Chapter 26
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Gwendolyn
My first rule of hacking was simple: Don’t make it personal.
I broke that rule just a few seconds ago.
My sister’s school crest filled the corner of the public website as I tunneled beneath it, fingers flying across the keyboard. Their security was laughable—standard contracted surveillance software, outdated firmware, lazy password rotation. I almost felt insulted at how easy it was.
A dark window opened on another screen, line after line of code cascading as I forced entry into the school’s network. Firewall. Bypass. Local storage access. Camera registry.
“Come on,” I muttered.
The feeds populated one by one.
Front gate. Hallway A. Admin office. Side parking lot.
My stomach tightened.
I pulled up the cell data from the last time Amelia had texted her friend.
I’m heading out now. I’ll ask Gwen if I can sleep over this weekend when I get home.
Timestamp: 3:35 p.m.
I rewound the side gate camera to 3:30 p.m.
Students poured out in clusters, their backpacks bouncing. I fast-forwarded frame by frame with my jaw clenched so tight, it hurt.
And then I saw her.
Amelia. My throat thickened.
Her curly red hair in a loose ponytail stood out. She wore an oversized hoodie. My hoodie. The one she’d stolen last month.
I swallowed hard.
Amelia paused near the curb.
A black SUV rolled into the frame. It was too slow and deliberate.
I froze the image. Zoomed in. Enhanced contrast. Pulled the license plate.
Partial.
Of course.
The passenger window slid down.
Amelia stepped back.
The camera angle showed me the whole scene—how her face paled, how she shook her head. But then she took a step toward the car before stopping abruptly. She dropped her bag to the ground before climbing into the vehicle.
“No. No, no, no….”
She wouldn’t have just climbed into a stranger’s car. They had to have threatened her or something.
I slammed my fist on the desk once, then forced myself to still. I had more work to do. I shoved the rage down and got back to it. A large hand gripped the back of my neck in support.
Max.
He was silently reassuring me that as soon as I had the information, he and his men would move to save her.
I tracked the SUV to the next camera—the outer road. Then I slipped into the traffic grid, pivoting networks, hopping from surveillance to private business feeds.
Every time the SUV appeared, I tagged it.
Built a trail.
School zone. Main road. Highway merge.
The plate sharpened in a clearer intersection camera three miles away.
I ran it.
It was a stolen vehicle that’d been reported two days ago.
Fuck.
Of course it was.
The SUV exited toward the industrial district near the docks.
My pulse thudded in my ears.
I tapped into port authority cameras next, then warehouse security feeds. Then traffic lights. I stitched the route together like a surgeon closing a wound.
The SUV turned into a fenced compound.
No signage. Minimal lighting. Three visible security cameras. One blind spot near the loading dock.
I marked the coordinates.
Then I did what I’d been dreading to do.
I entered a clear picture of Amelia into the facial recognition software, and it hummed to life. I pushed it out through the dark web to see if her face pinged anything.
I masked my IP through five countries. Rerouted through a botnet I owned but had never touched for something this personal.
Searching, searching, searching.
The seconds dragged.
Nothing.
Nothing.
Then—
A hit.
My breath stopped.
The image populated on a hidden marketplace forum.
My sister’s face was in a recent photo.
Amelia sat on a concrete floor in a short white silk nightgown, her wrists zip-tied behind her back. Her ankles bound as well, and there was duct tape across her mouth. Her eyes were red, terrified but open.
She’s alive.
But then my stomach twisted painfully when I noticed the digital text above her head.
Starting bid: $2,000,000. Auction closes: 23:59 — 48 hours. Private buyers only.
My vision blurred, my hands trembling so violently, I had to grip the edge of the desk to steady myself.
They were selling her.
Like property. Like an object.
My throat closed. A sharp, broken sound escaped me before I could stop it.
“Help’s coming,” I whispered at the screen.
The forum thread showed engagement already. Anonymous bidders. Encrypted comments. One username stood out from the high transaction history. Frequent fucking buyer.
Bile rose, but I swallowed it down.
I screenshot everything. Copied the server path. Began tracing the host node.
This was very professional.
But it wasn’t untouchable.
“We’ll find her, doll,” Max said at my back, voice determined and hard.
Nodding, I wiped my eyes with the back of my hand and inhaled slowly.
Max would make them pay for taking her, for touching her.
He would slaughter them all, and they deserved everything that’d be done to them.
I opened a new terminal window.
If the auction closed in forty-eight hours, I would end it long before, then send in a man who would haunt their nightmares even after they were dead.
I went back to the warehouse coordinates I’d tagged earlier, cross-referencing property ownership, shell companies, utility usage.
Power spike at 5:12 p.m.
That was right after the SUV arrived.
My jaw hardened. I printed the layout from an old blueprints file I scraped from council archives. Entrances, exits, and possible holding rooms.
One camera inside the compound pinged on my scan, unsecured.
Amateur mistake, assholes.
I slipped in.
The feed loaded.
There was a dim hallway with a metal door at the end.
My breath caught when it opened briefly and I saw a flash of red hair inside.
It was enough.
Tears rolled silently down my cheeks. “You picked the wrong sister,” I murmured. Turning, I faced Max. “I know where she is.”
His smile was cruel and vicious—calculating and cold.
And somewhere in a dark warehouse near the docks, the men who thought they were running an auction had just unknowingly entered one of their own.
Only the bidding wasn’t for money.
It was for how long they had left to live.