AVERY'S POV
Gray morning light filtered through the broken skylight above, cutting cold lines across the dusty floor.
My wrists were stiff and raw against the metal workbench, but my mind was completely clear. When heavy footsteps approached from the partition office, I didn't flinch.
The taller kidnapper carried the burner phone in his right hand. He stopped two feet in front of me, his dark eyes unreadable behind the black ski mask.
"Fifteen seconds," he said, holding the screen toward me. "Don't waste them."
He tapped the screen and pressed the speaker button.
The call connected on the first ring.
"Avery?" Lucas's voice came through instantly, sharp with tension and exhausted anger. "If you're on this line, you need to listen to me right now—"
"Lucas, don't talk. Just listen," I said.
My voice was quiet, steady, and stripped of every drop of panic. I didn't cry. I didn't beg.
"I am in an abandoned warehouse near a freight rail line," I said, speaking clearly into the microphone. "Heavy cargo trains pass on the east side every forty minutes. The air smells strongly of industrial paint thinner, and there's a red rail signal visible through high northern glass. Log the timetable. Match the train frequency to the northern freight corridor."
A heavy silence hung on the line for three seconds.
"Avery..." Lucas began, his tone wavering with sudden uncertainty. "Where did you get those details?"
Right on schedule, a deep, rhythmic rumble began vibrating through the concrete floor beneath my knees. The steel beams overhead groaned under the growing roar of an approaching freight engine.
I leaned my head back toward the cracked window above, letting the phone capture the sound.
The train's horn tore through the morning air, a deafening blast of metal and compressed air that shook the entire room for five solid seconds. The sheer volume filled the microphone, drowning out everything else.
On the other end of the line, Lucas's breath sounded sharp and ragged. "Avery? Are you—"
"Lucas, please think for a second," Lena's soft voice cut in from the background, smooth and composed.
My stomach turned. She was right beside him.
"Lucas, remember her college portfolio?" Lena asked, her tone gentle, reasonable, and laced with quiet concern. "Two years ago, Avery spent three months scouting the old rail yards for the foundation's urban arts project. She knows every abandoned district in the county. She knows exactly what sounds to play to make it convincing."
"Lena, that horn was real," Lucas said, though the conviction had already vanished from his voice.
"Of course it's real," Lena replied patiently. "She could easily be sitting in a rented loft right next to the northern tracks, playing the train schedule against you. Lucas... if you wire five million dollars right now, what does that teach her? It tells her that every time she wants to run away or start a business, all she has to do is stage a crisis."
The line fell quiet.
I could hear the rustle of clothing as Lucas shifted. I knew that silence. I knew the exact expression on his face—the way his jaw hardened whenever he remembered the mistakes of our past, twisting six-year-old guilt into fresh resentment.
When he spoke again, all trace of hesitation was gone. His voice was ice.
"If this is another stunt, Avery, I'm done protecting you."
The words hung in the cold warehouse air, sharp enough to cut bone.
I didn't argue. I didn't mention the bruises on my face, the zip-ties tearing into my skin, or the dried blood on my lip. I didn't bring up our parents, our childhood, or the promises he had made when we were kids.
I didn't even call him my brother.
"Okay," I said quietly.
The kidnapper grabbed the phone from between us, his patience completely gone.
"Move her at first light tomorrow," he snapped to his partner across the room, stepping away from me. "The southern route won't be clear before then. We're done waiting on this idiot."
"Wait—who said that?" Lucas's voice came through the speaker, sudden panic flaring in his words. "Who was that? Avery—"
The kidnapper tapped the screen with a brutal swipe of his thumb, ending the call.
The silence that followed was suffocating.
The kidnapper tossed the phone onto a wooden crate beside a cheap scanner tuned to local dispatch traffic.
Ten minutes later, the speaker crackled to life.
A dispatcher's voice broke through the static: *"All units, update on the Hale abduction report. Hale Enterprises has stood down its private security search and will not authorize ransom. The reporting party cites a prior history of fabricated threats. Detective review remains open, but no tactical location has been confirmed."*
The frequency clicked off.
The shorter kidnapper let out a dry, humorless laugh from the doorway. He looked at me, shaking his head.
"Your family still coming?" he asked.
Behind my back, my fingers tightened around the broken silver clasp hidden in my palm. The jagged metal point sank deep into my skin, digging into the flesh until warm blood welled up between my fingers.
The physical pain was nothing compared to the silence in my chest.
I stared straight ahead at the dead, black screen of the phone on the crate.
"No," I said.
The rest of that day crawled past without rescue. The men kept the outer doors shut and spoke in low voices near the partition office while I stayed bound to the workbench. Every time they turned away, I worked the jagged clasp against the plastic around my wrists, stopping whenever footsteps crossed the concrete.
Darkness came again. Then another freight train. Then another.
By the time the second night began to thin toward morning, nearly two full days had passed since the parking garage. The zip-tie at my wrists had whitened and stretched where I had been sawing at it. One more hard pull might break it.
The men had said they would move me at first light.
I knew I had to get free before they did.
