She Heard Her Grandson Screaming Behind the Nursery Door—Then She Saw His Father Sitting There Doing Nothing. But the moment Grandma noticed the tiny red light above the crib, she realized the camera had captured something far worse than anyone expected. / Chapter 14 / 50

Chapter 14 - The 1:15 Extraction

Ethan sprinted out of the house, Margaret and Thomas hot on his heels. The roar of Thomas’s SUV engine tore through the quiet country air as gravel showered against the fence.

"Call the state police! Call an Amber Alert!" Ethan screamed from the passenger seat, tearing at his hair. "I swear to God, if she touches him, I will kill her with my bare hands!"

"Already on it," Thomas barked into his headset, patching directly into the state dispatcher network using his former credentials. "Dispatch, this is former Trooper Thomas Vance, badge 4402. I have an active parental kidnapping/child abduction in progress at St. Jude’s Academy. Suspect vehicle is a silver Ford Taurus, plate Illinois registration 8-Echo-Victor-9-9. Child is Noah Vance, four years old. Armed private security potentially involved."

Margaret sat in the back seat, her hands clasped tightly, eyes closed, whispering prayers mingled with boiling fury. *Not Noah. Never Noah.*

"She didn't do this for custody," Margaret said, her voice piercing the panic in the vehicle. "Vanessa doesn't care about Noah! She hated him when they lived together. She locked him in that nursery because his crying interfered with her lifestyle. Why take him now?"

"Leverage," Thomas answered grimly, weaving through midday traffic at eighty miles per hour, siren screaming from beneath the front grille. "If the people backing Vanessa are after Olivia’s research data, they know you and Ethan would burn the world down before handing it over. But with Noah in their hands? You’d give them whatever they asked for."

"I don't have her research!" Ethan yelled, slamming his fist against the dashboard. "When Olivia died, I packed all her clothes, her hard drives, her journals into plastic totes. When Vanessa moved in, she told me the clutter was holding me back. She insisted on clearing the attic! She must have gone through them back then!"

"She couldn't find it," Margaret realized aloud, her eyes snapping open. "Vanessa searched Olivia's things three years ago, but Olivia was smarter than all of them. Olivia knew she was in danger before the crash. She didn't put the data on a hard drive or in a notebook."

"Then where is it?!" Ethan cried out.

Margaret remembered that terrible evening before Olivia’s fatal crash. Olivia had arrived unexpectedly, drenched in sweat, carrying a small, handmade blue patchwork quilt that she had spent months sewing for her unborn son.

*“Mom,” Olivia had whispered that night, her fingers clutching the quilt tightly. “Keep this safe. If anything ever happens to me, never let anyone take Noah's blanket away from him. It holds everything he’ll ever need.”*

The blue blanket.

The very blanket that Margaret had carried into court during the custody hearing. The blanket that Noah dragged with him everywhere he went.

"The blanket," Margaret gasped, grabbing Ethan’s shoulder. "Ethan! Noah took his blanket to preschool today for naptime!"