Chapter 3 - The Blood on Route 4
The patrol car’s siren wailed through the silent, frost-bitten streets of Westbridge, cutting through the pre-dawn darkness like a blade. Elena sat in the passenger seat, gripping the dashboard as the cruiser took a sharp, sliding turn onto Route 4. The asphalt was glazed with black ice, the skeletal branches of oak trees arching overhead like crooked fingers under the pale moonlight.
"Dispatch, this is Cruz," Elena spoke into her radio, her breath fogging the cold windshield. "Give me an update on the victim at the lumber yard."
"Paramedics just arrived on scene, Detective," the dispatcher replied, the speaker crackling with static. "Patient is semi-conscious, suffering from severe postpartum hemorrhage and hypothermia. She’s hypovolemic—blood pressure is crashing. They’re prepping for immediate transport back to Westbridge Medical."
"Did she say anything?" Elena asked, her heart hammering against her ribs. "Did she mention where the baby was, or who was with her?"
"Negative, Cruz. She’s incoherent. She keeps repeating a single name over and over: 'Noah... Noah, protect the baby...' Nothing else."
Elena’s grip tightened on the mic. The little boy had done exactly what his aunt had begged him to do. He had carried that tiny, fragile life through the freezing dark and walked straight into a police station, trusting the flashing blue lights to keep his newborn cousin safe.
The cruiser’s high beams swept across the decaying sign of the abandoned Westbridge Lumber Yard. Rusted chain-link fences leaned drunkenly against overgrown briars, and the cavernous, corrugated-metal warehouses loomed like rusted monuments to a forgotten industrial era.
Two red-and-white ambulances were parked haphazardly near the front gate, their emergency strobes casting eerie, pulsating washes of crimson and white across the frosted grass. Paramedics in heavy neon jackets swarmed around a portable stretcher parked beside the open rear doors of the lead vehicle.
Elena threw her door open before the cruiser had even come to a full stop.
She sprinted across the gravel, her boots crunching on frozen mud. As she drew closer, the sharp, coppery scent of fresh blood hit her senses, sharp and undeniable against the clean winter air.
"How is she?" Elena asked, flashing her badge as she reached the side of the stretcher.
The lead paramedic, a weathered man with sweat beading on his forehead despite the freezing air, looked up grimly. "Not good, Detective. She lost a massive amount of blood following the placental detachment. Her core body temperature is ninety-one degrees. We’ve got an IV line open wide, pumping warm saline, but her veins are collapsing. If we don't get her into the trauma bay at Westbridge Medical within ten minutes, she’s going into cardiac arrest."
Elena leaned over the stretcher.
The woman lying beneath the thermal blankets was terrifyingly pale. Her dark hair was matted with sweat and dirt, plastered across her forehead. Her lips were blue, cracked, and flecked with pink froth.
Even through the ravages of hypothermia and blood loss, the resemblance to Laura was unmistakable—the same high cheekbones, the same delicate arch of the eyebrows.
It was Mia Bennett.
"Mia," Elena said softly, gently placing a gloved hand on the cold, trembling fingers resting outside the blanket. "Can you hear me? Your baby is safe. Noah brought her to the police station. She’s warm, she’s being looked after by Dr. Grant at the hospital."
Mia’s eyelids fluttered. A tiny, shallow gasp escaped her lips, sounding like dry leaves scraping across pavement. Her dark eyes rolled sluggishly beneath the lids before focusing with sudden, desperate clarity on Elena’s face.
Her lips moved, forming words without sound.
Elena pressed her ear closer to Mia’s mouth.
"...Daniel..." the dying woman whispered, her voice a fragile, rasping breath. "...he... he lied..."
"I know," Elena murmured, squeezing her hand. "We know about the guesthouse, Mia. We know Daniel was hiding you there. But you're safe now. Just hold on."
Mia’s head shook weakly from side to side, a tear freezing instantly on her cheek.
"...not hiding..." Mia gasped, her chest heaving as a spasm of pain crossed her face. "...running..."
Before Elena could ask what she meant, Mia’s eyes widened in sheer, unadulterated terror. Her body stiffened violently beneath the blankets, her back arching as a sudden, massive wave of shock seized her system.
"Code blue! Her pressure is dropping to zero!" the paramedic shouted, dropping his medical bag and ripping open a defibrillator pack. "Clear! Get her back in the rig, now!"
The doors slammed shut. The ambulance’s tires spun furiously on the ice, showering gravel into the dark before shooting down Route 4 toward the hospital with sirens screaming into the night.
Elena stood alone in the freezing stillness of the lumber yard, the red strobe lights fading into the distance.
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Not hiding... running.
What had Mia meant? Was she hiding from the supposed "bad men," or was she running from the man who had kept her locked forty feet behind his wife’s house?
