Chapter 9 - The Price of a Father
Maya stared at the screen.
Richard’s face was bruised. Tape covered his mouth. A dark stain marked the shoulder of his pinstripe suit.
A figure stood behind him, hidden by shadow.
Text appeared beneath the timer.
THE COTTAGE.
MAYA ONLY.
NO TRACKING.
Ethan shut off the screen.
“You’re not going.”
“They’ll kill him.”
“We don’t know that.”
“He is my father.”
“He betrayed you.”
“That doesn’t mean I watch him die.”
Marcus ordered his team to trace the signal, but the transmission had been routed through dozens of encrypted networks.
Helen touched the screen.
“Richard…”
Maya looked at her mother.
Despite everything, Helen still loved him.
Or loved the version of him she had spent decades hoping would appear.
Marcus prepared a concealed tracking device small enough to hide in Maya’s shoe.
The moment it activated, every electronic system in the farmhouse failed.
A new message appeared on Maya’s phone.
NO TRACKING MEANS NO TRACKING.
Maya removed the device.
Ethan caught her hand.
“If they take you, I may never find you.”
“Then don’t let them take me.”
“They demanded you go alone.”
“I’ll enter alone. You can follow from a distance.”
Marcus shook his head.
“They will expect that.”
Maya looked at Laura.
“What does Concord know about the cottage?”
“Only that Eleanor hid something there.”
“The pendant opens it?”
“Probably.”
Maya turned to Ethan.
“They need me alive until I open whatever is hidden.”
“And afterward?”
She did not answer.
They reached the coast before noon.
Eleanor’s cottage stood at the edge of windswept grass, its faded blue paint nearly gray from years of salt and rain.
No vehicles were visible.
Maya walked toward the house alone.
Ethan, Marcus, and the security team remained beyond the tree line where Concord would not easily detect them.
The front door opened before Maya touched it.
Inside, Richard sat tied to a chair.
No one guarded him.
Maya removed the tape from his mouth.
“Are you hurt?”
“Leave.”
“Where are they?”
“This is a trap.”
“I know.”
Richard looked at the pendant.
“They want that.”
“What does it open?”
“I don’t know.”
Maya cut the ropes using a knife left on the table.
Richard rubbed his wrists.
“You shouldn’t have come.”
“You are my father.”
“After everything I did?”
Maya met his eyes.
“I came because of who I am, not because of who you are.”
The words struck him harder than anger could have.
A speaker hidden somewhere inside the cottage activated.
“Touching.”
Maya recognized neither the male voice nor the accent.
“Place the keyhole in the fireplace.”
The stone fireplace had not been used in years.
At its center was a circular metal plate.
Maya inserted the pendant.
The entire fireplace shifted backward.
A staircase descended beneath the cottage.
Richard caught her arm.
“Don’t.”
The voice responded.
“If she does not descend, the charges beneath this house will detonate.”
Richard looked around.
“You’re bluffing.”
A section of the kitchen floor exploded.
Wood and dust filled the room.
Maya and Richard fell.
Outside, distant shouting carried from the tree line.
The voice remained calm.
“Descend.”
Maya entered the passage.
Richard followed despite being told to remain behind.
The staircase led to an underground tunnel carved into black stone.
Electric lights activated as Maya passed.
At the end stood a circular metal door bearing three stars.
The pendant fit into its center.
When Maya turned it, the door opened.
Beyond it was not a vault.
It was a railway platform.
A sleek black train waited in a tunnel extending beneath the coastline.
Richard stared.
“What is this?”
Maya stepped closer.
The train’s doors opened.
Inside, a wall of screens displayed maps, financial records, surveillance images, and live video feeds from cities around the world.
One screen showed Ethan and Marcus approaching the cottage.
Another showed Helen beside Laura at the farmhouse.
A third displayed Maya and Richard from above.
A man entered from the opposite end of the train.
He was perhaps seventy, with white hair and a perfectly tailored dark suit.
Maya recognized him from old photographs.
Sebastian Hawthorne.
Ethan’s grandfather.
The man who had been declared dead nine years before the plane crash.
“Welcome,” Sebastian said. “I have waited a long time to meet Eleanor’s granddaughter.”
Richard stepped in front of Maya.
“You’re dead.”
May you like
Sebastian smiled.
“Only on paper.”
