Chapter 4 - The Escape and the Alliance
They threw me down a flight of concrete stairs into the wine cellar beneath the mansion, locking the heavy iron door behind me. The darkness was absolute. My jaw throbbed, and I could taste blood in my mouth.
"Damn it!" I screamed, slamming my fists against the iron door. It didn't budge.
I looked at my watch. The glowing dial read 10:10 PM. One hour and twenty minutes left. If that plane took off, Clara was gone forever. I couldn't let my daughter die because of my past blindness.
I searched the darkness frantically, my hands scraping against wine racks and stone walls. Finally, my fingers wrapped around a heavy, iron-wrought wine rack stabilizer. Using every ounce of strength born from a father’s desperation, I pried the metal bar free.
I jammed the bar into the lock mechanism of the old wooden-and-iron door, throwing my entire body weight against it. Crack. The wood groaned. I threw myself against it again. Slam! The lock shattered, and the door swung open.
I sprinted up the stairs, avoiding the main ballroom which was now swarming with police sirens and screaming guests. I slipped out through a servant’s entrance into the pouring rain.
My SUV was blocked by police cars, but I saw a catering van with the keys still in the ignition. I jumped inside, hotwired the engine, and slammed on the gas, tearing through the manicured lawns of the Whitmore estate.
As I sped down the highway, my phone buzzed in my pocket. It was an unknown number. I picked it up.
"Rowan?" A gruff, trembling voice came through. It was Miller, the private investigator I had threatened earlier that night.
"Miller! If you're calling to save your skin, you better have something useful," I growled, dodging a truck on the slick road.
"Rowan, listen to me. Tessa’s men just came to my house. They took the rest of my backups, but they don't know I had a GPS tracker wired into the mobile medical unit they used to transport the baby. I put it there in case they tried to double-cross me on the payment."
"Give me the coordinates. Now!"
"They aren't going to the main airport terminal, Rowan," Miller said, his voice panicked. "They’re at Hangar 4 on the old military airstrip, fifteen miles north of the city. But there's someone else you need to call. Someone who is already on her way there."
My heart stopped. "Maren?"
"She figured it out, Rowan. She saw the news broadcast from the gala. She called me screaming, and before I could stop her, she drove off toward the airstrip in her broken-down truck. She’s going to get herself killed."
May you like
"If anything happens to her, Miller, I will find you," I slammed the phone down and threw the wheel to the left, heading toward the old military airstrip.
The rain was blinding, a torrential downpour that matched the storm raging in my soul. One year ago, I had failed to protect my wife. Tonight, I would either save my family or die trying.
