Chapter 6 - THE DAUGHTERS THEY TRIED TO TAKE
Callum hit the gunman’s wrist before the weapon cleared its holster.
The pistol fired into the ceiling.
Serena pulled Maisie behind the marble island while Penny dragged Wren into the pantry.
Two more men entered from the private elevator.
Blackwood Tower’s security system had been overridden by someone with executive credentials.
Victor was hospitalized.
Serena had been suspended.
Only three people retained access powerful enough to disable the penthouse locks.
One was interim chief executive Graham Locke.
Graham had served as Serena’s chief financial officer for eight years and voted for her suspension that morning.
Callum drove the first attacker into the wall. The second pulled a stun gun.
Serena threw a metal serving tray into his face.
Maisie crawled beneath the kitchen counter and reached the manual security switch Callum had shown her earlier.
She pressed it.
Nothing happened.
“The circuit is dead!” she shouted.
Penny opened the pantry’s service panel.
“There’s an old dumbwaiter!”
The shaft connected the kitchen to a catering preparation room two floors below. Serena had never used it.
Wren could fit.
Maisie could too.
Penny looked at Callum.
“I’m not leaving you.”
“You are taking Wren down.”
“But—”
“That is the mission.”
The language reached her.
Penny placed Wren inside the dumbwaiter, climbed in beside her, and lowered the manual brake.
Maisie refused to follow.
“My mother is still here.”
Serena caught her daughter’s face between both hands.
“You’re going with them.”
“You said you wouldn’t send me away.”
“I am sending you two floors down so I can follow.”
“That’s different?”
“Yes.”
Callum held off the attackers while Maisie entered the shaft.
“Next safe step,” he told her.
Maisie nodded.
Serena released the brake.
The girls descended.
Seconds later, another explosion shook the penthouse. Glass broke across the living room.
Callum and Serena retreated through the service stairwell.
Blackwood’s legitimate security team reached them on the thirty-ninth floor. Federal agents secured the building.
The three girls were not in the catering room.
The dumbwaiter door stood open.
A red knit cap lay on the floor.
Callum picked it up.
His face emptied of emotion.
That frightened Serena more than rage would have.
A camera captured Penny, Maisie, and Wren being led into a freight elevator by a woman wearing a Blackwood security uniform.
The woman was Serena’s executive assistant, Claire Dalton.
Claire had worked beside Serena since the company operated from a rented Brooklyn office.
She knew every school schedule, medical appointment, and emergency protocol.
Graham Locke had supplied the access.
Claire carried out the abduction.
The freight elevator descended to a subterranean garage and left the building inside an unmarked delivery truck.
Julian called Serena.
“Sign over temporary voting authority, withdraw your opposition to my custody petition, and dismiss every allegation concerning the camera.”
“I want proof they’re alive.”
A video feed activated.
The girls sat inside a windowless room. Penny held Wren. Maisie stared directly into the camera, memorizing everything she could see.
Julian’s voice continued.
“Callum will provide a statement admitting you hired him to alienate Maisie from me.”
Callum took the phone.
“If they are hurt, I will find you.”
“That sentence will look excellent beside the Connecticut footage.”
Julian expected rage.
Callum gave him silence.
“You have two hours,” Julian said.
The line ended.
Federal agents traced the call to six rotating relays.
Serena’s attorneys prepared the transfer documents to buy time.
Callum studied the video.
“Play it again.”
They watched Maisie’s eyes.
She looked left twice, upward once, then tapped her index finger against her knee in a pattern.
“Is she signaling?” Serena asked.
“Morse code.”
Penny had learned basic rescue signals from her father. She must have taught Maisie during the weeks they worked together.
The pattern spelled:
TRAIN. WATER. BELLS. 4 BELOW.
Serena displayed maps of Blackwood and Mercer properties.
A location four levels below ground near train tracks, water, and church bells narrowed the search.
Maisie added another clue.
She knocked over a metal cup.
It rolled across the floor and stopped at a slight incline.
The room was moving.
“They’re on a vehicle,” Callum said.
“A train?” Serena asked.
“Possibly a freight car.”
Blackwood Systems owned a mobile data center mounted inside a reinforced rail carriage. Graham had ordered it transferred from Manhattan to the company’s backup facility outside Albany that morning.
The carriage contained four underground-style server levels and soundproof maintenance rooms.
It followed the Hudson River rail line.
A church beside the Yonkers switching yard rang every half hour.
The girls were inside Serena’s own mobile server train.
Federal agents contacted railway dispatch.
Graham had altered the destination.
The train was heading north toward an abandoned Mercer-owned tunnel.
Callum boarded a state-police helicopter with Serena.
“You should stay at command,” he told her.
“My daughter is on that train.”
“I know.”
“Then stop suggesting it.”
He looked at her.
“I am not used to being responsible for two people who refuse orders.”
“Three. Penny appears to have inherited it.”
The helicopter located the train beyond Yonkers.
Julian’s men controlled the engine. The carriage’s electronic locks were isolated from external systems.
Callum descended by cable onto the rear platform.
Serena followed before the pilot could stop her.
They entered through the maintenance hatch.
Inside, emergency lights flashed red.
Callum disarmed two guards near the server room. Serena reached the lower level and heard Wren crying behind a steel door.
Maisie had removed a vent cover using the metal edge of her shoe.
Penny was halfway through the opening.
“Mom!” Maisie shouted.
Serena unlocked the door using a biometric override Graham had failed to remove.
She pulled her daughter into her arms.
Callum held both Penny and Wren.
The train accelerated.
A warning appeared on the server display:
BRAKING SYSTEM DISABLED.
Ahead, the track entered a dead-end maintenance tunnel blocked by concrete barriers.
Callum searched the control panel.
“No electronic brakes.”
Maisie pushed away from Serena.
“The cup rolled backward when we turned. The floor is tilted three degrees. This carriage has an independent stabilization system.”
Serena understood.
“If we reverse the hydraulic stabilizers, we can create drag against the rails.”
“It could derail us,” Callum warned.
“At this speed, we crash either way.”
Maisie entered the command sequence while Serena authorized it.
The stabilizers deployed.
Metal screamed beneath the carriage.
The train slowed.
It struck the barrier at twenty miles per hour instead of eighty.
The impact threw everyone to the floor.
Callum covered the three girls with his body.
When the dust settled, Penny looked up.
“Dad?”
“I’m here.”
Maisie found Serena’s hand.
Wren began crying.
They were alive.
Federal agents reached the carriage minutes later.
Claire Dalton was arrested at the switching station.
Graham Locke escaped.
Inside the train’s server room, investigators found something Julian had not intended to leave behind: the complete unedited recordings from the hidden camera in Maisie’s study.
Every nightly threat.
Every instruction to drive tutors away.
Every time Julian told his daughter her mother would abandon her.
The evidence could end his custody claim.
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But Graham still controlled Blackwood Systems.
And he had just initiated the permanent deletion of every copy.
