Racing the Clock

Judge Hastings’s signature burned on the phone screen. A hundred thousand dollars to buy a midnight injunction and strip a teenager of her only protection. Eleanor didn't wait to read the fine print. She bolted through the O'Hare terminal, her flats slapping hard against the polished linoleum.

The drive to David’s house in the western suburbs was a blur of frantic lane changes and crushing acceleration. The injunction granted Harrison immediate emergency custody. If Arthur dispatched the local police to her townhouse, they would find it locked and empty. They would triangulate her known contacts. They would go to David's next.

She had to get Chloe out before the squad cars arrived.

Her SUV skidded into David’s driveway, tires kicking up wet leaves. No police cruisers blocked the street. No silver Porsche idled at the curb. Just the quiet, affluent stillness of the neighborhood.

Eleanor hammered the heavy brass knocker against the oak front door. Silence.

She punched her old access code into the garage keypad. The mechanism ground upward with a slow, agonizing whine. She slipped under the rising door and burst into the mudroom.

"Chloe!"

The shout bounced off the minimalist vaulted ceilings, unanswered. The house smelled of stale coffee and drafting vellum. Eleanor tore through the kitchen. Two ceramic mugs sat in the stainless-steel sink. A half-eaten piece of toast rested on a paper towel.

She ran into the living room. It was meticulously tidy. The heavy wool throw she had wrapped around Chloe’s shoulders last night was folded precisely over the arm of the leather sofa.

David’s drafting table was clear. His keys were missing from the ceramic bowl near the entryway.

Eleanor’s lungs tightened, the air turning thin. The plastic burner phone she had seen David pocket in the mirror flashed in her memory. He hadn't taken it just to stay in contact. He took it to control the communication block.

But she had given Chloe her own burner. The silver box from the electronics store.

Eleanor dropped her tote bag onto the kitchen island. She pulled her laptop out, her fingers clumsy and rigid as she booted up the tethered connection. The tracking software loaded agonizingly slow. She miskeyed her administrative password twice. Her pulse hammered against her ribs. On the third try, the green status bar filled the screen.

*Locating Device: 'Work'.*

A digital map of the county snapped into focus. A single red dot pulsed steadily against the gray grid lines.

Eleanor leaned over the marble island, her nose inches from the glass screen. The dot wasn't hovering over the Vance Estate. It wasn't at a local police precinct, and it wasn't moving toward the psychiatric ward at St. Jude's hospital.

It was stationary in the heart of the downtown commercial district.

She zoomed in on the coordinates, the street names sharpening into focus. Wacker Drive. A commercial high-rise. She pulled up the directory for the building, scanning the corporate suites until the name locked into her vision like a sniper's crosshairs.

Suite 4400. Pendelton & Associates.

The ceramic mugs in the sink weren't left in a panic. They were left by a man calmly having breakfast before running an errand for the Vance machine. David hadn't protected Chloe. He had delivered her straight to the family lawyer.