Chapter 4 - The Ghost Hunt
For the first forty-eight hours, Damian’s grief manifested as pure, unadulterated fury.
He mobilized every asset at his disposal. His private security details, his intelligence operatives, his network of informants across Colorado, New York, and the Pacific Northwest—all of them were thrown into a massive, high-stakes man-hunt to locate Elena Voss and his newborn daughter.
Private jets crisscrossed the country. Every commercial flight manifest, every hospital admission, every credit card transaction, and every municipal registry was scrubbed by algorithms designed to flag even the slightest trace of her name.
Nothing.
It was as if Elena Voss had simply evaporated off the face of the earth.
By the third week, the fury burned out, leaving behind a cold, ash-gray wasteland of absolute, consuming despair. Damian sat alone in his dark study at Black Pine, the whiskey bottle on his desk untouched, staring at a single photograph captured on a security camera from a gas station in a small mountain town three hours north of Vail, dated two days after the blizzard.
The image was grainy, captured in the predawn gray. Elena stood beside an old, rusted blue pickup truck belonging to a local veterinarian. She wore a faded denim jacket, her dark hair pulled back into a simple ponytail, holding a bundle wrapped in a yellow blanket against her chest. She didn't look back at the camera. She climbed into the passenger seat of the truck, and the vehicle vanished down a mountain road that led nowhere—and everywhere.
“Sir?”
Damian didn't look up as Vince, his chief of security, stepped hesitantly into the study.
“Speak,” Damian said, his voice a low, raspy whisper.
“We checked every property, every remote cabin, and every known associate from her college days in Boston,” Vince reported, keeping his eyes fixed on the floor. “Nothing, Mr. Voss. It’s like she had help. Professional help. Someone wiped her digital footprint the moment she crossed the county line.”
“Who?” Damian asked, his dark eyes lifting to meet Vince’s gaze.
“We... we have a lead on that, sir,” Vince hesitated, swallowing hard. “The truck she left in... it belongs to Dr. Thomas Vance, an eccentric retired pediatrician who lives off the grid in a valley near the San Juan Mountains. He’s... well, he’s Margaret’s brother.”
Damian stood up so fast his leather chair crashed backward against the oak bookcase.
“San Juan?” Damian demanded. “Why didn't you search there immediately?”
“We tried, Mr. Voss,” Vince said defensively. “The San Juan valley is private federal conservation land surrounded by sheer cliffs and impassable forestry roads. There’s only one access bridge, and local militias loyal to the old mining families guard it twenty-four hours a day. They don't let outsiders in—especially men carrying federal IDs or private security badges.”
Damian grabbed his heavy wool coat from the back of the sofa.
“Get the helicopter ready,” Damian ordered, his jaw set in a hard, dangerous line. “We’re going to San Juan.”
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“Mr. Voss, if we fly unannounced into their airspace, they will shoot us out of the sky—”
“Let them try,” Damian cut him off, his voice ringing with absolute, terrifying resolve. “They can shoot me down, or they can let me land. But I am not leaving that mountain without my wife and my daughter.”
