Chapter 13 - Forty-Eight Hours
Marcus’s deadline began at midnight.
Adrian refused to tell Grace exactly what had happened.
She knew anyway.
“My cousin helped me reach the crash.”
“He knows I had Lily.”
Adrian nodded.
“Marcus has him.”
Grace sat down.
Emma played quietly beside Lily.
The two children had no idea an entire city was moving around them.
“I’ll tell Marcus where I am.”
“No.”
“He wants me.”
“He wants Lily.”
Grace looked at Adrian.
“Then what are you going to do?”
Adrian stared through the window.
“Give him exactly what he asked for.”
Thomas frowned.
“The evidence?”
“A copy.”
“The trust?”
“A fake withdrawal.”
“And Lily?”
Adrian looked toward his daughter.
“No.”
That part was not negotiable.
Adrian contacted Grant Mercer again.
Grant supplied a warehouse Marcus had recently leased through a shell company.
Thomas recognized the surrounding area from the photograph of Grace’s cousin.
They had a location.
But Marcus also had watchers throughout the city.
One wrong move could expose Lily.
Adrian created three false convoys.
Each carried a woman holding a wrapped bundle.
Each drove toward a different private airfield.
Marcus’s men followed all three.
While they chased ghosts, Thomas and Adrian approached the warehouse through an abandoned rail tunnel.
Inside, Grace’s cousin was alive.
So was Samuel Voss.
Marcus had taken both men.
Samuel looked terrified when Adrian freed him.
“You don’t understand.”
“What?”
Samuel grabbed Adrian’s sleeve.
“The board vote isn’t the real deadline.”
Adrian stopped.
Samuel continued.
“Marcus filed something this morning.”
“A death petition.”
“For whom?”
Samuel’s eyes filled with fear.
“For you.”
Adrian said nothing.
“In forty-eight hours, Marcus plans to announce that Adrian Vale died during a retaliatory gang attack.”
Thomas stared.
Samuel swallowed.
“He doesn’t want to remove you from the company anymore.”
“He wants you dead.”
A phone began ringing inside the warehouse.
One phone.
Sitting alone on a metal table.
Adrian answered.
Marcus’s voice came through.
May you like
“You were always better at rescues than obedience.”
Then an explosion shook the far side of the building.
