He Came Home Early and Found a Pet Collar Around His 6-Year-Old Son’s Neck. His New Wife Called It “Discipline”—Until Her Own Mother’s Phone Revealed What They Had Planned Before the Party Even Began. / Chapter 34 / 50

Chapter 34 - The Ghost Ship at Pier 48

The rain over Elliott Bay came down like sheets of hammered lead. The docks at Pier 48 were abandoned, surrounded by rusted chain-link fences and decaying shipping cranes that looked like colossal, skeletal beasts against the stormy black sky.

Daniel stood in the shadow of a rusted warehouse, wiping the driving rain from his eyes. His shoulder burned with a feverish intensity, but his hand gripped the grip of a customized Glock 19 tucked inside his trench coat. Behind him, concealed inside two unmarked panel vans three blocks back, Thorne and a tactical strike team were monitoring his encrypted audio feed.

“Daniel, do not go onto that vessel alone,” Thorne’s voice warned in his earpiece, crackling through the downpour. “Thermal imaging shows multiple heat signatures on the cargo deck. We need twenty minutes to get Coast Guard cutters in position to cut off their sea route.”

“He doesn't have twenty minutes,” Daniel said coldly into his lapel mic. “Vanessa knows the FBI is tracing the perimeter. If she hears a siren, Mason dies. Keep your distance until I give the breach signal.”

Without waiting for Thorne’s response, Daniel clicked off the radio.

He stepped out into the open, walking toward the looming shadow of the *Carthage*, a 400-foot rust-streaked container freighter tethered to the rotting wooden pilings. The ship’s diesel generators hummed with a low, bone-jarring vibration that made the puddles beneath Daniel’s boots shiver.

A single gangway led up to the main deck, illuminated by a solitary halogen floodlight that swung wildly in the howling wind.

Daniel climbed the wet steel steps, his senses dialed to an agonizing extreme. The smell of diesel exhaust, brine, and dead fish filled the air. When he reached the main deck, containers were stacked three stories high on either side, forming a narrow, claustrophobic canyon of rusted iron.

At the end of the corridor of shipping containers, tied to a wooden chair beneath the floodlight, was a tiny figure.

“Mason!” Daniel’s heart leaped into his throat.

Mason was sitting there, his hands bound behind the chair, a strip of silver duct tape over his mouth. His large brown eyes were wide with terror, filled with tears that washed clean tracks through the grime on his pale cheeks. When he saw Daniel, he began to squirm violently, letting out muffled, frantic screams through the tape.

“Mason, stay still! Daddy’s here!” Daniel sprinted forward, his boots clattering against the steel deck.