Chapter 6 - THE PRICE OF A DAUGHTER
Celeste did not scream.
She did not collapse.
She stood beside the open vehicle while panic ripped through every part of her body, and she forced herself to think.
The deputy was alive. He had been struck from behind and injected with a sedative. Security footage showed a landscaping truck leaving the estate seven minutes earlier.
Grace had been taken through the eastern service gate.
Marcus coordinated roadblocks while federal agents tracked the truck.
Celeste stared at the empty back seat.
Grace’s phone lay beneath it.
Adrian had left it intentionally.
At 10:26, the device rang.
Celeste answered.
“Let me speak to her.”
“Good morning to you too,” Adrian said.
“Let me hear my daughter.”
A rustling sound followed.
Then Grace’s voice.
“Mom?”
Celeste gripped the phone.
“Are you hurt?”
“No.”
“Did he touch you?”
“No. I’m in some kind of van.”
Adrian took the phone back.
“She is remarkably composed. Julian would be proud.”
“Say his name again and I will bury you.”
“That sounds expensive.”
“I can afford it.”
Adrian laughed.
“This is not about money.”
“It is always about money with men like you.”
“Bring me the archive.”
“Where?”
“You’ll receive instructions.”
“If Grace has one bruise—”
“You should worry less about bruises and more about time.”
The call ended.
Marcus approached.
“We traced it for six seconds. They’re moving north.”
“Can we follow?”
“Not yet.”
Preston was placed in an interrogation room inside the estate’s security wing.
Celeste entered before the federal agents could stop her.
He sat handcuffed to a metal table.
“You helped him take Grace.”
Preston shook his head.
“I didn’t.”
“He said you were supposed to remove her.”
“I told him to get her away from the gala before she found anything else. That was all.”
“You hired a convicted predator to abduct a child.”
“I didn’t know he would do this.”
Celeste placed both hands on the table.
“Where would he take her?”
“I don’t know.”
She leaned closer.
“You have one opportunity to be useful.”
Preston’s confidence had vanished.
“Cross used an old property years ago. A hunting lodge near Lake Ashford. But he won’t go somewhere I know.”
“Give Marcus the address.”
“He’ll kill me if I help you.”
Celeste’s voice turned cold.
“He already intends to.”
Preston looked toward the mirrored glass.
“What do I get?”
Celeste stared at him with disgust.
“Your niece has been kidnapped because of you, and you are negotiating?”
“She isn’t my niece.”
“No. She is Julian’s daughter. The man whose death paid for your lifestyle.”
Preston’s eyes lowered.
For the first time, shame appeared genuine.
He gave her the address.
The hunting lodge was empty.
Police found fresh tire tracks, Grace’s broken hair clip, and a printed photograph of Julian taped to the wall.
Adrian wanted Celeste to know he controlled the pace.
At 2:00 p.m., another call came.
“Take the archive to Grand Central Terminal,” Adrian instructed. “Locker 418.”
“You release Grace first.”
“You are not in a position to set terms.”
“You need the complete archive, and you don’t know whether I copied it.”
Silence.
Celeste continued.
“If anything happens to her, every file goes to the FBI, the press, and every pension attorney in the country.”
“You may have already sent it.”
“I haven’t.”
“Why should I believe you?”
“Because I want Grace alive more than I want justice.”
Adrian considered that.
“Locker 418. Four o’clock.”
The call ended.
Marcus shook his head.
“He won’t release her after getting the drive.”
“I know.”
They prepared a duplicate archive fitted with a tracker.
At 3:55, Celeste entered Grand Central alone.
Thousands of travelers moved beneath the painted ceiling. Announcements echoed through the terminal. Police officers dressed as commuters positioned themselves throughout the building.
Celeste reached Locker 418.
Inside was a red scarf Grace had worn the previous winter.
A note instructed Celeste to place the drive inside and walk away.
She did.
Five minutes later, a teenage boy opened the locker.
Agents surrounded him.
He began crying.
A stranger had paid him two hundred dollars to retrieve the drive and leave it inside a trash can near the subway entrance.
The trail continued through three more couriers.
Adrian never appeared.
At 5:12, the tracker stopped moving beneath an abandoned warehouse near the Hudson River.
Celeste and Marcus arrived with tactical officers.
The building was empty except for a laptop playing a prerecorded video.
Grace sat tied to a chair.
A clock behind her showed 4:30.
Adrian stood beside her.
“You keep sending soldiers, Celeste,” he said to the camera. “I asked for a mother.”
The video shifted to a map.
A location appeared in the Catskill Mountains.
“You will come alone at midnight. No Marcus. No federal agents. No tracking devices. Bring the original archive.”
The screen went black.
Marcus studied the map.
“It’s a former Hawthorne retreat.”
Vivian, who had been brought under federal protection, recognized it immediately.
“The Blackwood House,” she said. “Robert used it for private meetings.”
“Other exits?” Marcus asked.
“An old service tunnel beneath the wine cellar. It leads toward the woods.”
Celeste looked at the clock.
Six hours remained.
“You’re not going alone,” Marcus said.
“I have to.”
“That’s what he expects you to believe.”
“He’ll kill her if he sees a tactical team.”
Marcus stepped closer.
“And he’ll kill you if he doesn’t.”
Celeste looked through the warehouse windows at the darkening sky.
For sixteen years, she had protected Grace through preparation, education, security, and love.
Now all of it had been stripped away.
She had one drive and one chance.
At 11:48 p.m., Celeste arrived at Blackwood House.
Snow had begun falling across the mountains.
The old retreat stood among the trees like an abandoned monument, its stone walls black against the white ground.
Celeste carried the archive inside her coat.
She entered alone.
A fire burned in the great room.
Adrian sat in a leather chair drinking brandy.
Grace was tied to another chair near the fireplace.
Her face was pale, but she appeared uninjured.
“Mom.”
Celeste fought the urge to run to her.
Adrian raised his pistol.
“The drive.”
Celeste placed it on the table.
“Let her go.”
Adrian inserted the drive into a laptop.
Files began appearing.
His eyes moved quickly across the screen.
“This is incomplete.”
“No. It isn’t.”
“The third archive is missing.”
Celeste had never known there was a third archive.
Adrian stood.
“Julian recorded everything. Meetings, payments, conversations. He kept insurance.”
“I don’t have it.”
“You own his possessions.”
“I searched everything.”
Adrian walked toward Grace.
“Then perhaps she remembers something.”
Grace looked at Celeste.
A strange understanding passed between them.
The first archive had said the last part contained evidence of crimes committed to protect the scheme.
Julian had hidden clues inside music.
Grace whispered, “Mom, the last note.”
Celeste remembered the red piano.
Five notes opened the first compartment.
But the melody Julian recorded ended with a sixth note Grace had not played.
Adrian heard her.
“What last note?”
Grace lifted her chin.
“The one you’ll never find.”
Adrian struck the arm of her chair with the pistol.
Celeste moved forward.
“Don’t touch her!”
Adrian pointed the gun at Celeste’s chest.
“Tell me.”
A floorboard creaked beneath him.
Celeste looked toward the wine-cellar door.
Adrian followed her gaze.
That mistake lasted less than a second.
Grace threw herself sideways, knocking over the chair.
Celeste lunged.
The gun fired.
The bullet tore through Celeste’s jacket and grazed her ribs.
She slammed into Adrian, and both crashed against the table.
The laptop fell.
Grace rolled toward the fireplace and used a broken piece of metal to cut the rope around her wrists.
Adrian struck Celeste across the face.
He raised the pistol again.
Before he could fire, the wine-cellar door burst open.
Marcus and the tactical team flooded the room.
“Drop it!”
Adrian grabbed Celeste around the throat and pulled her in front of him.
The gun pressed against her temple.
“Back away.”
Grace stood behind him, free of the ropes.
She picked up the heavy iron fire poker.
Adrian never saw her swing.
The poker struck his wrist.
The pistol fell.
Marcus fired a stun round into Adrian’s chest.
He collapsed.
Celeste dropped to her knees.
Grace ran into her arms.
For several seconds, neither could speak.
Outside, snow continued falling.
Inside, Adrian Cross was handcuffed and dragged away.
May you like
But as paramedics examined Celeste’s wound, Grace whispered the words that proved the danger was not finished.
“I know where Dad hid the third archive.”
