The Call

The Call

Rex’s fingers hovered over his phone for the better part of an hour, then two. He kept dialing the number he’d given Judith the nights before—the one he’d arranged through old channels, the one that was supposed to be a guarantee: his people would do as he asked. Each time it rang and went to voicemail, the knot in his stomach tightened.

King sat on the edge of the sofa, head in his hands, pacing once in a while and swearing under his breath at every new headline that crawled across the muted screen on the wall. The house felt like a tomb—too quiet, too full of things unsaid. Outside, the city was alive with rumors and men with money tuning their ears to the wrong frequencies. Inside, Rex felt smaller with every passing minute.

When the phone finally rang, Rex leapt for it like a drowning man reaching for a rope. He answered before the second ring finished, voice raw. “Robin. Where the fuck are you? I’ve been calling you for hours—”

“Boss.” The voice that came through the line was strained, hurried, as if someone were holding the phone where they shouldn’t. A second voice whispered something in the background—indistinct, panicked. Then Robin said, low and quick, “Hide. I can’t—” The line crackled. “I’m calling you from a hidden phone, one Mrs. Radsford doesn’t know about. She took all our phones and got new gun men, I think they are from the Southern Gang. If anyone sees this phone, I am as good as dead.”

Rex’s heart jumped. “What’s going on? Are you with Judith? Where are the twins? How are they doing?”

Robin’s pause was long enough to make the blood thrum in Rex’s ears. “She’s got them on lockdown boss, everyone one is on lockdown” he said finally, voice flat. “No one leaves. No one comes in. Kids are in the next room. They’re—” A muffled whimper cut him off. Two small cries overlapped for a moment; hearing them raw on the line made Rex’s knees go weak.

King swore, the sound like a thing that had been sitting under his skin for days finally breaking free. “Tell me where she is,” he barked. “Now.”

Robin’s voice went very small. “I can’t say where I am. I—” He swallowed. “Boss, Mrs. Radsford has been unstable. She’s threatening to shoot the twins if anyone makes noise. She’s got a loaded gun and she’s quite restless. She’s… she’s not joking.”

Rex felt himself unmoored. “You get out. You get them—get them away from her and I’ll make everything right. I’ll—” He couldn’t finish the sentence; promises felt useless at that moment, when the sound of a child’s cry backed them.

“No,” Robin said. “I’m stuck here. She’s watching the door like a hawk.” The line went thin, as if someone had dropped a receiver. “Boss—I’m calling you from the cabinet in the washroom. She thinks I’m elsewhere. You have to be calm. She will kill anyone she feels is trespassing and right now, I don’t think she’s sane. Don’t tell anyone I called, I will call you back with an update.”

King’s jaw worked. “Robin, tell me one thing. Are they hurt? Are Ryan and Rosy hurt?”

There was a whisper: “They’re refusing to eat or sleep and the sedative are gradually losing its potency, they are crying. They’re scared and Madan keeps saying she’ll shoot them if they don’t quiet down. God—Boss, she has sincerely gone mad.”

A sharp bang cut the air, a hard noise that made both men flinch. For a moment no one on the line spoke. The bang was followed by a sound—a wet, horrible thud—and then a startled vocalization from somebody in the background. It was the sort of sound that unclenched whatever nerves were holding a person together.

Rex’s voice trembled. “Robin?” he said, and the question hung like a challenge.

The line filled with Judith’s voice then, bright and too casual, as if she’d only wandered into the room for tea. “Robin? Who are you talking to, dear?” she asked, patient and dangerous. Her tone was surgical—an ice-cold calm that made the hairs on Rex’s forearm stand up.

Robin breathed in—too sharply. He tried to cover the phone but Judith’s next words made his throat close. “You didn’t tell me you had a lover calling on you,” she said. A soft, cruel laugh threaded through. “Or are you betraying me for a reward? For the bounty? Oh, how touching. Are you taking the price on our heads, Robin? Tell me.”

Rex heard Robin say his name faintly, like a man pleading across a great sea. “It’s Boss. I’m talking to Mr. Radsford.”

“You’re talking to Rex?” Judith repeated on the line, incredulous and poisonous. “Well then. How convenient. What are you telling him? Are you reporting me to him? You want him to beat me?”

There was a sound like the click of a safety being released. King’s voice was a rough thing in Rex’s ear now, a low, animal sound: “Robin—get out. For God’s sake, run.”

Then, another bang: sharper, closer. Robin’s cry broke off mid-word. The phone trembled in Rex’s hand. For a second the line was full of frantic breathing, then muted, then Judith again—colder now, stripped of the fake amusement. “Do you betray me for a purse?” she asked. “Or was it for loyalty? Pick.”

Rex’s throat felt raw. “Don’t—don’t hurt him,” he said, though he knew he had no right to bargain. He heard King ranting beside him, cursing Judith by every name he had in mind. The house blurred; the air seemed thick with the heavy taste of panic.

A low, ragged sound came from the line—the kind of breath that meant a body was losing its battle for control. Robin’s voice was close to silence. “Boss—” he whispered, “you need to go to—” The word was a ragged thing. Robin’s voice had turned gravelly; blood edged it. “—pier three. The old—fisherman—warehouse—Docks—pier three—east side. Behind the crates—shelf C. That’s where they—” His words stumbled and slurred, blood in his mouth making everything wet and immediate. “—they’ll be there. Please. Save them from her.”

Rex’s knees nearly buckled. “What? God—what did she—” he started, the sentence collapsing under the weight of sound that was now horribly clear: a wet shuffle, a final intake of breath, and then a hollow, ending click as the line went dead.

“No,” King said, the word a physical thing, a slab dropped into a well. He stood, face white, cursing in a way that was almost unbelievable for a man like him. “That bitch—that lunatic! She shot him. She fucking shot him.”

Rex stared at the screen until the numbers blurred. The room, the house, the world, condensed into one single bright, impossible fact: Robin had been trying to give him an update on the situation at hand, and Judith had killed him to stop him. But the location had been given—slurred, stained, and scarcely a whisper—felt like a cruel mercy.

He grabbed his jacket, fingers fumbling. “We need to go now,” he said, voice flat, a man stripped of denial.

King didn’t bother to open the front door properly; he was already moving, angry and reckless and perfectly willing to break anything that stood in the way. “Where’s the car?” he demanded.

Rex’s hands shook as he dialed the number of  his other security personnels whom he had always used for—advanced security measures, backups, anyone who would answer. The line went through to voicemail, to another disconnected number, a red name pulsing with uselessness. The house around them seemed suddenly small and fragile.

On the drive, every red light felt like a theater curtain. King swore and talked with sudden, brutal efficiency, mapping the quickest route, the best way to avoid checkpoints. Rex kept gripping the steering wheel so tightly his knuckles went white, replaying Robin’s last words in his head until a brittle, terrible map had formed.

“Pier three,” he said aloud, trying to make the syllables solid. “Warehouse—east side—behind the crates—shelf C.”

King didn’t flinch. “We’ll call in favors. We’ll take whoever will come. We can’t wait for the police.”

Rex’s mouth was a dry line. Guilt burned along his skin—guilt for not acting sooner, for not shutting Judith down, for trusting someone who he knew was dangerous and manipulative. Each time he blinked, he could see Robin’s face: sweat, panic, the resignation of a man who understood what loyalty cost.

They reached the docks in a blur—smells of salt and oil, gulls crying high above them, the emptiness of early morning. The pier rose up like a skeleton, steel and wood, crates stacked in rows. When they pulled up to the east side, it would be the same as Robin had said—a narrow path between stacks of old shipping boxes, a shelf labeled in faded paint.

Rex didn’t know how long they could be. He only knew this: a man had died telling him where his children might be. That knowledge was a blade turned inward.

He parked, slammed the door, and ran before King had even had time to finish lighting a cigarette. The two men moved through the warehouse like two old soldiers, ugly, blunt, willing to do whatever it took.

Behind them, the world was beginning to close in. Judith had just proved she would kill anyone who stood in her way. And their ruin, whatever shape it would take, had already begun.