Chapter 2 - The Silent Apartment
Evelyn drove her car through the slick, rain-soaked streets with reckless speed.
Every red light felt like a trap waiting to be sprung.
She pulled up to Lucas’s apartment building, her tires screeching against the wet pavement.
The lobby was eerily quiet, the security guard nowhere to be found.
Evelyn ran up the three flights of stairs, ignoring the burning ache in her lungs.
She reached his door and found it slightly ajar.
The wooden frame around the lock was splintered, a clear sign of forced entry.
"Lucas!" she screamed, pushing the door open with trembling hands.
The apartment was in complete disarray, a chaotic mess of overturned furniture and scattered papers.
The large corkboard where Lucas kept his investigation notes had been ripped from the wall.
Evelyn walked through the living room, her shoes crunching on broken glass from a shattered coffee table.
There was no sign of blood, which gave her a small, desperate glimmer of hope.
She noticed his laptop was missing, along with all his backup hard drives.
Whoever had broken in was looking for information, not just revenge.
Suddenly, a cold breeze swept through the room from the open balcony door.
Evelyn cautiously stepped outside into the rain.
A small, black flip phone was resting on the wrought-iron table.
It was not Lucas’s phone, but the screen was glowing, indicating an incoming call.
Evelyn picked it up, pressing it to her ear without saying a word.
"Judge Carter," a deep, heavily distorted voice whispered through the speaker.
"Where is my son?" Evelyn demanded, her voice shaking with raw, maternal fury.
"Your son is currently a guest of ours, enjoying a very uncomfortable car ride," the voice replied calmly.
"What do you want?" she asked, tears mixing with the rain on her face.
"Richard hid a secondary ledger, a master list of all our offshore accounts and political assets," the man explained.
"We know he kept it in a safety deposit box, and we know he mailed the key to your son."
Evelyn remembered Lucas mentioning a strange, unmarked envelope he had received a week ago.
"I don't have the key, and neither does he," Evelyn lied smoothly, trying to buy time.
"You have forty-eight hours to find it, Judge," the voice warned.
"If you contact the FBI, or if you fail to deliver the key, your son will disappear forever."
The line went dead, leaving Evelyn alone in the freezing downpour.
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She gripped the phone so tightly her knuckles turned white.
They had made a fatal mistake by underestimating a mother’s resolve.
