The Cassandra Sanction: The most controversial action adventure thriller you’ll read this year!

‘I don’t know. But it would explain why she needed money without leaving a trace.’ Raul worked it over for a few moments longer, then shook his head. ‘No. Why would someone blackmail her for twenty thousand euros when she was worth so much more? And why would she have to disappear afterwards? The blackmailer suddenly turns kidnapper? That doesn’t make sense either. If they’d simply kidnapped her in the first place, they could have asked whatever ransom they wanted.’

‘Or,’ Ben said.

Raul looked at him again, pale with worry. ‘Or what?’

‘There’s another possibility, Raul. One you need to be ready for.’

‘I’m ready.’

Ben took a long draw on the cigarette, and flicked ash out of the crack in the window. ‘Suppose you’re right and there’s some weirdo extorting money from her for some reason we don’t know yet. She doesn’t want anyone to know, and selling her jewellery is the only way she can think of to raise the money quickly and quietly, without leaving a trail. She can’t go to a respectable jeweller, either, not if she wants to avoid any kind of paperwork, records, receipts, official evaluations. That’s why she ends up having to go to a piece of shit like Braunschweiger, even though she knows she’ll get a fraction of what the items are worth. She’s willing to take the loss. So, she gets the twenty thousand cash, passes it straight over to the blackmailer, in the hope that it’ll all go away, but then it turns out the twenty thousand was just the start. Maybe he starts pressuring her for twenty more, or fifty, or a hundred. She refuses.’

Raul stared at him. ‘And?’

‘There’s a confrontation. Maybe he threatens her. She’s defiant. It gets violent. Maybe he never intended to hurt her, but he kills her in the struggle. He makes it look like suicide.’

‘I keep telling you, she’s alive,’ Raul said. ‘She’s in danger, but she’s alive.’

Ben took another draw on the cigarette and blew smoke. ‘That’s what you believe, or what you want to believe?’

‘It’s neither. It’s what I know.’

Ben shrugged. ‘Fine. Then let’s take that as our bottom line. She’s alive, and she’s scared and in danger.’

‘Yes.’

‘Then consider this alternative scenario,’ Ben said. ‘Maybe she didn’t need the money to pay off someone else. Maybe she needed it for herself. We could be getting this all wrong. Imagine the situation from another angle.’

Raul blinked. ‘What other angle?’

‘Stalkers are cowards. They’re also delusional enough to believe that they might actually have a chance of scoring with the person they’re obsessed about. If some creep was hanging around, it’s more than likely he’d have been making a nuisance of himself for a while. Typically, these types of people will try to insinuate themselves into the victim’s life in all kinds of ways before all the rejections, warnings, and finally court exclusion orders, cause them to build up enough rage and resentment to resort to anything as drastic as abduction. If he found out her private email address, he might have bombarded her with messages. Or written her letters. The police found nothing like that. Now, that could mean they weren’t looking thoroughly enough, or it could actually mean they were right. There’s no evidence that she was being stalked. None at all, just like we have no body. The only thing driving that idea is your fear that some nutjob is holding your sister captive in a cellar somewhere.’

‘What are you trying to say?’

‘Go where the evidence points,’ Ben said. ‘Take the stalker out of the equation. What if there is no kidnapper? What if she was just running from something, or someone, who had her so scared that she faked her own suicide?’