Chapter 16 - The Siege of Penthouse 42
Daniel burst through the mahogany doors of the library like a charging bull, his roar echoing over the classical quartet in the ballroom: "MARCUS! THE PENTHOUSE! NOW!"
Hannah dropped her glass, which shattered across the polished parquet floor. Without asking a single question, she kicked off her high heels and sprinted behind Daniel toward the private elevator bank.
Marcus was already screaming into his radio: "Team B, report! Alpha Team, do you copy? Penthouse 42, give me a status!"
Only static hissed back through the frequency. Then, a chilling voice cut through the comms—smooth, aristocratic, and completely cold:
*“Good evening, Mr. Vale. This is Arthur Vance. You really shouldn't have dug up my daughter’s hard work. It leaves the garden so messy.”*
"If you touch my daughter, Arthur, I will burn your entire bloodline to ashes!" Daniel roared into Marcus’s radio as the private elevator shot up forty floors.
*“Your daughter is a lovely child, Daniel. So much like Eleanor. It’s a pity her heart won't survive the evening.”*
The radio went dead.
*DING.*
The elevator doors opened onto the forty-second floor. The smell of copper and discharged gunpowder hung heavy in the air.
Two of Daniel's tactical guards lay motionless in the foyer, incapacitated by high-velocity stun darts. Further down the hall, the reinforced steel door to the master suite hung ajar, its electronic keypad smashed and sizzling with blue sparks.
"CLARA!" Hannah screamed, surging past the guards.
"Hannah, wait! Corner discipline!" Marcus yelled, drawing his sidearm.
They breached the suite. The living room was trashed—furniture overturned, curtains torn down. In the center of the nursery room sat Clara’s small high chair, completely empty. Her favorite teddy bear lay ripped on the rug.
From behind the closed bathroom door came a muffled whimper.
Daniel kicked the door open, gun raised.
Sitting inside the empty bathtub, curled into a tight ball with her hands over her ears, was Clara. Beside her, unconscious but breathing, was her pediatric nurse, who had shoved Clara into the reinforced bathroom before being struck by a taser.
Clara looked up, her face streaked with tears and dirt, her tiny chest heaving. "Daddy! The mean lady with the needles tried to take my bear!"
Daniel collapsed onto the floor of the bathroom, pulling Clara into his arms with an intensity that rattled his entire skeleton. Clara wrapped her small arms around his neck, sobbing into his tuxedo collar. "I didn't let them take the blue stone, Daddy! I hid it in my sock!"
Hannah dropped to her knees beside them, her hands trembling as she smoothed Clara’s hair, checking her pulse, her pupils, her skin. "She’s unhurt. Daniel, she’s physically unhurt."
Marcus walked out to the balcony, pointing his flashlight down toward the street below. He returned, his face grim. "They weren't here to snatch Clara, Mr. Vale. It was a diversion."
"What are you talking about?" Daniel asked, his eyes blazing.
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Marcus held up a tactical tablet. "Arthur Vance’s strike team just hit the medical transport van transferring Victoria from Westchester Correctional to the federal courthouse. They bombed the armored car on the bridge. Victoria is gone. And Blackwood Sanitarium in upstate New York just issued a code black."
***
