This felt like the confirmation I needed.
They were alive. The two stationary signatures. Anna and Daisy.
The relief was so violent it was indistinguishable from terror. They were alive, but they werewith him. Still captive. Still in danger. Still?—
"How long?" I demanded, already moving toward the elevator. "How long until you breach?"
"SWAT is mobilizing now. Twenty minutes to be in position. Another ten for entry assessment."
Thirty minutes. Half an hour. An eternity.
"I'm coming."
"Jack—" James's voice held a world of warning, the tone of a friend about to deny a desperate man. "You can't. You know you can't. If Carter sees you, if he knows you're there?—"
"I'm coming, James." The words came out somewhere between a command and a plea. I was in the elevator now, jabbing the button for the garage, watching the numbers descend with agonizing slowness. "I've spent thirty-six hours in this glorified prison I call home, doingnothing. Sitting here, waiting, useless, while he?—"
My voice broke. I couldn't finish. Couldn't sayout loud what Carter had been doing to them while I sat in my expensive cage, powerless.
"I'll stay in the command vehicle," I continued, forcing the words out. The rational voice of negotiation. "I will follow every order. I will not compromise the operation. But I am not—Iwill notsit across town while you go to them. James, please. She's my daughter. And Anna… I have to be there. I have to be there when you bring them out."
A heavy pause crackled over the line, filled with the weight of our friendship and his professional judgment warring with each other.
"If you're not there in twenty minutes, we'll go without you," he finally said. "And Jack, command post only. You do not approach the building. You do not get out of the van unless I give the all-clear. You compromise this operation, you risk them. Do you understand?"
"Understood."
That word was a vow.
The drive was a descent into a special kind of hell measured in excruciating increments.
Twenty-three minutes. That's what the GPS said. I could make it in fifteen.
The city at 5 AM was still mostly asleep, empty streets slick with dew, traffic lights blinking yellow through the gray dawn. I pushed the car to eighty on residential streets, ninety on the commercial boulevards. Red lights became suggestions I ignored.
My mind was a riot of images that wouldn't stop:The thermal blobs on James's description—two stationary figures. The single drop of blood on Anna's apartment carpet. The butterfly hair clip. Anna's mouth in the video, formingI'm sorrylike she had anything to apologize for.
And the photo. That goddamned photo. Anna slumped in that chair, fresh bruises blooming like poisonous flowers across her skin. Daisy behind her, unable to see but forced to hear everything.
How long do you think she can last?
My hands were white-knuckled on the steering wheel. My heart hammered so hard I could feel it in my temples, in my throat, behind my eyes. Every breath tasted like copper and fear.
The GPS recalculated. Fourteen minutes. Twelve minutes. Eight minutes.
Not fast enough. Never fast enough.
When the industrial waterfront came into view, my heart tried to tear itself from my chest. The world here was drained of color: Gray concrete, decaying brick, the oily black of the river. Dawn was just breaking, painting everything in cold blues and grays.
The Halcyon Textile mill loomed against the lightening sky. Six stories of jagged, broken windows and rust-stained brick. A monument to forgotten industry. A perfect tomb.
My daughter was in there. Anna was in there. With him.
The black van was idling behind a rusted chain-link fence two blocks away. I parked and ran. Vancewas already there, having been summoned by James. He gave me a grim, assessing nod, the look of a man who'd seen combat and knew what I was walking into. He pulled the van door open.
Inside was sensory overload.
A hive of controlled tension. The air hummed with overlapping voices, radio chatter, quiet commands, and the electric whine of electronics. Glowing screens everywhere. Maps with red and green overlays. Thermal images. Live feeds from helmet cams showing shadows and concrete.
