Keep reading with Chapter Two...

"Clear!"

The doctor pressed the defibrillator pads against Florence's chest. Her body jolted against the hospital bed, but the flatline sound on the heart monitor continued its terrifying, unbroken buzz.

"Charging to two hundred! Clear!"

Thump.

Spencer pulled Charlee against his chest, wrapping his arms tightly around her small shoulders to shield her eyes from the horrifying scene. Charlee buried her face in his coat, sobbing hysterically, her tiny fingers digging into his fabric.

"Come on, Florence, stay with us," Spencer muttered under his breath, praying for the first time in twenty years.

After three agonizing minutes of CPR and electric shocks, a faint, irregular pulse flickered across the screen.

Beep... beep... beep...

"We have a rhythm," the nurse gasped, adjusting the IV drip. "She's stable, but her heart is extremely weak. We need to move her to the Cardiac Intensive Care Unit immediately."

As the medical team rushed Florence’s bed down the hallway toward the elevator, Spencer knelt on the floor beside Charlee. He wiped her tears with his thumb, holding her small face in his hands.

"She's fighting, Charlee," Spencer said gently, his voice thick with emotion. "Your grandma is strong. She's going to hold on."

Charlee sniffled, wiping her nose on her sleeve. She reached into her coat pocket and pulled out a small, crumpled piece of yellow paper that Florence had slipped into her hand right before her heart stopped.

"Grandma gave me this," Charlee whispered through her tears. "She told me to give it to you if she went to sleep."

Spencer unfolded the yellow paper carefully. Written in shaky, frantic pencil was a series of numbers and letters:

WGE-Vault-77 / 45.3211° N, 122.6784° W / The Red Barn

Spencer’s eyes locked onto the coordinates.

WGE-Vault-77 referred to the private, off-grid storage facility owned by Warren Global Enterprise, located deep in the dense forests near Mount Hood—a property that had been officially marked as "abandoned" on corporate balance sheets five years ago.

Marcus walked back into the room, holding his satellite phone. "Boss, I just tracked Julian’s private phone signal. It pinged off a cell tower near the Sandy River fifteen minutes ago. He's moving toward Mount Hood."

Spencer stood up, his posture rigid, his gray-blue eyes flashing with lethal resolve.

"He has Jocelyn," Spencer said cold and sharp. "He’s taking her to the old corporate vault to force her to sign a formal relinquishment of parental rights before erasing the evidence."

He looked down at Charlee, then turned to Marcus. "Marcus, assign four of our best armed guards to stay in this room with Florence twenty-four hours a day. No one enters without my personal code."