My Daughter’s State-Appointed Guardian

“The SUV has to go,” Vance said, cramming folders into a duffel. “We can’t stay exposed on the road. I know someone upstate with a hunting cabin. We hide there, then contact the FBI.”

I glanced at Maya. The phone’s red alert still shone in her face, and tears had begun to gather in her eyes.

“No.” The word came out flat, stripped of anything gentle.

Vance paused with the bag in his hands. “David, listen to me. You’re the most wanted man in the state right now. A cop spots you, you may get shot before you can explain.”

“If we disappear, the other children disappear too.” I lifted the notebook from the bed. “Four kids are due to be moved in a Bluebird Freight truck. My truck.”

“We can’t rescue them tonight,” Vance said, pulling the zipper shut. “We don’t even know which warehouse they’re using.”

“I know where.” I studied the code beside the Bluebird mark: Terminal 4, Bay 12.

That was the main heavy-cargo export terminal across the river, on its eastern side.

I faced Vance. “Clara and Ray plan to leave tomorrow morning. The children’s transport has to go tonight, hidden by this storm.”

My gaze dropped to the inventory number marked on Maya’s wrist. Three years of buried fury surged through me, leaving no room for the frightened father I had been.

“No cabin,” I said, taking my keys. “We’re going to Terminal 4. We’re getting into my warehouse, and we’re finding out what they put in Bay 12.”

The trip east became a long, airless passage through rain and the threat of flashing lights.

Whenever a siren sounded somewhere beyond us, I clenched the steering wheel until pain spread through my knuckles. Vance had insisted on driving his unmarked gray sedan. We’d left my SUV at the Starlight Motel, which helped us avoid the three state-trooper cars we passed on the interstate.

Maya had folded herself into a small shape in the back. My heavy wool coat covered her head, making a little shelter around her.

“She’s awfully quiet,” Vance said from the passenger seat, searching the mirrors again and again. “Most kids her age cry. They ask what’s happening.”

“She’s learned what happens when children make noise.” My voice sounded distant even to me. “Ray taught her.”

Vance checked the magazine in his service pistol. Metal clicked sharply in the hush of the car.

Under my coat, Maya jerked at the sound.

“Put it away,” I said, sharper than I meant to. “You’re scaring her.”

He slid the gun into its shoulder holster and held up his hands. “I’m checking that we’re ready, David. Penhaligon has state troopers hunting you. He could have private guards at the warehouse. We’re heading into danger.”

“It belongs to me,” I said. “I built Bluebird Freight from nothing. I know every part of Terminal 4.”

Then the vast terminal rose through the pounding rain, and the certainty in my voice began to crack.

Corrugated steel, floodlights, and razor wire made the complex seem less like a warehouse than a fortress. On an ordinary night, diesel engines roared across the yard while dockworkers called to one another over the movement of cargo.

Now the place looked abandoned.

The main entrance was shut. No light came from the loading bays. Amber security lamps along the perimeter fence were the only signs of life.

“They emptied it,” Vance said, his voice taut. “A ghost shift. Penhaligon must have leaned hard on someone to close a major freight hub on a Thursday night.”

“He didn’t need to lean on anyone,” I replied, guiding the sedan along a narrow access road beside the river. “He used my company authorization. They’ve gotten into my corporate systems. They can issue a shutdown order in my name.”

I switched off the headlights and rolled to a stop behind a line of rust-streaked shipping containers, roughly a hundred yards from the fence on the eastern side.

“Bay 12 is south of here,” I murmured as I undid my seat belt. “There’s a maintenance entrance near the water. It has an old keypad. If the master override’s still the same, I can open it.”

I turned around and eased the coat away from Maya’s face. She looked up at me, eyes wide and glassy.

“Listen carefully, Maya. Vance and I are going inside to find those children. You stay down on the floor. Keep the doors locked, and keep my coat over you. Don’t get out until you hear my voice. Understand?”

Her answer was a small, uneven nod.

“I’ll come back for you,” I promised.

I locked the sedan, then stepped into the freezing rain with Vance close behind. We ran across the slick asphalt, heads lowered, until the chain-link fence loomed in front of us.

The maintenance gate was furred with rust. I reached for the keypad and entered the six-digit override my security chief had established five years earlier.