Chapter 18 Jack
Ihadn't slept.
How could I, with that photo burned into my memory, reappearing every time I closed my eyes? Anna slumped in that chair, bruised and broken. Daisy huddled behind her, small and terrified, unable to see what Carter was doing but forced to hear everything.
How long do you think she can last?
The question had been on repeat for six hours. Six hours of sitting at my desk, staring at my phone, willing it to ring with news while dreading what that news might be.
The penthouse was a morgue. Silent, cold and waiting.
Just then, as if the Universe had finally heard my plea, my phone vibrated against the mahogany desk. A contrast to decorum in my home.
My heart, which had been beating a slow, dead rhythm of dread for hours, exploded into a frantic gallop. Every nerve ending fired at once. My hand shot out, fumbling, nearly knocking the phone to the floor before I caught it.
The name on the screen: James Westbrook.
4:57 AM.
Six hours. They'd been searching for six hours since that photo.
I swiped to answer, brought it to my ear. No greeting. No breath. Just desperate, silent hope screaming in the void.
"We have a lead." James's voice was a taut wire, stripped of all greeting, all preamble. Every syllable was urgent. "Credible. A uniformed patrol doing a routine sweep of the old waterfront warehouses spotted a light. Third-floor windows of the old Halcyon Textile mill."
A light. In an abandoned building. My heart stuttered, caught between hope and terror.
"The place has been condemned for a decade," James continued. "No power. Shouldn't have lights. They called it in, and we scrambled a chopper with thermal."
I was already on my feet, my body moving before my mind could process. Slipping into the dark jacket that lay over the back of my chair with hands that wouldn't stop shaking.
"Is it them?" The words were a ragged scrape against my throat. "James, is it—"
"Two heat signatures in an interior room on the third floor.
One adult-sized, one child-sized. One stationary, the other moving.
Not moving. And—" He paused, and I heard him take a breath.
"Three other signatures spotted in a different part of the building, all adults.
One stationary and two moving. Almost like they were guarding the perimeter. "
This felt like the confirmation I needed.
They were alive. The two stationary signatures. Anna and Daisy.
The relief was so violent it was indistinguishable from terror. They were alive, but they were with him. Still captive. Still in danger. Still—
"How long?" I demanded, already moving toward the elevator. "How long until you breach?"
"SWAT is mobilizing now. Twenty minutes to be in position. Another ten for entry assessment."
Thirty minutes. Half an hour. An eternity.
"I'm coming."
"Jack—" James's voice held a world of warning, the tone of a friend about to deny a desperate man. "You can't. You know you can't. If Carter sees you, if he knows you're there—"
"I'm coming, James." The words came out somewhere between a command and a plea.
I was in the elevator now, jabbing the button for the garage, watching the numbers descend with agonizing slowness.
"I've spent thirty-six hours in this glorified prison I call home, doing nothing.
Sitting here, waiting, useless, while he—"
My voice broke. I couldn't finish. Couldn't say out loud what Carter had been doing to them while I sat in my expensive cage, powerless.
"I'll stay in the command vehicle," I continued, forcing the words out.
The rational voice of negotiation. "I will follow every order.
I will not compromise the operation. But I am not—I will not sit across town while you go to them.
James, please. She's my daughter. And Anna…
I have to be there. I have to be there when you bring them out. "
A heavy pause crackled over the line, filled with the weight of our friendship and his professional judgment warring with each other.
"If you're not there in twenty minutes, we'll go without you," he finally said. "And Jack, command post only. You do not approach the building. You do not get out of the van unless I give the all-clear. You compromise this operation, you risk them. Do you understand?"
"Understood."
That word was a vow.
The drive was a descent into a special kind of hell measured in excruciating increments.
Twenty-three minutes. That's what the GPS said. I could make it in fifteen.
The city at 5 AM was still mostly asleep, empty streets slick with dew, traffic lights blinking yellow through the gray dawn. I pushed the car to eighty on residential streets, ninety on the commercial boulevards. Red lights became suggestions I ignored.
My mind was a riot of images that wouldn't stop: The thermal blobs on James's description—two stationary figures. The single drop of blood on Anna's apartment carpet. The butterfly hair clip. Anna's mouth in the video, forming I'm sorry like she had anything to apologize for.
And the photo. That goddamned photo. Anna slumped in that chair, fresh bruises blooming like poisonous flowers across her skin. Daisy behind her, unable to see but forced to hear everything.
How long do you think she can last?
My hands were white-knuckled on the steering wheel. My heart hammered so hard I could feel it in my temples, in my throat, behind my eyes. Every breath tasted like copper and fear.
The GPS recalculated. Fourteen minutes. Twelve minutes. Eight minutes.
Not fast enough. Never fast enough.
When the industrial waterfront came into view, my heart tried to tear itself from my chest. The world here was drained of color: Gray concrete, decaying brick, the oily black of the river. Dawn was just breaking, painting everything in cold blues and grays.
The Halcyon Textile mill loomed against the lightening sky. Six stories of jagged, broken windows and rust-stained brick. A monument to forgotten industry. A perfect tomb.
My daughter was in there. Anna was in there. With him.
The black van was idling behind a rusted chain-link fence two blocks away. I parked and ran. Vance was already there, having been summoned by James. He gave me a grim, assessing nod, the look of a man who'd seen combat and knew what I was walking into. He pulled the van door open.
Inside was sensory overload.
A hive of controlled tension. The air hummed with overlapping voices, radio chatter, quiet commands, and the electric whine of electronics. Glowing screens everywhere. Maps with red and green overlays. Thermal images. Live feeds from helmet cams showing shadows and concrete.
The space smelled of coffee, metal, and fear masked as professionalism.
James stood at the center, a headset clamped over his ears, his posture rigid as steel. He didn't look at me as I entered, his eyes fixed on the screens, one hand pressed to his earpiece, listening to something.
I couldn't breathe. Couldn't make my lungs work properly. The van was small, crowded. Claustrophobic. Every surface was covered with technology that was supposed to bring my daughter and Anna home.
"Talk to me," I said, my voice coming out hoarse.
James pointed to the largest screen without looking away from it. A thermal image. Bright white shapes against black. "That's them."
The breath that had been trapped in my chest released in a rush that made me dizzy.
Two small, glowing shapes. Close together. Huddled. In a room near the center of the third floor.
One was slightly larger, adult-sized. The other...
The other was child-sized. So small. So impossibly small.
My vision tunneled. Everything in the van disappeared except that screen, those two fragile blobs of heat that represented my entire world.
"That's them," James confirmed, his voice low, certain. "The two stationary signatures are almost certainly Anna and Daisy. The larger one, Anna, hasn't moved in twenty minutes. She might be unconscious. Or..." He didn't finish. He didn't need to.
Around the two huddled forms, three other, brighter signatures moved in agitated patterns. Pacing. Prowling. Guarding.
On another screen, a grainy black-and-white feed from a helmet cam showed the SWAT team assembling in the shadow of the mill.
Echo Team. Eight operators. Clad in matte black from head to toe. Carrying armor, helmets, and rifles. They moved like shadows given purpose, flowing across the cracked asphalt yard with silent, predatory grace.
These men were going to get my daughter. They were going to bring Anna home. Or die trying.
The thought should have been comforting. Instead, it was terrifying. Because "or die trying" meant there was a world where this went wrong. Where they breached that room and Carter—
No. I couldn't think like that. I couldn't let my mind go there.
My eyes locked on one operator. He wasn't carrying a standard battering ram. The tool in his hands was large, rectangular, with wicked-looking hydraulic jaws. Industrial. Powerful.
James followed my gaze. "The main interior stairwell is barricaded. Intel from the building's blueprints and thermal imaging suggests he's shoved heavy machinery across it. Old looms, metal frames, industrial equipment. A ram won't work. They need the spreader."
He gestured to the screen.
"The 'jaws of life.' Can peel steel like tin foil. They'll get through."
The clinical description of the obstacle was a nightmare made real. Carter had had time. Hours. Days, maybe. He'd prepared this. Turned the building into a fortress within a ruin. He'd planned for us to find them. Wanted us to find them.
Which meant he'd planned for what came next.
The thought made my stomach turn to ice.
"Echo Lead to Command." A voice, filtered and calm through the speakers, cut through the tension. "In position at secondary entry point. Ready to deploy."
This was it. This was happening. Right now.