the wind, waiting for the caller to tell him why he called.
“Clara Olafson, your daughter, is with me.”
Anton jerked at the mention of his daughter’s name. He blinked, stared at nothing for a brief moment, then gasped.
“Where is she?” he asked.
“With me. Fulfill one condition, then she’s yours again.”
“What?” he nearly screeched. “What are you talking about?”
“Come on, Mr. Olafson. How many children have you hurt?”
The question startled him. No one knew what he did in his private time. No one knew who he really was. There was no way Clara knew anything. The guy was fishing. That’s all this was, a fishing expedition.
“Who are you?” Anton asked again.
Ignoring the question, the caller said, “Your private dealer in the use of young flesh, Damien, is finished. Call his number. Email him. Or read about it in tomorrow’s paper. You have to find someone else who deals in your specific kind of fantasies.”
“You’re mad,” he shouted, barely recognizing the pitch his voice had taken on. “This is ludicrous.”
“For Clara’s life, do one thing.”
He swallowed, then spun in the driver’s seat and watched cars race by. How much did the caller know? How much could he know? Damien arrested? Impossible.
“If you touch one hair on Clara’s head—” he started.
“Temper, temper, Mr. Olafson. Be careful. Do not threaten me.” There was a clicking sound on the line. For a brief second Anton thought the caller had hung up. “Check your email. I will wait.”
Anton grabbed his phone and hit the email icon. Four messages. Two from colleagues at NC3 and one from a friend. The fourth was a strange email address made up of numbers and letters. He tapped on the email and a picture began to download.
It was Clara. She was at an airport.
“There are two pictures,” the caller said. “One picture is from yesterday, when Clara departed the Copenhagen Airport. The other is today as she landed at Toronto’s Airport.”
Anton scrolled down and saw a sign behind Clara’s head that said welcome to Toronto. He turned off the hands-free option and put the phone to his ear so hard he winced at the pain.
“What have you done?” he breathed into the phone, anger rising in him, crowding out the fear and worry.
“She is with me. In Canada. She is mine until you do one thing for me. I’ll give you a week. Do this or you will never see Clara alive again.”
“And I will hunt you down and kill you myself,” he shouted into the phone. “I’ll fucking kill you.” Furious anger seethed out through his teeth as he tried to cope with what was happening.
“Threats only make me want to hurt Clara more. Like you’ve hurt so many of Damien’s underage boys. Don’t threaten me, Mr. Olafson. Just do as I say and all this goes away. Clara will be safe for another week.”
A large rig passed the Tesla, shaking it, the name BILKA on the back of the trailer in big block letters. Anton watched it moving away until BILKA was barely legible.
“What happens in a week?” Anton asked, using every ounce of will to remain calm.
“If you do as I ask, Clara is free to leave. She can fly home to you if she wishes.”
“ If she wishes?”
“The choice will be hers and hers alone. Don’t make me tell her who you really are.”
“What am I supposed to do?”
“To make things right, I need you to murder a random girl.”
Anton heard the words but didn’t put them together.
“What? How does murder make anything right?” Even though the caller couldn’t see him, Anton was shaking his head. “There’s no way I would kill anyone.”
“Like you’ve killed those little boys you take to your hotel room?”
“I never kill them,” he screamed into the phone. “We talk. That’s it.”
“You kill their hopes, their dreams. You kill them on the