Chapter 4 - The Voice Behind the Locked Door
The lock clicked a second time.
I shoved Clara behind my desk and aimed at the door.
"Marco, take the rear exit."
"Boss, the corridor is compromised."
"Then make one."
He fired twice into the ceiling, signaling the guards outside my office to fall back. A second later, someone slammed into the door hard enough to shake the frame.
I recognized the pattern of the impacts.
Not random gunfire.
A tactical team.
They knew exactly where we were.
"Clara," I whispered, "there's a panel beneath the desk. Pull the red lever and crawl through the opening."
She stared at me.
"What about you?"
"I'm right behind you."
She didn't move.
"My contract says you can't leave people behind."
For the first time that night, I almost laughed.
"You really intend to hold me to those four rules?"
"Yes, sir."
"Then consider this an emergency amendment. Go."
She disappeared beneath the desk.
I pulled the lever, revealing a narrow maintenance passage built into the building decades earlier. Marco followed Clara inside while I covered the doorway.
The lock shattered.
Three men entered, their faces concealed behind black masks. I fired toward the floor in front of them, forcing the first two back into the hallway.
The third raised his weapon.
A shot cracked behind him.
He collapsed.
Marco stood at the far end of the office passage, smoke curling from his pistol.
"Move, boss!"
We crawled through the passage and emerged inside an abandoned storage room on the floor below. The emergency lights flickered, casting long shadows across stacked furniture.
Clara looked at the door behind us.
"Where's Mommy?"
"We're going to find her."
"But the man said Daddy was there."
"I saw him."
"Then you believe me now?"
I crouched in front of her.
"I believed you when you first sat at my table."
She studied my face, searching for something.
"Even when I said favors can be taken back?"
"Especially then."
For a moment, she looked almost seven years old again.
Then she reached into her pocket and removed the twenty-dollar bill I'd placed there earlier.
"Do you still have the contract?"
I touched my jacket pocket.
The handwritten agreement was still inside.
"Yes."
"Good. Daddy said the important part wasn't the money."
"What was it?"
Clara looked toward the ceiling.
"The signature."
Before I could ask what she meant, Marco's phone vibrated. He checked the screen and swore under his breath.
"Boss, the building's cameras are back online."
"And?"
"Someone uploaded a message to every monitor."
He turned the phone toward me.
The footage showed my private office from a camera angle that should not have existed. A message appeared beneath Michael's face.
MIDNIGHT. SAINT AGNES STATION. BRING THE ORIGINAL CONTRACT. COME ALONE.
Marco shook his head.
"It's bait."
"Of course it's bait."
"Then we send a team to the station while you go somewhere secure."
I stared at the message.
Michael had been a thousand things in his life: stubborn, reckless, brilliant, infuriating. But he had never been careless about protecting people he loved.
If he wanted me to come alone, he had a reason.
Or somebody was forcing him to ask.
I turned to Clara.
"Do you know what the original contract is?"
She nodded slowly.
"Mama said Daddy and Uncle Dominic signed it before I was born."
"Why would my brother and I sign a contract about you?"
Her eyes filled with tears.
"Because somebody wanted me to disappear before I was born."
I felt the floor shift beneath my feet.
Then Marco received another message.
This one came from an unknown number.
It contained a photograph of Michael sitting inside the same concrete room.
His hands were cuffed.
A pistol rested against the back of his head.
The accompanying message was brief.
BRING THE CHILD, OR HER FATHER DIES AT MIDNIGHT.
Clara read the words over Marco's shoulder.
She looked at me.
Then she quietly placed the twenty dollars in my hand.
"Sir, I think we need to change the contract."
"How?"
May you like
Her voice broke.
"This time, we have to save Daddy, too."
