The Terminal Trade
The travel from secure safehouse to confrontation ground consumed the next hour. Headlights cut cold through the gathering dusk.
The radio crackled with static, then Dorian’s voice cut through the grain terminal’s cavernous silence. “Reid has a blackout unit at the east gate and he’s moving fast. Killian, if you wait, he gets to the child.”
The words hit Killian in the chest like a physical blow. He was already moving, half-turned toward the rusted catwalk where Jasper Covington had been supposed to appear, but the plan was dissolving in real time. His hand closed over the wire recorder in his jacket pocket, the tiny device still warm from his palm, and he forced his brain to process the tactical feed Dorian was feeding him through the earpiece.
“How many in the blackout unit?”
“Four vehicles. Heavy jamming suite. They’re not trying to be subtle.”
Of course they weren’t. Reid Covington had never once in his life been required to be discreet. The Covington heir had grown up with the certainty that the world would bend to his will, and now he was bending it toward a six-year-old boy.
Killian’s jaw worked as he pivoted, scanning the abandoned grain elevator’s massive concrete silos. He had fifteen minutes before Jasper Covington was scheduled to arrive. Fifteen minutes to extract Helena from the locking cage they’d found her in, to get her out and to safety, before the elder Covington walked into this trap expecting to reclaim his leverage.
But the trap was a two-sided coin now.
“Dorian,” he said, his voice low and tight. “Split the team. I need four men on the safehouse perimeter. Now.”
“If I pull anyone off the ridgeline, Jasper’s convoy gets clean passage.”
“I know.” Killian’s eyes tracked to the cage at the far end of the terminal floor, where Helena Wexler sat with her knees drawn to her chest. She was a civilian, a friend, a woman who had no business being tangled in the Covington family’s decade-long war for control of Voss Industries. She was here because she’d helped Evangeline disappear, and the Covingtons had discovered it. “Pull them anyway. Reid’s blackout unit is the priority.”
“And if Jasper slips through?”
“Then I’ll handle Jasper.” The words tasted like ash in his mouth. “But I will not let Reid get to Milo. Move.”
The radio went quiet. The grain terminal filled with the sound of wind whistling through broken windows, dust motes drifting in the late afternoon light. Killian crossed the concrete floor with measured strides, his footsteps echoing against the silos as he reached the cage.
Helena looked up at her, her face pale but her eyes steady. She’d been locked in this holding cell for nearly three hours, abducted from her apartment in the middle of the night by men who had been polite enough to knock but brutal enough to make the threat of violence explicit. Her wrists were red from the zip ties, and there was a bruise blooming along her cheekbone where one of the handlers had backhanded her when she’d tried to fight.
She hadn’t broken. He’d expected she wouldn’t.
“You’re cutting it close,” she said, her voice hoarse.
“I’m sorry.” Killian knelt, pulling a tension wrench and a pick from his boot. “Jasper brought the deal forward.”
“Let me guess. Reid’s doing something stupid.”
“Reid’s doing something reckless.” The lock clicked, and Killian pulled the cage door open. “He’s sent a blackout unit to the safehouse. Evangeline and Milo are still there.”
Helena’s face went white. “Killian, you have to go. I can get out through—“
“You’re not walking anywhere alone.” He grasped her arm, helping her to her feet. “Dorian’s men are pulling back to the safehouse, but we’re short on time. I need you to stay close and keep your head down until we’re in the truck. Can you do that?”
She nodded. Her hand shook in his, but her voice was even. “I’ve got a kid back home too. I can do whatever I need to do.”
Killian’s chest tightened. He knew that. He knew that Helena had a daughter, that her decision to help Evangeline had put her own family in the crosshairs, and that he would do everything in his power to make sure she walked out of this terminal alive.
But his heart was somewhere else entirely. It was in a safehouse on the other side of town, in the trembling arms of a woman who had spent six years hiding her son from her former employer, and in the wide brown eyes of that boy, the son Killian had known nothing about until three weeks ago, the son he had already seen in his dreams every night since.
He did not have time to be terrified. He had time to be precise.
They moved through the terminal’s shadowed interior, Helena close behind her as Killian navigated toward the eastern loading dock where he’d parked the modified truck. The wire recorder crackled in his pocket, still tuned to the frequency Dorian had planted beneath Jasper’s seat in the elder Covington’s armored town car.
The audio feed bled through his earpiece: Jasper’s clipped voice, a phone buzz, the murmur of the driver.
“—Reid is pushing too hard. I told him to wait for the exchange.”
“The young master believes Voss will come to him,” the driver said.
“Voss will come to me. He’s already here.” Jasper’s voice was cold, assured. “I’ve seen the way he moves. He let me put his girlfriend in a cage six years ago, and he did nothing. He’s weak. He’ll always be weak.”
Killian’s hand tightened on the wire recorder. Let the man talk. Let him confess everything, every detail of the plot that had led to Dorian’s predecessor getting fired, to Helena’s abduction, to the six years of quiet terrorism that had dismantled his family’s legacy. The recording was the insurance policy, the evidence that would bring down the Covington family’s grip on Voss Industries once and for all. But right now, with Jasper’s voice in his ear and Reid’s blackout unit converging on his son, it felt like a sick irony.
Helena touched the back of she wrist. “Killian. The east dock.”
He looked up. The sunlight through the loading bay’s grimy windows was dimming, cutting across the concrete in long amber slats. The truck was there, hidden beneath a tarp, exactly as Dorian had left it.
“Stay behind the pillar,” he said, pointing toward the rusted steel column near the dock’s edge. “I’m going to start the engine and get the doors open. If you see a black sedan, don’t wait for me. Run.”
“I’m not leaving you.”
“You will, if it comes to that.” He didn’t look at her, but his voice was softer. “I need to know Milo will have another safe person in the world besides his mother.”
Helena’s eyes glistened, but she nodded. She ducked behind the pillar and Killian moved to the truck, pulling up the tarp in one motion. His hand was on the driver’s side door when the earpiece crackled again, and Dorian’s voice came through with a sharp, clipped urgency.
“Killian. We have a problem.”
“What?”
“The safehouse. The blackout unit breached the service tunnel. They didn’t go for the perimeter—they went under. The jamming suite cut our comms to the bunk room for six minutes. We found the tunnel door forced open and the bunk room completely empty. Evangeline. Milo. They’re gone.”
The world tilted. Killian’s fingers dug into the truck’s door frame, the metal biting into his palm, and he forced himself to take a breath. To hold the piece of himself that wanted to scream, to get in the truck and gun it back across town, and to stay in the moment that would actually get them back.
“Do you have a trail?”
“Clean pickup, no vehicle track, but they left a phone. We triangulated the signal. It’s moving west on the highway, toward the Covington estate’s private landing field.”
“They’re taking them to Jasper.” Killian’s voice was flat. “To the estate.”
There was a pause on Dorian’s end. “The blackout unit was the feint. Jasper’s already moving to intercept them at the grain terminal—no, wait. The audio feed just went dead. We lost Jasper’s convoy on the satellite feed. They’ve gone dark too.”
Killian’s body went cold. The pieces were snapping into place with brutal clarity. Reid’s blackout unit at the east gate was never meant to breach the safehouse directly—it was meant to pull Dorian’s security teams to the perimeter, to force them to retask resources, to create a gap in the tunnel watch. And Jasper, the elder Covington, had never planned to show up at the grain terminal. He’d sent Helena and the wiretap as a distraction, something to keep Killian locked in place while Reid’s people grabbed the real prize.
The abandoned grain terminal was the decoy. The confession was the bait.
And Killian had walked straight into it.
“Killian.” Helena’s voice cut through the roaring in she ears. “She’s alive. He doesn’t hurt children. Jasper won’t hurt them if he thinks you have something he wants.”
“He doesn’t think. He knows.” Killian’s throat was tight. “He had me run this play once before. He memorized my tells. And I just gave Reid the one piece of evidence that can destroy their family—and the stock to go with it.”
He still had the SD card. The one piece of hard evidence that the Covington family had spent six years trying to destroy. The damning recordings, the board minutes, the hidden accounts that tied Jasper and Reid to the embezzlement that had bankrupted Voss Industries and driven his father to an early grave. It was in the truck’s vault, wrapped in carbon fiber and lead shielding, waiting for him to use it.
Killian would use it. But not the way Jasper expected.
He pulled out his phone, dialing the number from memory. It rang twice. Then Reid Covington’s voice came over the line, smooth, almost bored.
“Ah, Voss. I was beginning to think you’d forgotten about us.”
“Where are they?”
“With me, somewhere safe. They’re not hurt, I promise.” The lie was silk. “My father likes to keep leverage pristine. Two birds in a cage, as it were. The child was very brave, I’ll give him that. He asked if you were coming to get him. I told him I was sure you’d do the right thing.”
Killian’s hand was shaking. He could see it, the tremor in his fingers, and he forced it to stop. Forced his voice to stay even, precise, cold. “If you touch either of them—if you so much as scare my son—I will burn your family name to the ground and salt the earth beneath it. I have the wiretap confession. I have your bank records. I have everything.”
“I know you do.” Reid’s voice was cheerful. “That’s why this is so simple. We’ll make a trade. The original SD card, unsigned, with no copies, destroyed in front of us—and your controlling interest in Voss Industries, full ownership transfer, notarized tonight.”
“And then what?”
“And then you get your family back. Unharmed, I assure you.” There was a pause, and Killian could hear in the silence the sick confidence of a man who had never been denied anything. “Sunset, Voss. Covington Tower. Come in person, bring the card and the stock, and I’ll have the boy delivered to you in the lobby. It’s a fair offer. I think you should take it.”
Killian’s thumb pressed hard against the phone’s edge, the pressure a small anchor in the storm of his own rage. He had one move left. One angle that Jasper Covington had not calculated.
Because Jasper had taught him how to play this game.
And Jasper had never learned that Killian Voss didn’t play by anyone’s rules.
“I need proof of life.”
“Fine.” Reid made a soft sound, then the phone crackled as a video call came through. Killian accepted it, and the screen filled with the interior of a moving vehicle—the back of an SUV, tinted windows, leather seats. And there was Evangeline, pressed against the corner of the seat, her face pale and furious, her arms wrapped tightly around Milo’s shoulders.
Milo’s eyes were wide. His jaw was set in a stubborn expression that Killian recognized immediately. He was scared, but he was holding himself together. He was trying to show no fear.
Evangeline’s mouth moved. She wasn’t able to speak—the audio was muted on their end—but her lips clearly formed two words. “I’m okay.”
The video cut out. Killian’s arms dropped to his sides.
“Sunset,” Reid repeated, a final, mocking edge in his voice. “Be on time.”
The line went dead.
Killian stood there, in the dimming light of the grain terminal, the wire recorder in one hand and the cold certainty of his own failure settling into his bones like lead. Helena stepped out from behind the pillar, her face drawn.
“She knows you’re coming,” she said quietly. “She’s holding it together for him. As long as she’s holding it together, they have time.”
He nodded. His voice was hoarse, but it held. “I’m not giving them the stock.”
“What are you going to do?”
Killian turned the wire recorder over in his hand, the tiny device that held everything that mattered, and his eyes went dark.
“I’m going to get my son back.”
He walked to the truck and opened the driver’s side door. The engine rolled over with a growl that echoed through the empty silos, and he pulled out, leaving the abandoned grain terminal behind, the dusk eating at the skyline as he raced toward the one place he knew the Covington family would never expect him to go.
Covington Tower loomed against the orange smear of the setting sun, glass and steel rising like a monument to everything the Covingtons had stolen. Killian parked at the base of the building, headlights cutting through the dying light, as Dorian’s voice came back through the secure channel.
“Perimeter’s clear. I’ve got men on the neighboring rooftops. You’re cleared to enter.”
“Copy.”
He walked through the revolving doors into the high-ceilinged lobby. The guards flanking the security desk tensed, but Killian didn’t stop.
In his pocket, the SD card sat silent. In his other hand, the certified stock transfer documents were rolled into a tube.
Every lie Jasper Covington ever told about him was about to become the truth.
The elevator doors opened. Killian Voss stepped forward into the reflection of the polished marble, the wire recorder clicking one last time as the recording died, and then he was gone, moving into the steel belly of the tower that had once belonged to his family.
Above him, glass panels showed the sun finally bleeding out across the horizon. The sky was the color of a fresh wound.
On the phone, Reid’s voice was almost gentle: “I don’t bury children, Voss. But I know people who do. Sunset. Covington Tower. Bring the card and the company, or the boy becomes mine.”