Unexpected Hundred Million

My best friend suddenly transferred one hundred million dollars into my bank account! Right after the transfer went through, she sent me a video. In the clip, she was lounging on a tropical beach in a string bikini, laughing directly at the camera. "Did you get the cash I sent?" she asked. "Quit that garbage job, stop taking their crap, and go travel the world!" She looked incredibly happy. With a hundred million dollars sitting in my account, I should have been ecstatic too. But there was one massive, glaring problem. My best friend was a low-level clerk at our local county courthouse making barely three grand a month. Even if she worked every single day until retirement, she would max out at maybe a million dollars in her entire lifetime. Where the hell did she get this kind of money?! 1 I flipped on the bedside lamp, shoved my glasses onto my face, and stared at my banking app, carefully counting the digits on the glowing screen. Ones, tens, hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands... a solid one followed by eight zeros. One hundred million dollars. This was not Monopoly money. It was not a glitch, and it certainly was not a photoshopped prank. One hundred million dollars had actually been wired into my checking account! My hands were shaking so badly I could barely hold the phone, but I managed to call the bank's 24-hour customer service line to verify it. "My account just received a massive deposit of one hundred million dollars," I told the representative. "It says it's from a Ms. Sarah Davis. Is this real?" The bank employee replied with a perfectly calm, professional tone. "Yes, Miss Riley. Five minutes ago, at exactly 12:05 AM, a Ms. Davis authorized a wire transfer of one hundred million dollars into your account." "The transaction is fully confirmed and cleared." I hung up the phone and sank back into my chair, my mind spinning out of control. This made absolutely no sense. Sarah was a low-ranking civil servant in our rusty little Midwestern town. Her monthly salary was three thousand dollars. Where on earth did she get this fortune? I tapped the screen and opened the video she had sent me again. Yes, right after the money hit my account, this video popped up. It was short, barely thirty seconds long. She was wearing a bikini, half-reclined on a beach chair, speaking brightly to the lens. "Riley, did you get the cash I sent?" "Quit that garbage job, stop taking their crap, and go travel the world!" Those two sentences were it. The video abruptly cut to black. I dragged the progress bar back to the very beginning and watched it again, analyzing every single frame. Sarah was wearing a bright yellow, tiny string bikini. Her posture was relaxed, showing off her figure in a way she never normally would. In the background, I noticed a random guy walking past, staring at her with obvious, lingering hunger. She wasn't wearing an ounce of makeup, presumably because she was about to go swimming. She flashed a radiant, confident smile at the camera and delivered those two lines. "Riley, did you get the cash I sent?" "Quit that garbage job, stop taking their crap, and go travel the world!" Wrong. Every single thing about this video was completely, terrifyingly wrong! 2 First of all, Sarah was the most modest, risk-averse person I knew. If she wasn't, she would never have moved back to our boring hometown after college to take a secure, mundane government job. Someone that conservative would never, ever wear a revealing string bikini to a public beach. We had grown up together and went swimming all the time. Whenever she got in the water, she wore a high-necked, one-piece swimsuit. I had never seen her wear anything remotely this daring! Secondly, Sarah struggled with intense insecurities. Even though she was naturally pretty, she had crippling appearance anxiety. Whenever she left the house to see people, she either put on a full face of carefully blended makeup or hid behind a surgical mask. She would never let herself be seen bare-faced. Yet in this video, not only was she completely makeup-free in public, but she was smiling with a level of radiant confidence I had never seen from her before. It was impossible! But the final, most crucial red flag was the color. I had known Sarah practically my whole life, and if there was one thing I knew for an absolute fact, it was that she despised the color yellow. When we were in middle school, her beloved grandmother passed away. On the day her grandmother died, she was wearing a yellow dress. Ever since that traumatic day, the mere sight of the color yellow triggered a panic attack for Sarah. It reminded her of the worst loss of her life. All of her friends knew to actively avoid wearing yellow around her. She would absolutely never buy or wear a bright yellow bikini! This video was a massive, screaming distress signal. The moment the realization hit me, I frantically typed a message back to her. "Holy crap, look at you, rich girl! Are you messing with me? A hundred million?!" "Did you rob a bank or something?" Silence. Ten agonizing minutes ticked by. Still no reply. I hit the audio call button on our chat app. Nobody answered. I called her three more times in a row, the ringing echoing in my quiet bedroom, but the calls just timed out. A cold, heavy dread began to pool in my chest. I opened my contacts and dialed her actual cell phone number. Instead of a ringing tone, a robotic female voice immediately filled my ear. "We are sorry, the number you have reached is turned off or disconnected..." Sarah was missing. 3 The next morning, I called out of work and drove straight to Sarah's parents' house. Since Sarah and I were childhood best friends, her parents practically treated me like a second daughter. It was right around lunchtime. When I walked in, they smiled warmly and asked if I wanted to stay for food. How could anyone eat at a time like this?! "Where is Sarah?" I asked, my voice tight with panic. Seeing my frantic state, the smiles instantly vanished from their faces. "Sarah went to sleep over at a coworker's house yesterday," her mom replied, wiping her hands on a dish towel. "She hasn't come back yet. What's wrong?" "Did something happen to my baby?" "A coworker's house?!" I echoed, completely stunned. "Which coworker? Did she give you a name?" Her mother shook her head, looking utterly lost. "No, she just said it was a good friend from the office." Another massive red flag! Sarah had complained to me countless times about how utterly alienated she felt in that office. She was a quiet, traditional girl, but she wasn't archaic. Meanwhile, the older generation she worked with were incredibly toxic. They constantly judged her for being single, gossiped maliciously, and made her work life a living hell. She vented to me all the time about how she could barely tolerate being in the same room as them, forcing herself to maintain a polite facade just to survive the workday. Under what possible circumstance would she voluntarily sleep over at one of their houses? "Mrs. Davis," I asked, grabbing her hands. "When exactly did she go to this coworker's house?" "Right after she clocked out yesterday," her mom answered. "Did she come home first to pack a bag, or did she go straight there?" "She just texted us right after work and said she was heading over." I needed to be absolutely sure. "So the last time you physically saw her was yesterday morning?" Mrs. Davis nodded vigorously. "Yes!" Her eyes darted around in rising panic. "Riley, what is going on? Please don't scare me!" I hesitated for a split second, wondering if I should tell them the truth. 4 If I told them, I was terrified they would have a heart attack. But if I didn't, I would be keeping her disappearance from the people who loved her most. They had a right to know. I took a deep breath and made my choice. "Mrs. Davis... I can't reach Sarah anywhere. She's completely off the grid." The color drained from both their faces. They simultaneously yanked out their phones to call her. Mrs. Davis slapped her husband's hand away in a frenzy. "Stop it! Let me call! If we both call at the exact same time, whose call is she going to get?!" With trembling fingers, she dialed Sarah's number and put it on speaker. The cold robotic voice filled the kitchen again. "We are sorry, the number you have reached is turned off..." Mrs. Davis stumbled backward. Mr. Davis had to grab her arm to keep her from hitting the floor. "Why is her phone off? She was perfectly fine yesterday! Why would she just vanish?!" Mr. Davis was a retired veteran police detective. Years of grueling investigative work kicked in, making him significantly calmer than his wife. "Breathe, honey. Sarah sent a message in the family group chat just this morning, remember?" "It's only been a few hours. We live in a quiet town. A missing phone doesn't automatically mean a tragedy." "Don't let your imagination run wild. Her battery probably just died." If I had not received that astronomical wire transfer, I probably would have agreed with his logic. But that money, paired with that horrifying distress signal of a video, made it impossible to stay calm. Just as I opened my mouth to tell them about the hundred million dollars, a sharp knock echoed against the front door. Mrs. Davis hurried over and pulled it open. Two uniformed police officers were standing on the porch. They flashed their badges. "Are you the parents of Sarah Davis? Your daughter is a prime suspect in a massive money laundering operation. We need you to come with us for questioning." That completely shattered whatever composure the older couple had left. Even Mr. Davis, the hardened veteran detective, swayed on his feet. Mrs. Davis couldn't take the shock. Her eyes rolled into the back of her head, and she collapsed in a dead faint. 5 The officers rushed in to catch her. I grabbed her shoulders, helping them lower her safely to the sofa. Right as I looked up, one of the officers locked eyes with me. He looked me up and down, checking a photo on his phone before staring intently at my face. "Are you Riley Smith?" I nodded slowly. The officer's expression hardened into stone. "We tracked a massive sum of illicit funds that Sarah Davis wired directly into your account. You need to come with us too." Half an hour later, I was sitting in a sterile interrogation room alongside Sarah's bewildered parents. In my head, I cursed Sarah a thousand times over. What the hell was she playing at? What kind of criminal underworld had she stumbled into? I was a girl who didn't even dare to jaywalk on an empty street, and now, thanks to my best friend, I was sitting in a police precinct being treated like a cartel boss! The detectives hammered me with questions about Sarah. How long had it been since I last saw her? Did I know what she was doing outside of work? Besides this wire transfer, had she ever handed me large amounts of physical cash? I answered every single question truthfully. No. It was the honest truth. The last time I saw Sarah in person was over a month ago. We texted all the time, but it was just normal best-friend banter. Complaining about life, sharing memes, talking about food. The only bizarre thing she had ever done was this insane wire transfer last night. After answering their questions, I pulled up the video Sarah had sent me and pushed my phone across the metal table. I had no idea what kind of mess Sarah was in, but she was missing. Her life could be in imminent danger, and finding her was the only thing that mattered. The detectives watched the video closely and made a copy for their evidence files. Once they finally verified my story and confirmed I was a clueless bystander, they let me go. By the time I walked out of the precinct doors, it was already past ten at night. The moment the cool night air hit my face, I saw my parents waiting anxiously by the entrance. They rushed over to me, their faces tight with stress. I opened my mouth, ready to explain the terrifying ordeal I had just survived, but my mother grabbed my arm and cut me off. "Riley! I heard your friend transferred a hundred million dollars to you! Is that true?!" My dad's eyes were practically glowing with greed. "Yeah! Where is the money?!" Something felt deeply, horrifyingly wrong. 6 My parents were simple, honest, hardworking people. Sure, everyone loved money, but in a crisis like this, any normal parent would ask if their child was okay first. They wouldn't immediately interrogate me about the cash. What the hell was going on today? They didn't even ask if the police had mistreated me. They just wanted to know about the bank account. My stomach churned with disgust, but these were my parents. I forced down my anger and answered them patiently. "The money Sarah sent me is classified as illicit funds. The authorities have completely frozen the account." Hearing that, my dad slapped his thigh in sheer, agonizing regret. "Dammit! How did it get frozen?!" My mother clutched her chest, looking like she was about to pass out from heartbreak. "All that money! How could they freeze it?! This is your fault! Why did you involve the cops?!" I was absolutely stunned. First of all, I wasn't the one who called the police. But even if I had, what was wrong with doing the right thing?! I stared at her in disbelief. "Mom, if I hadn't cooperated with the police, what exactly did you expect me to do with a hundred million dollars of dirty money?" Without missing a beat, my mother blurted out, "You transfer it to us, obviously!" Give it to them?!