Chapter 7 - The Ransom
Ren screamed Nova's name, fighting desperately against Gideon's grip to run back into the burning building.
Gideon hoisted the kicking, sobbing girl over his shoulder and ran toward the safety of the dark woods.
They watched from the shadows as Elias’s armored vehicles sped away from the burning warehouse.
Gideon collapsed to his knees in the cold mud, completely devastated by his failure to protect the little girl.
Ren hit his chest with her tiny fists, blaming him for letting the bad men take her only friend.
He pulled her into a tight hug, letting her cry until she was completely exhausted.
"I am going to get her back, Ren, I swear it on my life," Gideon whispered fiercely into her wet hair.
His burner phone, the only piece of technology not connected to his erased identity, suddenly vibrated in his pocket.
He answered the call, his jaw clenching as he heard his brother's arrogant voice on the other end.
Elias demanded the decrypted backup files that Gideon had successfully copied before the fire.
"Bring the drive to the abandoned shipping yards at Pier 44 by midnight, or Nova disappears forever," Elias ordered.
Elias hung up the phone, leaving Gideon in complete, suffocating silence.
Gideon knew his brother was a psychopath who would never leave witnesses alive after a trade.
Walking into that shipyard was a guaranteed suicide mission for both him and the little girl.
But as Gideon looked at the backup drive in his hand, a dangerous, brilliant idea formed in his mind.
He pulled a small toolkit from his pocket and carefully cracked open the plastic casing of the hard drive.
He did not just have the decrypted files; he had a military-grade tracking beacon hidden inside his watch.
He wired the beacon directly into the hard drive's power source, turning it into a deadly trap.
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Gideon looked at Ren, his eyes hardening with a fierce, unbreakable resolve.
"We are going to war," Gideon promised the six-year-old girl.
