Chapter 7 - Teresa’s Disappearance
The transport van was found beneath an overpass north of the city.
Its back doors were open.
One officer had been struck unconscious. The other was missing.
Teresa was gone.
Blood on the floor belonged to neither officer, which meant someone else had been injured.
Police issued an emergency alert.
Detective Brooks believed Victor had kidnapped my mother to prevent her from cooperating.
“Will she cooperate?” I asked.
“She hasn’t so far.”
“Then why take her?”
“Because he doesn’t know what she might say once she realizes he abandoned her.”
Amy listened from across the safe-house kitchen.
“Could she have planned the escape with him?”
Brooks nodded. “That is also possible.”
My feelings were impossible to separate.
My mother had terrorized my wife and endangered my son.
But the thought of Victor hurting her awakened the child in me—the boy who once waited at the window for her to return from a second job.
I hated that part of myself.
Amy noticed.
“You’re allowed to care whether she lives,” she said.
“After what she did?”
“Caring is not the same as excusing.”
I looked at her.
“How are you able to say that?”
“Because I don’t want your mother to turn you into someone cruel.”
At midnight, my phone rang.
Teresa’s number.
Detective Brooks activated a trace before I answered.
“Mom?”
Breathing.
Then her voice.
“Connor, listen carefully.”
She sounded weak.
“Where are you?”
“Victor knows about the evidence. He thinks I copied files.”
“Did you?”
“Yes.”
“Where are you?”
“I can’t say.”
A man spoke in the background.
Teresa began talking faster.
“The birthday cake. The blue one you bought. I’m sorry I ruined his birthday.”
It was not an apology.
It was a clue.
The bakery.
I muted the phone and told Brooks.
Officers raced toward the bakery where I purchased Oliver’s cake. It had closed hours earlier, but the building contained storage rooms and a loading entrance.
Teresa continued.
“Do you remember when you were seven and I made you the blue train cake?”
“Yes.”
“You cried because it leaned to one side.”
“I remember.”
“I told you imperfect things could still be beautiful.”
Her voice broke.
For one dangerous second, she sounded like the mother I remembered.
Then Victor took the phone.
“You should have returned the laptop.”
“If you hurt her—”
“You’ll do what? Call the police again?”
“I’m already speaking to them.”
“I assumed so.”
He sounded amused.
“Your mother spent years convincing herself that your success belonged to her. I only showed her how to collect.”
“You used her.”
“She was remarkably willing.”
Teresa cried out in the background.
“What do you want?”
“The original storage drive.”
“I don’t have it.”
“But the police do.”
“I can’t get it.”
“Then your mother becomes unnecessary.”
The call ended.
The trace confirmed the phone was near the bakery.
Police entered the building.
It was empty.
They found Teresa’s jail uniform, blood, and a phone connected to a speaker. The call had been transmitted remotely.
But behind a refrigerator, officers discovered a handwritten note.
Connor, Victor is not leaving the country. He is going to finish the building.
Detective Brooks showed me a photograph.
“What building?”
I thought of every construction project I had discussed around my mother.
Then I remembered my current site—a twenty-story office tower where the structural inspection had kept me away on Oliver’s birthday.
The building was nearly complete but mostly empty.
It contained service tunnels, unfinished floors, and temporary security systems.
Victor knew my schedule because he had manipulated it.
Maybe the project was not just part of the birthday plan.
Maybe it was his escape route.
Police surrounded the site before dawn.
They found the missing transport officer tied inside a utility room.
He was alive.
Victor had forced him to drive while wearing a police jacket.
Security footage showed the van entering the underground garage and leaving twenty minutes later.
No one saw Teresa leave.
She was somewhere inside the tower.
I knew the building better than anyone except the project manager.
Detective Brooks refused to let me enter.
“Victor expects you to come.”
“Then use that.”
“No.”
“He wants the evidence. He’ll contact me.”
As if summoned by the words, my phone buzzed.
A live video appeared.
My mother sat tied to a chair on an unfinished floor. Behind her, city lights glittered through open windows.
Victor stood beside her.
“You have thirty minutes,” he said. “Bring the storage drive to the roof.”
The video ended.
Detective Brooks looked at me.
“You’re not bringing anything.”
“He’ll kill her.”
“We’ll send a tactical team.”
“He knows the building. There are dozens of ways to see them coming.”
I opened the construction plans.
“The elevators are disabled above the seventeenth floor. There’s an exterior service lift and two stairwells. But there’s another route.”
“What route?”
“A ventilation access corridor from the adjacent parking structure. It was sealed last week, but the barrier is temporary.”
Brooks studied the plans.
The tactical team entered through the corridor.
I remained in the command vehicle, though every part of me wanted to run inside.
At minute twenty-eight, Victor called.
“Where are you?”
“Coming up.”
“You’re lying.”
Behind him, Teresa whispered something.
Victor struck her.
I closed my eyes.
“I have the drive.”
“Then prove it.”
I held up a duplicate prepared by investigators.
Victor smiled.
“Roof. Alone.”
The tactical team reached the nineteenth floor.
Then every light in the tower went out.
Victor had cut the temporary power.
Radio signals failed.
The live feed vanished.
An explosion shook the lower floors.
Flames appeared inside the underground garage.
Victor had triggered a fire to force police evacuation.
Smoke moved upward through the open structure.
The incident commander ordered everyone out.
I stared at the black tower.
“My mother is still inside.”
Detective Brooks grabbed my arm.
“Connor, no.”
But I knew something the others did not.
The fire suppression system was not fully operational.
May you like
And Teresa was trapped nineteen floors above a fire designed to erase every witness.
I pulled away and ran toward the building.
