Chapter 15 - Ten MinutesNadia didn't negotiate through Vivian's phone. She sent the video to a crisis team and ordered officers to secure every exit around the warehouse. Daniel tried to follow the lead vehicles. She blocked his path.
“Your son needs you alive,” she said. “Wait here.”
The sentence stopped him. For eleven months, he'd treated staying behind as another kind of failure. Tonight he understood it could be an act of love.
Emma sat with him inside the operations van. “Tell me something good about her,” she said.
Daniel stared through the windshield. “She used to leave notes in my coat pockets. Bad jokes, mostly. Once she wrote, 'You look important, but you still forget your lunch.'”
Emma laughed through tears. “That sounds like Claire.”
At the warehouse, police located several people in a locked section. Vale had used the confusion of a false fire alarm to flee into an adjoining loading facility. Claire was not among the first group rescued.
A detective radioed that someone had seen a woman in a blue cardigan on a roof access stairwell. Daniel gripped the edge of his seat.
When Claire finally said his name, Daniel heard the voice of the woman who had argued with him about paint colors and laughed at terrible late-night television. She was not a symbol, a clue, or the answer to a mystery. She was a person who deserved a chance to become herself again.
Minutes passed. Then came a burst of radio chatter and a medic requesting a stretcher.
“Is it Claire?” Daniel demanded.
Nadia answered with maddening care. “Someone is hurt. We don't know who yet.”
Emma held his hand until it stopped shaking. For the first time all night, he let himself lean on another person.
Finally Nadia appeared at the van door. “We found Claire.”
Daniel stood so quickly he hit his shoulder against the frame. “Alive?”
“Yes. She's conscious.” Nadia's face remained grave. “But Daniel, she says somebody inside your company helped Vale.”
“Who?”
May you like
“Your oldest friend. Owen.”
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