“I tried to tell you, Mom,” Maya’s recorded voice crackled, devoid of the teen angst I had so easily dismissed. “But you were always too busy protecting the partners. I hacked into Mr. Vance’s server last month. That’s why my grades slipped. That’s why I was sneaking out. I was trying to find a journalist who would believe me.”
Vance. The senior partner at my law firm. The man who had so kindly suggested Blackwood Academy when I confessed my struggles with Maya’s recent behavior at a corporate gala. ‘A wonderful place for troubled girls,’ he had said, a sympathetic smile on his face as he swirled his scotch. ‘Total isolation. It does wonders for discipline.’
Total isolation. I felt the bile rise in my throat.
“They traffic secrets, Mom. And when people find out, they traffic the people,” the recording hissed, the background noise suggesting she had recorded this in the dead of night. “Vance knew I was in his system. I saw the encrypted emails. Blackwood isn’t a school. It’s a containment facility for liabilities. You handed me right to them.”
A sharp intake of breath hissed through the tiny speaker. “I’ve paid off one of the night guards with the emergency cash I stole from your safe. I’m making a run for it tonight. If you’re hearing this, it means I didn’t make it to my safe house, or… or they called you to establish an alibi. Don’t trust the police. Don’t trust the firm. Burn your phone. If you ever loved me more than your reputation, find me.”
The spool clicked to a halt. Silence swallowed the room, deafening and absolute.
My mind raced back to the morning she left. Her empty eyes. The way she didn’t fight back. It wasn’t the sullen surrender of a defeated teenager; it was the quiet terror of a prisoner walking to the gallows, realizing her own mother was the executioner. All I had cared about was the hushed whispers at the country club, the worried glances from the board members. I had prioritized my corner office over my child’s life.
My phone buzzed in my pocket. The caller ID flashed: Arthur Vance.
“Eleanor,” his smooth, patrician voice drifted through the receiver, dripping with false warmth. “I just heard the dreadful news from Blackwood. Have the police located Maya yet? We have our best private investigators standing by to help.”
He was probing. Checking to see what I knew.
I looked at the shattered music box on the floor, then at the framed photo of Maya and me on her dresser—taken back when my ambition hadn’t eclipsed her existence. A cold, unfamiliar clarity washed over me. The corporate fixer, the ruthless negotiator that Vance had so carefully cultivated over fifteen years, was finally waking up. And she was going to tear his empire down to the studs.
“No, Arthur,” I lied, keeping my voice perfectly steady, perfectly hollow. “No word yet. I’m just sitting here in her room. I don’t know what to do.”
“Stay right there, Eleanor. I’m sending a car for you. We’ll handle this.”
“Thank you, Arthur. You’ve always taken such good care of us.”
I hung up the phone, walked into my en-suite bathroom, and dropped the device into the toilet. I had twenty minutes before Vance’s “car” arrived to contain their last remaining liability.
I changed out of my designer suit, pulled a dark duffel bag from the closet, and retrieved the hidden glock from my lockbox. I was no longer a senior partner at Vance & Sterling. I was a mother on a manhunt.
