I walked back to the cot and sat down, pulling the blanket up over Oliver’s shoulders.

Isabella sat back down at the desk, her eyes fixed on a digital map tracking Adrian’s progress.

A small blue dot began to move along the grid of Chicago’s streets, heading north.

“He will make it,” Isabella said, though she did not look at me.

“He has his father’s determination.”

“And his mother’s ruthlessness,” I added softly.

Isabella did not deny it.

We sat in the dim light of the screens, the quiet only broken by the soft breathing of my children.

The blue dot crawled slowly across the map, nearing the lakefront where the Vale estate stood.

Twenty minutes felt like twenty years.

Suddenly, a sharp static hiss pierced the silence of the room.

The speakers on the desk crackled to life.

Isabella leaned forward, her hand hovering over the volume dial.

The blue dot on the map stopped moving.

It was right at the gates of the Vale estate.

But instead of Adrian’s voice, the console erupted with a high-pitched, warbling alarm.