and now that you have you don’t know what to do with yourselves. I should just call the police.”
Alex pulled her cell phone from her pocket and swiped it open. Drew started toward her, but Laverne’s hand moved to his shoulder.
“No,” Laverne said. “Let her. Go ahead. Call the cops.”
There was a long gap of silence.
“Go on.” Laverne pointed at Alex’s phone. “Call them. What’re you going to tell them? That you agreed to have drinks with me and that I came to pick you up?”
“No, that you followed me across the continent to blackmail me.”
Laverne showed her crooked teeth again. “Blackmail you for what? That’s what the coppers would ask. And what would you tell them?”
There was another long, bloated stretch of silence.
“Go on,” Laverne said. “Think it through. What would you tell them? You’d have to tell them the truth. You’d have to tell them who you are. And if you thought we could out you in a hurry, go ahead and tell the authorities who you are. Your world would blow up in a fast goddamn minute.”
“A goddamn minute!” Drew piled on.
More silence.
Alex slipped her phone back in her pocket. “Fine. Back to my original question. How much?”
