Chapter 6 - The Hostage Ride
The interior of Marcus’s luxury sedan smelled of expensive leather and peppermint. It was a smell I associated with a thousand successful business trips. Now, it was the smell of a coffin.
I sat in the passenger seat, my hands resting on my knees. Marcus drove with his left hand, his right hand keeping the suppressed pistol leveled steadily at my ribs.
Lily and Maria were safe at the house. I had convinced Marcus that leaving a trail of bodies in a wealthy suburb would draw too much heat before the corporate transfer was finalized.
“You’re making the smart play, Daniel,” Marcus said, keeping his eyes on the rain-slicked road. “Once the ink is dry, you can take whatever is left in your personal accounts and disappear with the kids. I win the company, you win your family. It’s a clean transaction.”
“There’s nothing clean about this, Marcus,” I said, staring out the window into the darkness. “You murdered my wife.”
“I secured my investment,” Marcus corrected smoothly. “You were brilliant at writing code, Daniel, but you were always soft when it came to the cutthroat reality of empire building. I built Whitmore Grid Systems just as much as you did. I’m just taking my rightful equity.”
“By using a two-year-old as leverage?”
“Business is business.”
I didn’t respond. I needed him arrogant. Arrogance bred mistakes.
As we drove away from the city center, heading toward the industrial district on the south side, my mind raced. I needed a way to signal for help without him noticing. My phone had been tossed out the window three miles back.
“Where is Vanessa?” I asked.
“A defunct Whitmore storage warehouse near the docks,” Marcus replied, turning the steering wheel. “She thinks she’s waiting for me to bring her a cut of the trust money. But Vanessa has become a liability. The child abuse, the sloppy bank transfers... she drew your attention. She’s going to take the fall for everything.”
“You’re going to kill her.”
“I’m going to make it look like a tragic murder-suicide,” Marcus smirked. “A deranged stepmother realizes she’s been caught embezzling and abusing the children, kills the husband, and then turns the gun on herself. The police will eat it up. The grieving COO steps in to save the company.”
My blood ran ice cold. He had never intended to let me or Sam live.
We pulled up to a massive, rusted corrugated steel building. The area was completely abandoned, illuminated only by a single flickering streetlamp.
“Get out,” Marcus ordered, pressing the gun harder into my side. “Slowly.”
I opened the door and stepped out into the damp, freezing night air.
Marcus marched me toward the heavy side door of the warehouse. He punched a code into the keypad, and the heavy metal door clicked open.
Inside, the warehouse was dimly lit by temporary work lights. It smelled of motor oil and dust.
In the center of the vast, empty space, a playpen had been set up.
Inside the playpen, sleeping soundly on a pile of blankets, was Sam.
The relief that washed over me was so intense my knees almost buckled. He was alive.
But the relief was shattered a second later when I looked to the right.
Vanessa was sitting in a folding chair, bound tightly with thick plastic zip ties. Her mouth was taped shut. Her eyes were wide with sheer, unadulterated terror as she looked at Marcus and me.
She wasn’t an accomplice anymore. She was a hostage.
“What is this, Marcus?” I asked, feigning confusion.
Marcus chuckled, kicking a metal toolbox out of his way.
“I told you, Daniel. Vanessa is a liability,” Marcus said loudly, ensuring she heard him. “She thought she could negotiate a higher payout by kidnapping your son. But I don’t negotiate with pawns.”
Vanessa let out a muffled sob, thrashing against the chair.
Marcus pulled a stack of legal documents from his coat pocket and tossed them onto a nearby wooden crate. He tossed a pen next to them.
“Sign the transfer, Daniel,” Marcus commanded, stepping back to keep both Vanessa and me in his field of vision. “Right on the dotted line. Then, I’ll let you hold your son one last time before the tragic end.”
I walked slowly toward the wooden crate. I looked at the documents that would sign away twelve years of my life.
But as I reached for the pen, my eyes locked onto something sitting on the floor next to Vanessa’s chair.
It was Sam’s diaper bag. The one Vanessa had hastily packed.
Attached to the strap of the bag was a small, innocuous black plastic bear. It looked like a keychain.
But I knew exactly what it was. I had designed the prototype myself at Whitmore.
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It was an emergency nanny cam. It recorded high-definition audio and video directly to a secure cloud server, and the lens was currently pointed dead center at Marcus.
All I needed to do was get him to confess everything on tape.
