Chapter 4 - The Hunt for the Invisible Girl
By nightfall, Oakridge had transformed into a search zone.
Julian didn't call the police. He knew the police were slow, loud, and prone to leaking information to the press. If the media got wind that the long-lost heirs to the Sterling fortune were homeless in the city, the stock market would go into a frenzy, and worse, the enemies of the Sterling family would know exactly where to strike.
Instead, Julian hired the most elite private security firm in the state, throwing millions of dollars at a single directive: Find her. Do not harm her. Bring her to me.
Inside a temporary command center set up in a blacked-out surveillance van parked near 5th and Elm, Julian paced like a caged predator.
"We have thermal imaging drones sweeping the abandoned sectors," the lead investigator, a grim-faced man named Vance, reported. "But the weather is interfering. The cold rain is masking body heat."
"Keep looking!" Julian roared, slamming his fist onto the metal desk. "She's seven years old, Vance! She's out there in a wet coat. If she freezes to death tonight, I will personally see to it that your firm never gets another contract in this country."
Meanwhile, deep in the underbelly of the industrial district, Lily was hiding.
She had sought refuge in her ultimate safe haven—the old, abandoned barn where she had saved Thomas Sterling. She figured no one would look for her here; the local kids still thought it was haunted, and the police rarely patrolled this far out.
She sat in the darkest corner of the hayloft, hugging her knees to her chest. She was shivering so hard her teeth clicked together like dice. She had no food, no dry clothes, and she had lost her squeegee.
Worse, she had lost the photo of her mother.
"I'm sorry, Mommy," Lily sobbed into the darkness. "I lost it. I'm sorry."
She reached into her pocket, searching for Emma's magic handkerchief, but her hand found only empty space. She remembered she had left it with the old man in the car.
"I have nothing left," she whispered, her small voice breaking.
Suddenly, a bright light swept across the floor of the barn.
Lily gasped, pressing herself deeper into the hay. Had the angry man from the sports car found her?
But the voices that drifted up from the entrance weren't Julian’s. They were rough, harsh, and smelled of cheap beer and desperation.
"I'm telling you, I saw the kid run in here," a voice growled. "The one the guys in the black suits are looking for. I heard them talking at the diner. They're offering a fifty-thousand-dollar reward for any info on a little girl in a brown coat."
"Fifty grand?" another voice rasped. "Are you serious? For a street rat?"
"Yeah. Which means she's worth a hell of a lot more to whoever wants her. If we find her first, we don't just take the reward. We hold her for ransom. A million, easy."
Lily's blood ran ice-cold.
The two men—local street thugs who frequented the abandoned docks—began tossing aside broken crates and rotting barrels on the ground floor.
"Come out, kitty-kitty," one of them laughed, a sound that sent shivers of pure terror down Lily’s spine. "We just want to help you. We know your family is looking for you."
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Lily looked at the rafters above her. There was a narrow wooden beam that led to a small window at the peak of the barn. It was incredibly high, slippery from the damp air, and one wrong step meant a fatal fall.
But as she heard the heavy footsteps of the men beginning to creak up the wooden stairs to the hayloft, she knew she had no choice.
