Chapter 13 - The Phone in the Ice Bucket.
The fire alarm was false.
No smoke appeared on any sensor.
No sprinkler activated.
Someone had triggered a manual station on the ninth floor and used the confusion to move through an emergency stairwell.
Frank Delaney knew hotel procedures well enough to predict every security response.
While officers moved upward, he moved down.
Ethan realized it when the old cellar door alarm flashed open for six seconds.
He and Detective Shah ran back through the service corridor.
The hidden compartment stood open.
The steel box was empty.
Henry’s letter, cassette, and notarized statement were gone.
Lily felt as if someone had struck her without touching her.
“We photographed everything,” Shah said.
“And the agents witnessed it.”
“The originals still matter,” Lily answered.
“They matter to Grant because he thinks they can be destroyed.”
A radio call came from the loading dock.
A man matching Frank’s description had been seen pushing a laundry cart toward the banquet level.
Ethan knew the route.
They split up.
Shah and an agent took the service elevator.
Ethan used the stairs.
Lily was ordered to stay with another officer and return to Mia.
She obeyed for exactly thirty seconds.
Then the officer’s radio reported that Grant Vale had been seen in the hotel lobby.
Lily stopped.
“Grant is here?”
The officer listened.
“Possible sighting.”
Lily looked toward the elevator.
She understood the distraction.
Grant wanted police focused on him while Frank moved the evidence.
Or Frank wanted police to think Grant was in the building.
Either way, Mia became Lily’s only priority.
She rushed back to the suite.
The door was open.
Sergeant Alvarez stood inside with his hand on his holster.
Mia was gone.
Lily could not process the sentence when he first said it.
“She went with Celeste.”
“What?”
“Celeste came up with a nurse and a hotel officer.”
Alvarez’s face was gray with anger at himself.
“She said Detective Shah authorized moving Mia to a secure room because of the alarm.”
“Did you verify it?”
“I called Shah’s number.”
“And?”
“A woman answered and confirmed it.”
The call had been spoofed.
Celeste’s hospital room had been empty for forty minutes.
Lily grabbed the edge of the table.
“Celeste would not take her willingly.”
Ethan arrived seconds later.
He understood immediately.
“Simon.”
The man who tried to force Celeste into a car could have forced her again.
Hotel footage showed Celeste walking through the eleventh-floor corridor with Mia beside her.
A man in a hotel security uniform followed them.
His face was hidden by a cap.
Mia did not appear frightened until the elevator doors opened.
Then she stopped.
Celeste bent toward her and said something.
Mia stepped inside.
The camera cut out.
Lily wanted every exit sealed.
The hotel was already locked down.
No one had left through the main doors.
Javier searched the building system.
One service elevator had gone to the ballroom kitchen and remained there.
Ethan ran.
The kitchen was empty except for staff gathered near the far exit.
A server pointed toward the banquet storage room.
They had heard something fall inside.
Ethan opened the door.
Celeste sat on the floor with her wrists bound loosely in front of her.
She was conscious.
“Mia?” Lily shouted.
Celeste looked toward a second door.
“He took her.”
“Who?”
“Simon.”
Lily’s knees nearly failed.
Celeste spoke quickly.
Simon met her outside the hospital wearing scrubs and showed her a live video of Mia in the hotel suite.
He threatened to send someone into the room if Celeste did not return with him.
At the hotel, he forced her to help move Mia by pretending it was a police relocation.
Once they reached the kitchen, he tied Celeste and took Mia through a delivery corridor.
“Where does it go?” Ethan asked.
Celeste shook her head.
“I don’t know.”
A chef answered.
“Old service lift.”
The lift connected the banquet kitchen to the basement receiving area.
It had not appeared in the modern elevator control system because it was manually operated.
They reached the basement.
The lift gate was open.
A child’s pale blue ribbon lay on the floor.
Lily picked it up.
It had been tied around Mia’s wrist since morning.
Ethan looked at the loading dock cameras.
One feed showed a black utility van leaving seven minutes earlier.
The plate was unreadable.
Another camera caught the driver’s side for half a second.
Simon Vale was behind the wheel.
Grant’s cousin had taken Mia from the hotel.
Lily’s phone rang.
Grant’s name appeared on the screen.
She answered.
“Mia?”
Grant’s voice was calm.
“Do you see what happens when you turn my life into a police operation?”
“Where is she?”
“She is safe.”
“Put her on the phone.”
“No.”
Lily felt every person in the room watching her.
“What do you want?”
“The originals from Henry’s safe.”
“Frank already took them.”
There was a pause.
Grant did not know.
That was important.
“Then find Frank.”
Lily closed her eyes.
Grant and Frank were no longer moving together.
The alliance was breaking.
“Grant, if Simon harms her—”
“He will not.”
“He already frightened her.”
“Then do what I say.”
Grant told Lily she had one hour to retrieve Henry’s originals and bring them alone to the Bellmont Grand’s closed rooftop restaurant.
Lily almost laughed at the absurdity.
“You kidnapped your own daughter and want me to walk into another room alone?”
Grant’s voice hardened.
“I did not take Mia.”
“Simon did.”
“Simon was supposed to move her somewhere safe.”
“From whom?”
“From you.”
The line went dead.
Ethan stared at Lily’s phone.
“He believes his own language.”
Detective Shah began coordinating a response.
Then Mia’s small silver recorder, which sat in an evidence bag on the table, vibrated.
Everyone looked at it.
The device did not have cellular service.
It could not vibrate.
Javier picked it up carefully.
A tiny compartment in the back had opened.
Inside was a micro-SIM card and a second memory chip.
Mia had not stolen an ordinary voice recorder.
She had taken one of Grant’s covert tracking devices.
The chip contained location pings from every place the recorder had traveled.
The most recent ping was not from the hotel.
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It came from a warehouse on the South Branch of the Chicago River.
Grant’s own surveillance device had just shown them where his daughter was.
