A young girl called 911 late at night because her parents wouldn’t wake up. What officers found inside the house haunted them.

Daniel sprinted back through the double doors into the ICU waiting room.

"Eleanor!" he shouted.

The waiting room was empty.

The crayons were scattered across the floor. The pad of paper lay torn on the coffee table. Lily’s worn teddy bear sat abandoned on the vinyl sofa.

Daniel’s blood ran cold. "ELEANOR!"

A door to the adjacent emergency stairwell swung shut with a heavy metallic click.

Daniel drew his service weapon, his heart hammering in his throat as he rushed to the stairwell door and threw it open. "MARCUS! GET UP TO THE FOURTH FLOOR STAIRWELL NOW!" he yelled into his radio.

He pushed into the echoey, concrete stairwell and looked over the railing. Two floors down, he caught a glimpse of a woman’s silver hair and a tall man in a dark maintenance uniform dragging a struggling child by her arm.

"POLICE! FREEZE!" Daniel roared, taking the stairs three at a time, his boots clattering against the steel steps.

The man in the maintenance uniform didn't stop. He shoved Eleanor Vance hard against the concrete wall. She crumpled to the landing with a sharp groan, clutching her head as blood trickled from a scalp wound.

The attacker grabbed Lily around her waist, lifting her off her feet as she kicked and screamed.

"LEAVE ME ALONE! DADDY!" Lily shrieked, her tiny fists pounding against the man's heavy shoulder.

The intruder burst through the ground-floor exit doors leading out toward the rear ambulance bay.

Daniel reached the ground floor seconds later, kicking the door open into the gray morning drizzle.

Fifty yards away across the wet asphalt, a grey delivery van sat idling with its rear doors wide open. The man in the maintenance uniform tossed Lily into the back, scrambled into the driver's seat, and slammed the accelerator to the floor.

"STOP!" Daniel screamed, raising his pistol, but he couldn't fire—not with a seven-year-old child inside the cargo area.

The van's tires shrieked against the wet pavement, tearing out of the hospital parking lot and swerving wildly onto the main avenue before disappearing into the morning commuter fog.

Marcus burst through the exit doors behind Daniel, out of breath, his gun drawn. "Daniel! What happened?!"

"They took her," Daniel panted, his hands shaking with adrenaline as he stared at the empty street where the van had vanished. "Sterling’s people just grabbed Lily right out of the hospital."

"How did they know she was here?!" Marcus demanded.

Daniel looked down at the ground near the exit door. Lying in a puddle was a small, high-tech GPS tracker—the kind used by elite private investigator firms to track police vehicles.

"They've been tracking us since we left the cabin," Daniel realized, his teeth grinding together in rage. "They knew we were piecing it together. They took Lily to force Sarah and Arthur to stay silent if they wake up."

Marcus radioed the precinct instantly. "All units, this is Vance! We have an Officer-Involved Kidnapping! Suspect vehicle is a dark grey Ford transit van, no rear plates, heading northbound on Route 9! Set up blockades at all bridges!"

Daniel walked back to the stairwell to check on Eleanor. A team of nurses was already attending to her head wound on the landing.

She looked up at Daniel, her eyes full of tears and guilt. "Daniel... I'm so sorry... he stepped out of the service closet... I couldn't stop him..."

"It’s not your fault, Eleanor," Daniel said softly, kneeling beside her. "Did you see his face?"

"He had a scar... running from his jaw up to his ear," Eleanor wheezed. "And he told someone on his earpiece... 'We have the kid. Drive to the shipyard.'"

Daniel stood up, a deadly calm washing over him.