By the time the ambulance doors opened, the boy had stopped shaking.

The rain was falling in blinding sheets as Grant’s black SUV tore through the empty, slick streets of downtown Briar. The city skyline, usually lit up with bright corporate logos, looked like a row of black jagged teeth against the bruised, stormy sky.

Grant drove with grim, terrifying precision, his knuckles white on the steering wheel. In the backseat, Maya sat beside Noah, who had refused to be left behind at the hospital. He sat strapped into his seatbelt, holding the red toy fire truck, his eyes fixed on the road ahead.

"The pumping station has three subterranean levels," Grant said over the roar of the rain hitting the windshield. "It was decommissioned in 1982. We secured the upper ground floor for structural staging, but the lower vaults are accessible through the old access tunnels near the river bank."

"If Kendra went in there with a baby in the middle of a rainstorm, those lower levels could be flooding," Maya said, her medical instincts kicking in. "Hypothermia can set in within twenty minutes for an infant exposed to cold water and damp air."

Grant pressed his foot harder on the accelerator. The engine roared, propelling the heavy vehicle across the iron suspension bridge that led into the industrial sector.

Behind them, through the rain-streaked rear window, Maya saw twin beams of headlights emerge from the gloom. A heavy silver sedan was trailing them, keeping its distance, matching their high speed without flashing any emergency lights.

"Grant," Maya said, her voice tight. "We have company."

Grant glanced in the rearview mirror. His jaw set hard. "That's Julian's security detail. They must have tracked my phone's GPS."

"Can you lose them?"

"Not on these main roads," Grant growled. He suddenly slammed his foot on the brake, cutting the wheel hard to the right. The SUV skidded across three lanes of slick asphalt, its tires screaming against the wet pavement as it darted into a narrow, dark alleyway framed by rusted shipping containers and chain-link fences.

The silver sedan overshot the turn, its brake lights flaring red through the storm before it backed up violently to pursue them.

"Hold on!" Grant yelled.

He plowed the heavy SUV straight through a flimsy wooden construction gate, smashing into the mud and gravel of the Riverfront redevelopment site. Towering yellow cranes hovered above them in the darkness like ancient, skeletal monsters. The ground was a maze of deep mud trenches, concrete pipes, and high-voltage power lines strung between temporary wooden poles.

Grant navigated the treacherous terrain purely by memory, bouncing through deep puddles, the vehicle's four-wheel-drive system fighting for traction. Behind them, the silver sedan entered the construction site, but its lower ground clearance proved fatal—it hit a deep rut of thick, wet clay and bottomed out, its wheels spinning frantically, throwing up thick plumes of mud.

"That bought us three minutes," Grant said, slamming the SUV into park beside a massive, Victorian-era red brick building that loomed over the swollen brown waters of the river.

The old pumping station stood completely dark, its arched windows boarded up with heavy plywood.

Grant killed the headlights, plunging them into pitch blackness broken only by the flashes of lightning across the clouds. He grabbed a heavy industrial flashlight from the glove compartment and opened his door.

"Stay in the car," Grant told Maya and Noah.

"Not a chance," Maya said, unbuckling her seatbelt. "You don't know how to evaluate a infant for hypothermic distress or smoke inhalation. And Noah knows the way."

Grant looked at his son. Noah nodded firmly, grabbing Maya's hand.

They stepped out into the howling wind and driving rain. The air smelled of wet earth, iron, and the sharp, metallic tang of river water.

Grant led them to a heavy steel access door at the base of the brick structure. The lock had been freshly cut away with bolt cutters, the heavy chain dangling uselessly from the handle.