Chapter 225: Chapter 226: Richard Called
MARCUS’S POV
In fifteen years of security work, Marcus Reid had run operations on four continents, in conditions ranging from corporate boardrooms to active conflict zones. He’d coordinated extractions, investigations, counter-surveillance, and three situations that had never been written down anywhere because writing them down would have been inadvisable for everyone involved.
He had never run anything that felt like this.
Because this wasn’t a client. This was Aria.
He’d known her for the better part of a year....had watched her arrive in his boss’s life like a grenade with the pin already pulled, had watched his employer become someone different in the best possible way because of her. Had watched her navigate the most complicated situation imaginable with intelligence and courage and a specific kind of stubbornness that he privately found both exasperating and deeply admirable.
She was family in the way that people became family when you spent enough time protecting them. And someone had taken her from a hospital corridor in broad daylight while his man was right there.
Marcus did not waste time on guilt. Guilt was for after. Right now he ran.
The war room in Damien’s office was operating at full capacity....four screens, six people, every database and contact network they had access to being pushed simultaneously. The plate partial Seb had logged was being run through traffic camera networks covering a twelve-block radius of Metropolitan General, the footage pulled and analyzed frame by frame.
The ambulance appeared on a camera at 44th and 9th....different direction than the first sighting, which confirmed they’d anticipated the initial pursuit and sent a decoy. Marcus flagged it, rerouted two of his analysts to trace the new trajectory, and kept moving.
"Vehicle interchange," one of his analysts reported....young, sharp, faster with surveillance systems than anyone Marcus had ever worked with. "Parking structure on 38th. They switched vehicles inside....no external camera coverage of the actual switch, but we’ve got the ambulance going in and not coming out. Two minutes later, a gray panel van exits the structure from the opposite side."
"Plates on the van."
"Running now."
Marcus moved to the next screen. Harold’s property connections.....the brother’s portfolio had yielded three candidates, all being assessed simultaneously. His teams on the ground were doing drive-bys, looking for signs of recent activity, vehicles, security cameras that shouldn’t be there, any indication that a building supposedly sitting empty wasn’t.
The Brooklyn property....the former textile manufacturing facility on the edge of the warehouse district.....had come back with an interesting detail. A neighboring business had filed a noise complaint two weeks ago. Maintenance activity at odd hours. Someone had been preparing that space.
He flagged it as primary and redirected resources.
His phone buzzed. Liang....Alexander Wei’s security chief.
"We have something," Ling said without preamble. "A contact inside Gregory Ashford’s property management. The Brooklyn facility has had utility restoration in the last three weeks. Power, water, heating. Gregory filed it as renovation preparation but there’s no contractor on record and no permits pulled."
"You’re confirming Brooklyn."
"I’m saying Brooklyn is active when it shouldn’t be. Whether it’s your location, that I can’t confirm yet."
"Good enough to move on." Marcus looked up and found Damien watching him from across the room. He gave a single nod. "We’re going to Brooklyn."
**
The convoy assembled in twenty minutes. Three vehicles....Damien’s SUV, a security transport, and a third carrying four of Marcus’s most experienced people. The weapons situation had been handled with the quiet efficiency of people who knew how to handle it and never discussed it in language that could be repeated.
Alexander Wei’s team added two more vehicles, six more people, and.... crucially Liang, who had a tactical background that Marcus respected without having fully mapped yet. They’d been working in parallel for the last two hours and the parallel had been productive. Different networks, different access points, filling each other’s gaps with the unsentimental efficiency of professionals who had temporarily set aside the complicated politics of their respective employers.
Damien and Alexander rode in the same vehicle by unspoken agreement. Marcus noted this without comment and chose to interpret it as a positive development.
His phone rang as the convoy pulled out of the building’s underground garage. Richard Blackwood.
He passed the phone to Damien without speaking.
"Grandfather."
"I’ve been watching the situation develop through Marcus’s updates." Richard’s voice was crisp and alert in the way that it always was when something serious was happening....the quality of a man who was at his sharpest precisely when things became most difficult. "Where are you?"
"Moving toward a location in Brooklyn. Former textile facility....Harold’s brother has been using it as a staging ground."
"Good. Listen to me carefully, Damien. I’m sending Hargreaves." A pause during which Damien processed the significance of that name. Thomas Hargreaves was Richard’s personal head of operations....a man whose particular skills existed in a specific gray area that even Damien didn’t have full visibility into. "He’ll have three additional people and he’ll reach your location within the hour."
"Grandfather, I appreciate...."
"I’m not asking." Richard’s voice was calm and absolute. "Harold Ashford has taken someone from this family. Whatever happens in that building tonight, you want the right people around you. Hargreaves knows how to manage the aftermath of situations like this. Use him."
Damien was quiet for a moment. Beside him, Alexander was on his own phone, listening and not listening simultaneously ..... the quality of a man who was tracking multiple conversations at once.
"Thank you," Damien said.
"Bring her home." Richard paused. "And Damien, be smart. Not just fast. Smart."
The call ended.
The city moved past the windows....the organized chaos of New York at early evening, people going about the ordinary business of their ordinary lives while in this vehicle four people carried the specific gravity of knowing that somewhere in this city someone they loved was afraid.
"Your grandfather is Richard Blackwood," Alexander said from beside him. Not quite a question.
"Yes."
"He sends Hargreaves to situations like this."
"You know who Hargreaves is."
"I know what Hargreaves does." Alexander was quiet for a moment. "Richard Blackwood takes care of his family."
"Yes." Damien looked at him directly. "He does."
