Chapter 8
Every person in the command center went silent.
Brooks began tracing the call.
Colonel Hayes ordered teams toward Emma’s building.
I kept Kane talking.
“You came back for the missing components.”
“I came back because you refused to follow instructions.”
“I never received instructions.”
“You did. Three months ago.”
I remembered an unsigned note beneath my windshield wiper before deployment.
Stop asking questions about Harbor Transit.
I had assumed it was connected to an internal contract dispute.
I reported it.
The report disappeared.
“You buried my complaint,” I said.
“I buried many things.”
“Like Thomas Carter’s murder?”
Kane paused.
That pause was an answer.
Margaret had not simply opened the door for Mark.
Kane had known.
“Why Emma?”
“Children make excellent leverage because mothers imagine every possible pain.”
Emma sobbed in the background.
“Let her go. You need me, not her.”
“At last, something we agree on.”
“What do you want?”
“A vehicle. Clearance through the south gate. You will drive.”
“With Emma?”
“She comes with us.”
“No.”
“Then this conversation ends.”
A faint mechanical hum reached me through the phone.
Ventilation.
A periodic metal rattle.
I knew those quarters.
Emma’s room was near an exterior air-conditioning unit.
But the hum was too loud.
“Kane isn’t in her room,” I whispered to Brooks.
He studied me.
The sobbing sounded real.
The background did not.
“Emma,” I said, “what color is the blanket?”
“What?”
“The blanket on your bed.”
“Gray.”
“Where is Mr. Bear?”
Kane spoke sharply.
“That’s enough.”
Emma cried louder.
“Under the chair.”
Mr. Bear was the stuffed animal she had slept with since she was four.
He was at the hospital.
The voice was Emma’s.
But the answers were being forced.
Or the call had been recorded earlier.
“Emma, what did Grandpa Thomas call you?”
Silence.
Then the call disconnected.
Brooks’s trace identified the signal inside a maintenance building near the eastern runway.
Teams entered moments later.
They found a phone connected to speakers and industrial equipment producing background noise.
The room was empty.
A tablet on the floor displayed a live audio feed from Emma’s quarters.
Kane had not been with her.
But someone was.
Security footage finally returned.
A woman in a medical uniform exited through a service corridor.
She pushed a laundry cart.
Inside the cart, officers found Emma’s gray blanket.
No Emma.
The woman had used credentials belonging to a nurse who called in sick that morning.
Her photograph matched no known associate.
The base gates were closed before she left.
Emma was still somewhere inside.
Colonel Hayes organized a section-by-section search.
I went to the quarters.
A needle cap lay beside Emma’s bed.
A broken silver bracelet rested near the window.
The bracelet Kane had given her.
I picked it up.
It was heavier than I remembered.
I twisted the clasp.
A tiny circuit board sat inside.
A tracker.
Kane had been monitoring Emma for three years.
Brooks sealed the bracelet as evidence.
“Why leave it broken?” he asked.
“Emma discovered it.”
“Or her abductor did.”
A drop of blood marked the windowsill.
Outside, the ground was undisturbed.
No one had climbed out.
I checked the bathroom.
Water covered part of the floor.
The vent above the shower hung open.
Too small for an adult.
Large enough for Emma.
“She escaped,” I said.
Kane’s accomplice had entered.
Emma broke the bracelet.
Then she climbed into the service duct.
We obtained the building plans.
The duct connected to a utility corridor and ended in the laundry facility.
Search teams moved there.
The nurse’s uniform had been abandoned.
So had the cart.
A shoe print led toward a tunnel used for electrical maintenance.
Halfway inside, officers found the woman unconscious.
A metal wrench lay beside her.
Emma had struck her and run.
“She’s moving through the tunnels,” Hayes said.
“So is Kane,” I replied.
The tunnels connected several restricted buildings.
Kane had designed security procedures for the base years earlier.
He knew the routes.
We separated into teams.
Brooks insisted I remain behind.
I refused.
“My daughter will come to me if she hears my voice.”
“You could also lead Kane directly to her.”
“He already knows the tunnels.”
Hayes handed me a protective vest and radio.
No pistol.
We entered through the laundry facility.
The tunnel smelled of dust and hot metal.
Emergency lights cast red circles along the walls.
“Emma!” I called.
No answer.
We moved deeper.
A child’s footprint appeared in a patch of dust.
Then another.
She was barefoot.
We followed them to a junction.
The prints turned left.
A smear of blood marked the right wall.
“Decoy,” I said.
Brooks nodded.
Emma had placed bloody fingers on the opposite side to confuse whoever followed.
She remembered what I taught her during hiking trips.
Leave a false trail.
Stay near exits.
Listen before moving.
We went left.
A gunshot echoed through the tunnel.
Then two more.
The lights went out.
Someone hit me from behind.
I struck the concrete floor.
Brooks shouted.
A struggle followed in darkness.
When the emergency lights flickered back, Brooks was bleeding from his forehead.
His weapon was gone.
Victor Kane stood ten feet away.
He held Emma by the shoulder.
Her face was dirty.
Her bare feet were bleeding.
But she was alive.
Kane aimed Brooks’s gun at me.
“She is remarkably difficult to capture.”
Emma looked at me.
I saw fear.
I also saw focus.
“Let her go,” I said.
“Walk toward me.”
I obeyed.
Brooks began to rise.
Kane fired into the wall beside him.
“Stay down.”
The shot deafened us in the confined tunnel.
Kane pulled Emma backward toward a steel door.
“Open it,” he ordered me.
The door required an identification card and code.
It led to a secure communications room.
“You need my access,” I said.
“Correct.”
“My credentials were suspended.”
“Your old credentials were. Your temporary emergency authority was activated thirty minutes ago.”
He knew internal procedures in real time.
Someone inside command was helping him.
“Who is your source?”
Kane smiled.
“You still think Ryan was the greatest betrayal waiting for you?”
He pressed the gun against Emma’s head.
“Open the door.”
I placed my hand against the scanner.
The panel turned green.
I entered my emergency code.
The lock released.
Kane forced Emma and me inside.
Then he sealed the door behind us.
The communications room contained secure terminals and direct access to regional defense networks.
Kane pushed me toward a console.
“Approve the transmission.”
A file waited on the screen.
It appeared to be a routine emergency update.
But the destination address was foreign.
“What’s inside?”
“Nothing that concerns you.”
“If you could send it yourself, you would.”
“I need an active officer’s authorization.”
“Kill me and you lose it.”
“That is why I brought your daughter.”
Emma’s eyes met mine.
Her hand moved slowly toward her pocket.
Kane did not notice.
She pulled out the broken half of the silver bracelet.
A sharp metal pin extended from it.
I understood.
I placed my hand over the authorization pad.
Then I hesitated.
Kane leaned closer.
“Do it.”
Emma drove the pin into his thigh.
Kane shouted and fired.
The bullet shattered the monitor.
I struck his wrist.
The gun fell.
Emma kicked it beneath the console.
Kane hit me across the face and reached for her.
I wrapped both arms around him.
He was stronger.
But he was injured.
And furious people make mistakes.
He drove me into the wall.
I held on.
Brooks and the tactical team cut through the outer lock seconds later.
Kane was forced to the floor.
As officers cuffed him, the damaged terminal began beeping.
The transmission had started automatically.
Three percent.
Five percent.
Seven.
May you like
Kane looked up and laughed.
“You’re too late.”
