CHAP 4: The Predator's Trap
I picked up the phone, sliding the screen to answer. I didn't speak.
"Vance? Is it done?" Daniel’s voice came through the speaker, devoid of the pathetic, submissive tone he used at the Sunday dinner table. He sounded cold, calculated, and arrogant. "My father wants the boy alive. He says a child who survives a wall slam has good bones for the labor camps. The mother can go in the fire."
Claire choked back a sob behind me. I reached out, holding her hand tightly, squeezing it to give her strength.
"Daniel," I spoke into the line, my voice a deadly promise.
A long pause hung over the line. Then, a dark, amused chuckle cracked through the receiver. "Ah, the harmless grandmother. I must admit, Evelyn, you played the part well. The baking, the gardening, the library volunteering... we actually thought you were pathetic. But it doesn't matter now. My father has his empire back. And we have your daughter’s house surrounded."
I looked at the security monitors. The safehouse was compromised, but we weren't at the safehouse anymore—Daniel thought we were still at the primary location. He didn't know I had moved Claire and Noah to a secondary, deeper bunker beneath the property.
"You hurt my daughter, you broke my grandson's bones," I said, walking toward the weapons locker hidden behind the false concrete wall. "You brought a war into my family, Daniel."
"We are the Hales, Evelyn. We own this city. You're just a ghost from a dead agency."
"Then you should know," I said, loading a customized tactical rifle with armor-piercing rounds, "that ghosts are very hard to kill. I'm coming for you. Tell Victor to wear his best suit. It’s going to be his funeral."
I hung up the phone and smashed it beneath my boot.
Turning to Claire, I placed both hands on her shoulders. "I need you to be strong now. Take Noah. Enter the panic room at the bottom of the structure. Do not open it for anyone but me. If I am not back by sunrise, press the blue button on the panel. It will broadcast our location directly to the Pentagon."
May you like
Claire looked at the rifle in my hands, then into my eyes. For the first time in years, the fear was gone. She nodded. "Kill them, Mom. Kill them all."
HOOK FOR CHAP 5: I arrived at the Hale Construction main headquarters an hour later, expecting a small army of mercenaries. Instead, the front lobby was completely empty, decorated only by a single, blood-stained teddy bear sitting on the receptionist's desk—Noah's favorite toy.
