Chapter 5 - THE MASTER ADMIN
The air in the office instantly vanished from my lungs.
I stared at the pink ribbon dangling from Eleanor’s manicured fingers. Arthur. The man my mother had supposedly hired. He had been a plant. He hadn't come to the motel to save me; he had come to isolate me from Emma.
“What did you do to my daughter?” I screamed, lunging forward.
The two massive construction workers immediately stepped in front of Eleanor, shoving me violently back against the oak bookshelf.
“Relax, Laura,” Eleanor sneered, placing the pink ribbon in her expensive purse. “Emma is perfectly fine. She’s sleeping in the backseat of Arthur’s car right now. We’re taking her home to her father, where she belongs. You, however, are going to take a long drive with these gentlemen.”
I looked at the two men. They weren't regular crew members. They were fixers.
“You’re going to kill me,” I whispered, clutching the envelopes from the safe against my chest. “You’re actually going to murder the mother of your grandchild.”
Eleanor rolled her eyes, a gesture so casual it made my blood run cold. “Oh, please. It’s a tragic car accident. A hysterical, unhinged wife steals company documents, flees in the middle of the night, and drives her car off the quarry bridge. It happens all the time.”
She held out her hand. “Give me the envelopes, Laura. Make this easy, and maybe I’ll let Emma keep a picture of you.”
A primal, ferocious heat ignited in my chest. For twelve years, I had lowered my eyes. I had let this woman belittle me. I had let her son take credit for my endless nights of labor. I had let them make me feel small.
But I was a mother. And they had taken my child.
“You want the envelopes?” I asked, my voice eerily calm.
I tossed them onto Michael’s heavy mahogany desk.
As Eleanor stepped forward to grab them, I slammed my hand onto the large red emergency lockdown button mounted beneath the lip of the desk.
I had insisted on installing the system three years ago after a series of warehouse robberies. Michael had mocked me for the expense.
Instantly, a blaring alarm shattered the silence. Heavy steel security shutters violently dropped over the windows and the office doorway, sealing the room in a split second.
Eleanor shrieked as the metal door slammed shut, trapping her and one of the thugs inside the office with me. The second thug had been standing just outside the doorway and was cut off in the hallway.
“Turn it off!” Eleanor screamed, clutching her ears against the deafening alarm.
“Only the master admin can turn it off,” I shouted back, grabbing a heavy brass paperweight from the desk.
The thug inside the room lunged at me. I didn't hesitate. I smashed the brass paperweight directly into his kneecap with all my strength. He crumpled to the floor with a howl of agony, grasping his leg.
Eleanor backed away, her eyes wide with terror as she looked at me. For the first time in her life, she was looking at a woman who wasn't afraid of her.
“You’re going to jail, Eleanor,” I spat. I grabbed the two envelopes from the desk and picked up a heavy rolling office chair.
I hurled the chair through the interior glass wall that separated Michael’s office from the adjacent conference room—a room that didn't have steel shutters over its hallway door.
The glass shattered into a million pieces.
I climbed through the broken frame, ignoring the cuts on my arms, and sprinted down the hallway, leaving Eleanor trapped in the blaring office.
I burst through the warehouse fire exit and ran into the freezing night. My car was still in the lot, but I knew Arthur would have tracked my GPS.
I needed a different vehicle. I ran to the company’s fleet parking lot and found one of the heavy work trucks. I had the master keys for the entire fleet in my purse.
I started the engine and tore out of the lot, dialing 911 on my cell phone.
“911, what is your emergency?” the dispatcher answered.
“My name is Laura Bennett,” I gasped, speeding toward the highway. “My husband and his mother have abducted my ten-year-old daughter. They are traveling with a man named Arthur Vance. Please, you have to track my cell phone. I’m heading toward the downtown private airfield.”
“Ma'am, slow down. Why the airfield?”
I looked down at the documents I had pulled from the first envelope. It wasn't just the forged loan. It was a chartered flight itinerary.
Michael wasn't planning on staying in Ohio to collect the life insurance. He knew the fraud was too massive. He was liquidating the loan, taking Chloe, taking Emma, and fleeing to an offshore haven before the morning bank audits caught the discrepancies.
“Just send the police!” I yelled, throwing the phone onto the passenger seat.
I opened the second envelope with one hand as I drove.
Inside was a stack of handwritten letters. But they weren't from Michael to Chloe.
They were letters written to Michael from Derek.
I glanced at the top letter, and my foot slammed instinctively on the brakes, sending the heavy truck swerving across the empty highway.
The letters detailed a secret arrangement. Derek wasn't just Michael’s brother. Derek was the one who had actually orchestrated the fraud. Derek had been blackmailing Michael for years, threatening to expose a fatal structural collapse at one of Michael’s early construction sites—a collapse Michael had covered up by bribing city inspectors.
Derek had demanded the $240,000. He had demanded my mother’s house.
May you like
And at the bottom of the letter, Derek had written: Don't worry about Laura and the kid. Arthur will handle them at the motel. By the time you board the plane with Chloe, your wife and daughter will be at the bottom of the quarry.
They hadn't just kidnapped Emma. They were going to kill her.
