worked for. I needed that same leverage to protect myself so he would never come for me again. I memorized as much as I could. Didn’t want to leave a digital trail for Simon or anyone else to follow to know what I was up to.”
Alan’s shoulders sagged. “Zoey, why didn’t you just go to the police?”
She bolted from the bed. “Because!” She shrank back. She’d spoken too loudly. Her eyes shot to the door, then she lowered her voice. “Because I had already been to the police multiple times. What had they ever done for me? They could not stop him. I could only trust myself. I got leverage, Alan. He would never bother me again.”
“Okay. Okay,” Alan said. “But . . . wait. Simon is dead. What does any of this have to do with your disappearance now?”
“I’m getting to that.” Zoey covered her face. “I don’t want you to hate me.”
“Please, Zoey, just tell me.”
“I moved money.”
“Moved? You mean you stole money?”
“To help others, Alan. I moved money from the organization Simon worked for. Small amounts at a time so it wasn’t too noticeable, and I shared it with organizations that help trafficked women. They needed more funds to make a difference.”
“That’s right. You talked to Rae about trafficking.”
“My mistake. I didn’t know she would spend months investigating trafficking in Denver so she could write a story. I already knew where it would lead her.” Zoey grabbed her hair and fisted it. “I hadn’t meant to send her down that road. To dig so deep. She was going to get hurt. So I sent a message to threaten him.”
Alan stood and gently gripped her shoulders. “Him . . . who are you talking about?”
Zoey shut her eyes and exhaled as if working up the nerve to keep going, then she opened them. “The man who would lose the most if she exposed him. The head of the trafficking ring in Denver. He has many aliases. Malcom Fox. Devon Winters. William Granger. I threatened to expose him.”
“But he didn’t listen.”
She shook her head. “Rae was taken anyway, then saved by that undercover DEA agent. But my threat had drawn Fox’s attention, and I’d tipped my hand. He might have landed in prison, but he sent people to search for me just the same. Possibly because of what I knew about him, but probably because of the money.”
She hung her head.
Alan lifted her chin so she would look at him. “Because of the money you diverted to helped trafficked women.”
“Not that money. Different money.”
Alan dropped his hands and fisted them. “My head is spinning here, Zoey.”
She frowned. “At first, after I escaped Simon back in college, I was scared, so scared. I took money to help organizations, yes, but there’s more. I took a chunk of his money.”
Alan stared at her as he tried to comprehend her words.
“Only, it turned out it wasn’t Simon’s money. It belonged to Malcom Fox. I think Malcom thought Simon had stolen the money. I think he killed Simon. But he finally figured out that I was the one who stole his money.”
This whole time Zoey was sitting on money belonging to this criminal. Alan swallowed hard. “And what did you do with the money?”
“I used it to buy cryptocurrency.”
That surprised him. “What? You mean like Bitcoin?”
She nodded. “I was half out of my mind after Simon abducted me. Scared he would come for me again. I feared the leverage of knowledge wasn’t enough. When I was in that room with Simon going through his laptop, there was a Zane Williams thriller novel sitting on the desk. It seemed out of place and caught my attention. Sure enough, Simon had written something inside. I don’t know—he couldn’t find paper? Didn’t want to text or type the information into his computer, leaving a digital trail? But I took that idea and ran with it.
“I took the money and bought cryptocurrency. That week after I escaped Simon, I visited a used bookstore and grabbed Zane Williams’s Benedict Jaynes adventure series—the first twelve books. I used those novels to hide passwords. Maybe I went a little crazy, but I was terrified. Don’t you see? No one could ever find the money without those passwords.”
“I’m not sure I understand. Why twelve?”
“Oh. Well, the cryptocurrency wallet has a thirteen-word passphrase—or seed. When you create it, the software instructs you to never store the seed electronically or on a website. In other words, you don’t want it in digital form.