Page 12 of Thirty-Two Calls

"Mr. Rothwood, this is unacceptable," Chief Harrison stammered, trying to salvage the situation. "I will personally see to it that these officers are disciplined, and the investigation will be reopened immediately with my top team —"

"The investigation is irrelevant," Lance cut him off, stepping back and buttoning his suit jacket with a chilling finality. "Because the victim is gone. You failed her. And because you failed her, the Rothwood Foundation will be launching a comprehensive, independent audit into the 4th Precinct’s handling of assault victims. I will have your precinct turned inside out. If I find one more instance of this discriminatory negligence, I will personally ensure you never wear those badges again. Get out of my building."

The three officers scrambled to their feet, fleeing the boardroom with the profound, heavy shame of those who knew they had been stripped bare and found entirely lacking.

The Ghost Hunt

The satisfaction of destroying the detectives lasted less than a minute. By the time Lance returned to his executive suite, the war room had been reassembled.

Matthew Jordan, the sharpest logistical mind in the company, had joined Connor and the cybersecurity team. The massive smart-screens lining the walls were filled with maps, code, and financial ledgers.

"We're hitting concrete, Lance," Matthew said, running a hand through his hair. "I’ve had a team tracking the offshore accounts where her final severance was deposited. The money was routed through the Caymans, split into twelve different crypto wallets, and then bounced through servers in Estonia before vanishing completely. It's untraceable."

"What about the brother?" Lance asked, leaning over the console. "Evander Foster. He must have left a physical trail. Car rentals, flight manifests, train tickets."

Connor pulled up a map of the city’s transit hubs. "We ran facial recognition on all airport, train, and bus terminal cameras for Friday night. We got three pings for Van Foster. One boarding a flight to London, one renting a car heading south to Florida, and one scanning a passport at the Canadian border."

Lance frowned. "Simultaneously?"

"Yes," the head of cybersecurity, Aris, chimed in. "He spoofed the biometric scanners. He fed false positive facial recognition packets into the municipal grid while simultaneously erasing their actual physical departure. He even hijacked our own Rothwood satellites to bounce the fake signals. We're chasing ghosts."

Lance stared at the map, the realization slowly washing over him.

Van hadn't just panicked and run. He had planned this with the cold, calculating brilliance of a master architect. He had anticipated the Rothwood resources. He knew Lance would deploy unlimited funds, private investigators, and cyber-teams to find them, so he hadn't just built a wall—he had built a labyrinth filled with traps and mirrors.

A heavy silence settled over the war room as the executives and tech experts stared at the dead ends. They were the most powerful men in the city, entirely bested by an angry older brother with a laptop.

Lance let out a slow, heavy breath, leaning back from the console. The anger that had been driving him all morning suddenly gave way to something entirely unexpected: a profound, grudging respect.

Van hated him. And Van had every right to. But Van had stepped into the void when Lance had failed. Van had protected Evie, shielded her from the fallout, and executed an extraction so flawless that a multi-billion-dollar empire couldn't crack it.

"He's brilliant," Lance murmured, almost to himself, a dark, respectful smile touching the corner of his mouth.

"Sir?" Connor asked, confused.

"He knew exactly how we would hunt them," Lance said, his eyes scanning the false pings on the map. "He protected his sister. He did exactly what I should have done."

Lance straightened up, the master tactician fully engaged. The guilt was still there, a bleeding wound in his chest, but the objective was clear. Van had given them a head start, but Lance had unlimited resources and the rest of his life.

"Shut down the digital search," Lance ordered, surprising the room. "Van wants us chasing code. So, we stop looking at the screens. Connor, Matthew, I want you to start pulling analog records. Real estate purchases under shell companies created in the last two weeks. Small-town bank accounts opened with physical cash. We start eliminating the globe, city by city, town by town."

Lance looked out the window again, his reflection transposed over the city.

I'm coming, Evie. Just wait for me.

Chapter Ten: The Ashes of an Empire

Six months. One hundred and eighty-two days of deafening, suffocating silence.

The transition from brutal winter to the fragile bloom of early summer had gone entirely unnoticed by Lance Rothwood. He operated in a state of absolute, surgical detachment, driven forward by a singular, consuming obsession composed of two distinct directives: Burn the Rothwood Legacy to the ground, and bring Evangeline home.

He had no earthly idea how to achieve the latter. Despite deploying millions of dollars, armies of private investigators, and the most sophisticated digital tracking money could buy, Van Foster’s labyrinth held firm. Evie remained a ghost.

But the first directive? That, Lance could execute with the ruthless brilliance that had built his empire.

Sitting in the dim light of his executive office, Lance stared at the towering stacks of legal dossiers bound in thick, red ribbon. It was done. For the last six months, while the world thought he was mourning the near-loss of a corporate merger, Lance had been systematically dismantling the financial architecture of his own family. He had liquidated holding companies, dissolved joint family accounts, and funneled the unimaginable Rothwood wealth into a series of draconian, iron-clad blind trusts. The foundation was now untouchable. It could not be leveraged, manipulated, or squandered by the board, by his mother, by his wife, or by any future heir.

He had placed the Rothwood name behind bulletproof glass, rendering the power of his family entirely inert.