Chapter 4 - The Abandoned Warehouse
Maya lunged for the door handle, but the child locks were already engaged.
Carter drove with one hand on the steering wheel and the other resting casually on his gun.
"Do not try anything stupid, Maya," Carter warned in a dangerously calm voice.
"You played me," Maya whispered, betrayal burning hot in her chest.
"I play for the highest bidder, and Isabella simply made a better offer after the plane exploded," he replied.
He steered the heavy SUV off the main highway and onto a forgotten dirt road.
They pulled into the loading bay of a massive, decaying warehouse on the edge of the city.
Carter dragged Maya out of the vehicle and pushed her roughly into a metal folding chair.
He used heavy plastic zip ties to bind her wrists tightly behind her back.
Carter reached into her jacket pocket and pulled out the black key card and the birth certificate.
"Isabella will be very happy to burn these," Carter smirked, pocketing the items.
He turned his back on her and walked toward the far end of the dark warehouse.
Maya immediately twisted her wrists, feeling the sharp edge of the metal chair frame against the plastic tie.
She ignored the pain as the plastic bit into her skin and sawed her bindings against the jagged steel.
With a final, desperate pull, the plastic tie snapped in half.
Maya quietly rubbed her bleeding wrists and stood up in the suffocating shadows.
She crept silently behind a row of rotting wooden shipping crates.
Carter was standing near a rusty freight elevator, talking to a figure cloaked in the darkness.
"I have the girl and the documents, just as you requested," Carter reported.
Maya frowned, confused by the strange tone in his voice.
He was not speaking with the arrogant, demanding inflection he always used with Isabella.
The mysterious figure stepped out of the shadows and into a sliver of moonlight.
It was not Isabella standing there in the cold warehouse.
The woman had silver hair, a sharp jawline, and wore a simple, elegant trench coat.
Maya gasped silently, recognizing the face from the old oil paintings in the estate's grand hallway.
It was Eleanor Vance, Julian's wife, who had supposedly died in a car crash ten years ago.
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"You did well, Carter," Eleanor said, taking the documents from his hand.
"Now, untie my daughter so we can finally take our family back."
