Chapter 6 - The Interception over the Lake
-6-
The encrypted satellite phone buzzed against my palm with a sharp, insistent vibration. I pressed it to my ear as I sprinted back down the emergency stairwell, leaving the freezing rooftop behind.
"Tracker locked, Mr. Carter," a cool, synthesized voice crackled through the secure channel—my chief private security director, operating out of our covert orbital monitoring facility in downtown Chicago. "Eurocopter N70S is currently vectoring northeast at two hundred knots, climbing through six thousand feet. Projected flight path is heading straight across Lake Michigan toward a private airstrip in Northern Michigan controlled by Sterling-Vance holdings."
"Do not let them cross state lines," I ordered, my boots pounding against the metal steps as I descended back into the concrete bowels of the mansion. "Scramble our two private Hawkeye interceptors out of the O'Hare private hangar. Force that bird down on the ice, or run it into a cornfield. I don't care about the hull; I want my daughter back."
"Copy that, sir. Interceptors are wheels-up in ninety seconds. But be advised—we're picking up a secondary signal on their comms channel. An encrypted line patched directly into federal district court servers."
I paused on the landing, my hand gripping the cold iron railing. "Federal servers?"
"Yes, sir. It looks like Victoria filed an emergency writ of habeas corpus and an immediate parental rights termination order signed ten minutes ago by Judge Robert Vance—your wife's uncle. If our jets force them down without official federal clearance, your interceptors will be classified as hostile combatants by the FAA."
A dark, bitter laugh escaped my lips. They had covered every single legal angle. They had the courts, the police, the corporate ledgers, and the family bloodline wrapped around their fingers like silk thread.
"Let Judge Vance issue all the warrants he wants," I said, my voice dropping into a chilling, absolute register. "When you're dealing with monsters who traffic in children, federal jurisdiction ends where a father's barrel begins. Execute the intercept."
I pushed open the door leading back into the underground bunker, intending to grab Jonathan Cross and squeeze every last access code out of him until he bled.
The office door was wide open.
The mahogany desk was deserted. The crystal decanter sat abandoned, and the leather executive chair was spinning slowly in the dim light.
Cross was gone.
I rushed inside, my eyes scanning the room. The reinforced steel filing cabinets were open, their contents emptied into large industrial shredders humming quietly in the corner. On the center of the desk lay a single, blood-stained envelope with my name written across it in bold, black ink.
I tore it open. Inside was a polaroid photograph of Isabella sitting inside the helicopter cabin, a strip of grey duct tape pressed firmly across her mouth, tears streaming down her pale cheeks. Scribbled on the back of the photo in jagged handwriting were four words:
THE WOLF'S DEN. MIDNIGHT.
The Wolf’s Den—an abandoned federal Nike missile silo hidden deep within the dense, snow-choked forests of the Upper Peninsula, purchased legally by a shell company controlled by Jonathan Cross back in 2012.
It was where the syndicate took assets when they needed to break them permanently.
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I didn't waste another second. I grabbed the antique ledger of the Sterling-Vance Syndicate off the desk, tucked it securely inside my coat, and bolted back toward the service exit leading to the property line where my rented sedan was hidden in the pine trees.
Victoria thought she was flying Isabella to a safehouse. But she was walking right into the ancestral tomb where the syndicate's deepest secrets were buried. And I was going to be waiting at the door.
