Chapter 5 - The Warehouse of Lies
The building was an abandoned distribution center owned by the Warren Foundation.
Charlee remembered the faded blue bird painted above the entrance. Her mother had taken her there three years earlier, telling her to wait inside the car.
Lena never returned.
A police officer eventually found Charlee wandering beside the road.
Two days later, Lena’s body was discovered inside her wrecked vehicle.
Spencer showed the photograph to Detective Marcus Shaw, the lead investigator assigned to Dexter’s kidnapping.
Shaw requested a tactical unit.
“No one enters until we know the hostages’ positions,” he warned.
Spencer agreed.
Then he walked into the warehouse alone.
He had received another message from Adrian.
Come without police, or Florence dies first.
The main floor smelled of oil, dust, and old wood.
Nathan sat tied to a chair beneath a hanging light. Blood covered one side of his face.
Florence was restrained nearby.
Jocelyn lay on a mattress against the wall, weak but conscious.
Adrian emerged from the shadows wearing an expensive gray suit.
Nolan stood beside him holding a gun.
“You always needed an audience,” Spencer said.
Adrian smiled.
“And you always believed money made you untouchable.”
“I’m here. Release them.”
“Sign first.”
Adrian placed documents on a metal table.
They transferred Spencer’s voting shares, corporate authority, and control of the family trust to Adrian.
“You tried to kill a newborn for company shares.”
“I tried to preserve what should have belonged to my father.”
“Your father stole from mine.”
“My father built Warren Industries while Charles collected praise. Raymond handled the factories, the unions, the lawsuits, and the debts. Then Charles left everything to you.”
Adrian’s voice became bitter.
“You spent twelve years believing you were sterile. The company was supposed to become mine.”
“So you stole eighty million dollars while you waited?”
“I took what was owed.”
Spencer glanced at Jocelyn.
“Where is Dexter?”
“Safe, for the moment.”
The answer chilled him.
Dexter had been inside the mansion when Spencer left.
Adrian saw his expression and laughed.
“You surrounded the child with guards, but you forgot that Nolan designed the security system.”
Nolan lifted a remote device.
“We opened the underground passage after you drove away.”
Spencer fought to remain calm.
“You have my son?”
“Not yet,” Adrian replied. “But we will.”
A loud alarm sounded from Nolan’s phone.
His expression changed.
Someone had triggered the mansion’s emergency lockdown.
At the estate, Charlee had noticed a stone panel standing open behind the kitchen pantry.
She remembered the hidden nursery passage and realized the tunnels were connected.
She carried Dexter into Spencer’s reinforced safe room and activated the red switch Mrs. Mabel had shown her.
Steel doors sealed every corridor.
Casey called Detective Shaw.
Mrs. Mabel poured boiling soup through a ventilation opening when one of Nolan’s men attempted to crawl through the kitchen tunnel.
By the time the intruders reached the safe room, police had surrounded the mansion.
Inside the warehouse, Adrian struck Spencer across the face.
“You brought them here.”
“I came alone.”
“You taught that girl too much.”
Spencer smiled despite the blood on his lip.
“No. She survived long before she met me.”
A red light appeared briefly on Nolan’s chest.
A police sniper had a clear view through the upper window.
Detective Shaw’s voice thundered through a loudspeaker.
“Drop your weapons!”
Nolan panicked.
He fired toward the window.
The warehouse exploded with gunfire.
Spencer threw himself across Florence while Nathan overturned his chair.
Jocelyn crawled behind a concrete column.
Nolan ran toward a side exit.
Adrian grabbed a fuel container and poured gasoline across the documents.
“You’re destroying the evidence!” Spencer shouted.
“I’m destroying your family.”
Adrian ignited the papers.
Flames raced across the floor.
Smoke filled the warehouse.
Spencer freed Florence and carried her toward the loading doors while officers entered from both sides.
Nathan helped Jocelyn.
Nolan was arrested near the rear fence.
But Adrian disappeared into the smoke.
When Spencer reached the parking lot, his phone rang.
Casey was screaming.
“Adrian came through the east tunnel during the evacuation. He took Dexter!”
Spencer heard a vehicle engine behind her.
Then Charlee’s voice came over the phone.
“Uncle Spencer, the blue teddy bear is with Dexter.”
“What?”
“I put my tracking tag inside it because Dexter keeps getting lost.”
Spencer opened the tracking application on Charlee’s tablet.
A small blue dot moved rapidly north.
It was heading toward the original Warren estate, an isolated mansion abandoned after Charles Warren’s death.
Detective Shaw ran toward his vehicle.
Spencer followed.
On the tablet, the blue dot stopped moving.
A new video message appeared.
Adrian stood on the upper balcony of the old mansion.
Dexter cried in his arms.
“Come finish what our fathers started,” Adrian said.
Behind him, lightning split the sky.
May you like
Then he held the baby over the edge of the balcony.
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