Chapter 2: The Burner Phone
Chapter 2: The Burner Phone
Three hours later, the morning light had completely failed. The sky bruised into a deep, stormy purple, pregnant with an impending coastal storm. Freezing rain began to lash violently against the windshield, the wipers struggling to keep up with the turbulent weather pattern rolling in off the Atlantic. Eleanor was halfway to her secluded seaside motel, finally beginning to relax, when an unfamiliar sound broke the rhythmic, hypnotic hum of the tires on the wet pavement.
A sharp, mechanical ringing.
It wasn’t the soft, familiar marimba chime of her iPhone. It was a harsh, jarring buzz, and it was coming from beneath the passenger seat. Pulling onto the damp, gravel-strewn shoulder of the highway, Eleanor put the car in park and reached down. Her fingers brushed against a small, chunky black burner phone. It had been fastened meticulously with heavy-duty Velcro to the metal seat springs. She peeled it off, the tearing sound loud in the quiet cabin. The small, cracked screen displayed an encrypted, routing number. Hesitantly, her heart rate slightly elevating, she hit accept.
"Mom?"
It was her daughter, Sarah. But the smug, vacation-ready tone from the night before was entirely gone. It was replaced by a breathless, hyperventilating terror that chilled Eleanor faster than the winter wind.
"Sarah? Why are you calling this phone? Where did this come from?" Eleanor demanded, her maternal instincts instantly overriding her anger.
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"Mom, where are you? We came to drop the kids off early to beat the traffic, but the house was empty. And then... oh god, Mom, they kicked the door in. There are men with guns—"
Before Eleanor could process the horrifying words, the phone was violently snatched away on the other end. A man’s voice, rough as crushed glass and dripping with menace, came over the speaker. "Listen carefully, grandma. You drove off with something that belongs to the Sinaloa cartel. And I want it back."
