The Joyride

I dropped the phone. The plastic cracked against the concrete floor, Julian’s panicked warnings silenced mid-sentence. He was right about one thing: I wasn't dealing with a board member anymore. I was dealing with a parasite that was being eaten alive by a larger predator.

"Stay here," I hissed at Lucas. "If you move, you're dead."

I didn't wait for him to respond. I sprinted back up the stairwell, my lungs burning. I wasn't running to save him. I was running to the only place I still had control: the corporate treasury terminal in my office.

If Lucas wanted the company to pay his debts, I would make sure there was nothing left to take. I hit the master override on the terminal, my fingers flying across the keys. I initiated a total liquidity freeze. One click and every Hawthorne account, from the offshore holdings to the petty cash in the lobby, was bricked.

I watched the "System Locked" notification glow red. Then I checked the security feed.

The two men from the lobby were stepping out of the elevator on my floor. They didn't look like debt collectors; they looked like butchers. One carried a heavy sports bag that clinked with a sick, metallic weight.

My desk phone rang. Internal line.

I stared at it. It was Lucas’s extension.

I picked up. "I told you to stay put."

"He's not here, Elena."

It wasn't Lucas. It was a voice like grinding gravel. Cold. Professional.

"We know you're the one with the keys," the voice continued. "The boy is with us now. We’re taking a little field trip."

I felt the floor tilt. "What boy? Lucas is in the stairwell."

"Not Lucas. The other one. The one who looks like his father."

I lunged for my personal phone and opened the tracking app for Leo’s phone. The blue dot was already moving. Fast. It was leaving the university district, heading north.

Toward the abandoned quarry. Arthur’s dumping ground.

I called Leo. It rang. Once. Twice. Then it went to voicemail. I called again. Nothing.

I dialed the number that had just called me. Lucas’s desk line.

"Unlock the accounts, Elena," the gravelly voice said. The mocking tone made my skin crawl.

I looked at the monitor. The office next door was empty. Lucas had vanished. He hadn't been cowering in the maintenance room. He had been the bait to get me to freeze the building while they took my son.

I hit redial on the international number I’d saved from Zurich.

Lucas answered on the first ring. The sound of wind rushing past a car window filled the speaker.

"You’re making a mistake, Elena," Lucas said. He sounded breathless, his charismatic mask replaced by a jagged edge of desperation. "They don't want the boy. They want the quarter-billion in the Zurich protocol. And they’re tired of waiting."

"If you touch him, Lucas—"

"I’m not touching him. I’m driving. We’re almost at the quarry."

I heard a muffled sound in the background. A boy’s voice. Leo.

"Unlock the accounts, Elena. Or Leo and I are going to have a very steep accident."