Chapter 4 - The Journalist’s Safehouse
Marcus moved through the rainy alleyways of Brooklyn with his jacket hood pulled low over his bandaged forehead.
Lily stayed glued to his side, her small hand buried inside his large coat pocket.
Every digital billboard they passed displayed Marcus’s face alongside the word KIDNAPPER.
The entire police department was hunting him, and he knew he had nowhere left to turn within the system.
He led Lily up the rusted fire escape of an old brick warehouse near the industrial docks.
He knocked four times on a reinforced steel door, paused, and knocked twice more.
The door swung open, revealing Sarah Chen holding an aluminum baseball bat.
Sarah was an investigative reporter and the younger sister of Marcus’s late partner, Detective David Chen.
Her brother had taken his own life eight years ago after being falsely blamed for losing Clara Sterling’s trail.
“Marcus, are you insane?” Sarah whispered, pulling both of them inside and throwing three heavy deadbolts.
“Every news channel in the country is running your mugshot right now,” Sarah said, her voice shaking with adrenaline.
“It is a frame-up, Sarah,” Marcus said, catching his breath as Lily huddled against an armchair.
Sarah looked at the frightened child, noticing the bruised wrists and the charcoal stains beneath her fingernails.
“Who is she, Marcus?” Sarah asked softly.
“She knows what happened to Clara,” Marcus said, pulling the damp sketch from his pocket.
Sarah smoothed out the drawing of the swallow necklace and gasped, stepping backward toward her desk.
“David had this exact locket drawn in his personal notebook before he died,” Sarah whispered, her hands trembling.
She quickly unlocked her laptop and pulled up a sealed corporate archive file.
“Eight years ago, Clara’s mother died in a single-car accident on Blackwood Road,” Sarah explained, turning the screen.
“Three months later, Victoria married Clara’s father, Julian Montgomery,” Sarah added, pointing at a wedding photo.
Lily suddenly walked over to the desk, her eyes fixed on the illuminated screen.
She tapped her finger furiously against a breaking news headline published just thirty minutes ago.
The headline announced that Julian Montgomery had filed an emergency motion to declare Clara legally dead at midnight tonight.
Once the clock struck twelve, Clara’s fifty-million-dollar inheritance trust would transfer directly and permanently to Victoria Montgomery.
Sarah checked the digital clock on her computer wall.
It was nine o’clock in the evening, leaving them exactly three hours before the legal deadline expired.
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Suddenly, all the lights inside the loft snapped off, plunging the apartment into pitch darkness.
From the hallway outside, the distinctive click of night-vision goggles powering on resonated through the wooden floorboards.
