Chapter 6 - THE EMPTY NURSERY
I woke to Grant shouting my name.
My head throbbed.
Smoke still floated near the ceiling.
The nursery window stood open.
Lily was gone.
Grant knelt beside me.
“Emma, look at me.”
“Where is she?”
“We’re finding her.”
“Where is Lily?”
His silence answered me.
I pushed myself upright.
Nadia sat against the wall with blood running from a cut above her eyebrow.
One security officer was unconscious near the door.
The other had vanished.
Grant helped me stand.
“How long was I out?”
“Four minutes.”
Four minutes was enough to take a child from the third floor of a guarded mansion.
Nadia checked the security feeds.
“Cameras are still down.”
Grant looked toward the shattered window.
“No one carried her down the wall.”
“There’s a maintenance platform outside,” Nadia said.
“It leads to the west stairwell.”
We ran.
The stairwell door had been forced open.
A torn piece of Lily’s blue dress lay on the floor.
I picked it up.
My hands shook.
“They’re taking her to Renata.”
Grant’s face twisted.
“I should have believed her two years ago.”
“You didn’t know.”
“I knew she was afraid.”
He ran faster.
“I told myself she needed time.”
We reached the garage.
One vehicle was missing.
Grant’s black SUV.
Nadia checked the tracking system.
“The GPS has been disabled.”
A second signal appeared on her screen.
She stared at it.
“What?”
“Lily’s medical bracelet.”
Grant looked at her.
“She isn’t wearing one.”
“I put a tracker inside the clasp after the bathroom incident.”
The signal moved north.
Then it turned toward the mountains.
Grant’s face went pale.
“That’s the road where Claire died.”
We took Nadia’s vehicle.
Grant drove.
I sat beside him, gripping the edge of the seat.
Rain began to fall.
The same kind of cold mountain rain that had fallen the night Claire’s car went over the guardrail.
Nadia watched the signal.
“They stopped.”
“Where?”
“Half a mile ahead.”
Grant pressed harder on the accelerator.
We rounded a curve.
The black SUV sat near the cliff.
Its engine was running.
Its headlights pointed toward the broken guardrail.
The vehicle began rolling forward.
“Lily!” I screamed.
Grant slammed on the brakes.
I jumped out before the car stopped.
The SUV moved slowly toward the edge.
Lily sat unconscious in the back seat.
Her hands were tied.
I ran beside the moving vehicle and grabbed the rear door.
It was locked.
Grant reached the driver’s side.
No one was behind the wheel.
A brick held down the accelerator.
The front tires reached the gravel near the cliff.
Grant smashed the driver’s window with a rock.
He reached inside.
The SUV lurched forward.
I struck the rear window again and again.
The glass cracked.
The front wheels crossed the edge.
Grant ripped the brick away.
The vehicle stopped.
Half of it hung over the drop.
“Don’t move,” Nadia shouted.
I climbed through the broken rear window.
The SUV shifted beneath my weight.
Lily’s eyes opened.
“Emma?”
“I’m here.”
I cut the rope around her wrists with a piece of broken glass.
The vehicle moved another inch.
Grant reached through the window.
“Give her to me.”
I lifted Lily toward him.
A masked man stepped from behind the trees.
He raised a metal bar.
“Grant!”
The weapon struck Grant across the shoulder.
He fell.
The man grabbed Lily.
I wrapped both arms around her.
He pulled.
The SUV rocked violently.
Nadia fired a warning shot.
The attacker released us and ran toward the woods.
Grant dragged Lily through the window.
Then he reached for me.
The SUV slipped farther.
I jumped.
Grant caught my wrist.
The vehicle disappeared over the cliff.
It crashed into the darkness below.
For several seconds, none of us spoke.
Then Nadia returned from the tree line.
“The attacker escaped.”
She held up an identification badge.
“He dropped this.”
Grant took it.
The badge belonged to Adrian Cole.
Renata’s older brother.
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Adrian was also Callahan Industrial Group’s director of corporate investigations.
He had investigated Claire’s accident two years earlier.
