Chapter 4 - The Desert Trap
I stared at the dashboard, my mind struggling to process the impossible information.
My injured daughter was supposed to be clinging to life on a hospital bed.
Instead, she had orchestrated her own abduction.
I turned to look at David, who was shivering in the passenger seat.
I asked him what Emily was really doing with the encrypted ledger.
David wiped the water from his face and admitted she wasn't just hiding it.
She was using it to hunt down the leaders of the rogue military contractor syndicate.
I slammed my foot on the gas pedal and headed straight for the municipal airfield.
We crashed through the chain-link perimeter fence just as a private jet started its engines on the runway.
I drove the SUV directly into the path of the aircraft, forcing the pilot to abort the takeoff.
I drew my weapon and sprinted up the mobile boarding stairs.
I kicked the cabin door open, ready to shoot anyone in a federal uniform.
The luxurious cabin was completely empty.
There were no agents, no pilot, and no sign of Emily.
The only thing sitting on the plush leather seats was a laptop displaying a countdown timer.
David climbed up the stairs behind me and gasped in horror.
The timer had exactly thirty seconds left on the clock.
I grabbed David by his torn shirt and threw him back out the door.
We hit the tarmac hard and rolled under the safety of a concrete barricade.
The private jet exploded in a massive fireball that lit up the night sky.
Burning metal rained down around us as the sirens of approaching fire trucks wailed in the distance.
I stood up, brushing the ash from my jacket.
My phone vibrated in my pocket with a single text message.
It was from an unknown number.
The message contained GPS coordinates for a location deep in the Nevada desert.
May you like
Beneath the coordinates was a photograph that made my stomach drop.
It was a picture of Emily, sitting in a dark room, smiling directly at the camera.
