Chapter 3 - The Ghost of Wicker ParkBy noon, the Vance Tower lobby was swarming with reporters, financial journalists, and state investigators carrying cardboard boxes filled with seized documents. Viktor and Marcus had been led out in handcuffs through the underground parking garage, their multi-million-dollar corporate careers reduced to a footnote in the financial crime archives of the Chicago Tribune.
I sat alone in my glass-walled office, the city stretching out below me under a gray, overcast sky.
My phone buzzed on the desk.
It was an unknown number, routed through a secure, encrypted VoIP proxy designed to bypass caller ID tracing.
My thumb hovered over the screen before I swiped to answer.
“Talk,” I commanded.
“You’re making a lot of noise, Daniel,” a cold, raspy voice came through the speaker. It wasn't Claire. It was a man—rough, hardened, and carrying the distinct cadence of the underground syndicates that operated in the shadows of the Chicago docks.
“Who is this?” I demanded, leaning forward in my chair.
“A mutual friend of Viktor and Marcus,” the voice replied smoothly. “You think because you handed your crooked partners over to the feds, you’re safe? You think the board meetings and legal injunctions are the only battlegrounds in this city?”
“If you have something to say, say it,” I warned, my jaw tightening.
“Your wife,” the man said, and my entire body went rigid. “Claire. She’s been very busy buying up real estate in Wicker Park and Lincoln Square under independent trust accounts. But a pregnant woman traveling alone through the city in the middle of winter... she’s awfully exposed, Daniel. It’d be a real shame if something happened to her before she gets to hold that baby.”
The blood rushed in my ears, a loud, deafening roar of absolute, unadulterated fury.
“If you touch a single hair on her head,” I growled, my voice dropping into a lethal, feral growl that made even my own blood run cold, “I won't just let the feds lock you up. I will hunt you down myself, and I will take everything you love before I end you.”
A harsh, grating laugh came through the speaker.
“We’ll see how tough you talk when we send you the first piece of her back, Vance.”
Click.
The line went dead.
I sat frozen for three seconds. Then, I grabbed my phone, opened my private contacts list, and dialed a number I hadn't used in ten years—the direct private line of Michael Reed’s former commanding officer from his days in military intelligence, a man named Henderson who ran a private tactical tracking unit out of a nondescript warehouse in Cicero.
“Henderson,” I said the second the line connected.
“Vance? Thought you went soft in the corporate towers,” Henderson’s gravelly voice answered.
“I need every satellite asset, every street-level informant, and every tactical operative you have deployed across the city within the hour,” I ordered, standing up so fast my office chair rolled back and crashed against the glass wall. “Someone just threatened my wife.”
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“Give me a starting point,” Henderson said, his tone instantly shifting from casual to combat-ready. “Where was she last seen?”
“Wicker Park,” I said, grabbing my heavy charcoal overcoat off the rack. “Find her before I tear this city apart looking for her.”
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