Chapter 157 Chase

Chapter 157 Chase
Sarah POV

"Who gave you this message?" Michael's grip on the teenager's arm tightened.

The kid shifted nervously. "Look, I don't know anything else, okay? I was just hanging around the subway station when she approached me. Offered me five hundred bucks to deliver a note."

Michael and I exchanged glances. She. My mind immediately jumped to Natalie, but something didn't feel right about that theory.

"What did she look like?"

"I couldn't really see her face. She had on a hoodie and a face mask." He glanced between us anxiously. "But the voice was definitely female, you know?"

"How tall was she? What was she wearing besides the hoodie?" Michael's voice remained controlled but urgent.

"Average height, I guess? Dark clothes. She kept to the shadows." The teenager was clearly getting more nervous. "That's it, I swear. Can I go now? I don't know anything else."

Michael released his grip on the kid's arm. "Get out of here."

The teenager didn't need to be told twice. He disappeared down the hallway faster than I'd ever seen anyone move.

"A woman," I murmured, leaning against the wall. "Michael, you don't think Natalie would—"

"I considered that," Michael interrupted. "But why would she demand only a hundred thousand? Her family's pharmaceutical empire is worth millions. If Natalie wanted to hurt us, she'd have more sophisticated methods."

I felt a chill run through me. "Then who? And how do they know so much about our family? Ashley hasn't even been with us for twenty-four hours, yet whoever did this knew exactly who she took."

"Someone's been watching us," Michael said grimly. "Closely."

The weight of that realization settled over me like a dark cloud. "So what do we do?" I asked. "Call the police?"

Michael shook his head. "If this person doesn't know my real identity, they might be expecting a business manager's salary, not a CEO's assets. That could work in our favor. We pay the ransom, get the girls back, then track down whoever's responsible."

"Michael, I need to tell you something." My voice wavered. "The paternity test results aren't ready yet. The equipment malfunctioned, so I still don't know if Ashley is really..."

"Sarah." Michael cupped my face gently. "If you believe she's your daughter, then I believe it, too. And regardless of what any test says, she's a child who needs our protection right now."

"And if they don't return Ashley and Lily after we pay?"

"Then we hunt them down. No one threatens our children and gets away with it." Our children. Even in this nightmare, Michael's unwavering support wrapped around me like armor.

Michael pulled out his phone. "Tomas? I need you to prepare one hundred thousand in cash. Unmarked bills... Yes, tonight."

An hour later, Tomas arrived with a black duffel bag. Michael opened it, revealing neat stacks of bills. But before zipping it closed, he tucked something small and metallic inside.

"Tracking device," he explained when he noticed my questioning look. "If this goes south, at least we'll know where our money went."

At 9:45 PM, we drove to Marco's Pizza on 5th Street in an old, beat-up van that Tomas had somehow procured. The contrast between this vehicle and Michael's usual rides would have been comical under different circumstances.

The alley behind Marco's was dimly lit and eerily quiet. Michael placed the bag in the designated dumpster, then we retreated to the van. He dialed the number from the note.

"The money's in place," Michael said when someone answered.

A mechanically distorted voice responded, "Leave the area immediately. After I confirm the money is there, your children will be released at a random safe public location."

The line went dead.

"We're not leaving," I whispered.

"Absolutely not," Michael agreed.

We sat in the van, watching multiple monitor screens showing different angles around the dumpster, while a separate screen displayed our tracking device's location as a red dot. The dot remained stationary for what felt like hours, but was probably only twenty minutes.

Then it started moving.

A homeless man had been digging through the dumpster, and when he walked away, our tracker showed movement in the same direction.

"There!" I pointed at the screen.

We jumped out of the van and confronted the homeless man, who was dragging a large garbage bag behind him. He looked at us with genuine confusion when we demanded to see what he'd taken.

"Look, I don't know what you're talking about," he said, backing away. "I was just looking for bottles."

"We need to check your bag," Michael said firmly but not unkindly.

The man reluctantly opened his garbage bag. We dug through empty cans, food scraps, and other discarded items, but there was no black duffel bag anywhere. Just the sad collection of a man trying to survive.

"I'm sorry," I told him, feeling terrible as we helped him gather his belongings back into the bag. "We thought... we're looking for something important."

The homeless man shrugged, already moving on down the street with his collection.

I ran back to the dumpster. Empty. The bag was gone. I rushed to the van to check the tracking screen, and our tracking device showed it was still moving.

"How is that possible?" I muttered.

Michael's eyes widened with sudden understanding. He rushed back to the dumpster and, with surprising strength, shoved it aside. Beneath it was a manhole cover and the metallic edge of an access tunnel.

"They're using the underground system," he said. "I'm going down."

"Michael, no—"

"Sarah, we don't have a choice." He pulled out another tracking device, smaller than the first, and activated it. "This one's for me. Tomas will drive you and monitor our positions from up here."

Before I could protest further, Michael grabbed a flashlight from the van, pried open the manhole, and disappeared into the darkness below.

Tomas and I raced back to the van. On the screen, I could see two dots now: Michael's signal chasing after the bag's signal through what looked like a maze of tunnels beneath the city.

"They're heading southwest," Tomas observed, navigating the van through the streets above.

The bag's signal finally stopped moving. We drove to the corresponding location above ground: a desolate stretch of abandoned buildings and cracked pavement.

"There's nothing here," I said, frustrated.

Tomas studied a map on his tablet. "According to city records, there's an abandoned subway station directly below this area. Construction stopped in the 1980s when funding ran out."

We found a rusted entrance to the old station hidden behind overgrown bushes and a chain-link fence. Tomas cut through the chains with bolt cutters he'd apparently come prepared with.

"Stay in the van," I told him. "Keep monitoring the signals and be ready to call for backup."

"Mrs. Johnson, perhaps I should—"

"No." My voice was firmer than I felt. "Someone needs to coordinate from up here."

I grabbed another flashlight and descended into the abandoned station. The air smelled of rust and decay. After what felt like an eternity of walking along defunct railway tracks, I saw another light approaching.

Michael emerged from the shadows, breathing hard and covered in grime. He'd been running along the tracks to catch up.

"The signal stopped moving," he reported quietly, catching his breath. "Should be right around here."

We pressed forward together, sweeping our flashlights across the tunnel walls until we found it. Just the tracking device itself, abandoned on the rusted rails.

"They dumped it," I whispered.

Michael crouched down, examining the ground. "They can't be far."

We were about to continue our search when the sound hit us.

The sharp, metallic clang of a heavy door slamming shut echoed from somewhere ahead in the darkness. Immediately after, we caught the sound of heavy footsteps... and underneath it all, the unmistakable sound of quiet sobbing.