Chapter 4 - The Escape into the Woods
The moment our heads cleared the bulkhead doors, the crisp morning air hit us like a dash of cold water.
We were standing in the overgrown fern bed behind our detached garage, completely hidden from the front driveway by a thick row of rhododendron bushes. Across the street, Mrs. Gable was out on her front porch fetching her morning newspaper, her fluffy white poodle sniffing at the base of the mailbox.
For a second, my hand twitched toward her. I wanted to scream. I wanted to run across the asphalt, grab her by the shoulders, and beg her to call the police.
No. If Mrs. Gable called local dispatch, Arthur or Derek’s local contacts would intercept the call within two minutes. We needed to disappear from this neighborhood entirely before Arthur realized we had slipped out through the cellar.
"Lily, hold my hand tight," I whispered, keeping our bodies low against the tall grass as we skirted the edge of the property line, ducking into the municipal wooded trail that ran behind our back fence.
The woods behind our subdivision were dense, stretching for three miles toward the old state park reserve—a maze of brambles, steep ravine drops, and forgotten logging paths that most suburban residents only used for walking dogs on sunny afternoons. In the gray drizzle of a Saturday morning, it was completely deserted.
We ran until our lungs burned.
Every snap of a twig behind us made my heart leap into my throat. I kept expecting to hear Arthur’s voice booming through the trees, or the heavy rumble of Derek’s sports car pulling back into the driveway.
After twenty minutes of hard scrambling through the mud, we reached the old creek bed—a deep, shaded ditch spanned by a rusted concrete drainage pipe large enough for a person to crawl through.
"In here," I panted, pulling Lily behind the concrete culvert where the overarching ferns shielded us from overhead view.
We collapsed against the damp earth. Lily was shivering violently, her thin pajama top soaked with morning dew at the cuffs. I stripped off my cardigan and wrapped it around her shoulders, ignoring the chill biting into my own arms.
My phone vibrated in my back pocket.
I pulled it out. Elena Ruiz had replied.
Clara? Where are you? I’m tracking your IP ping from the secure message. You're near Oak Ridge. Stay put. I’m dispatching federal agents to your coordinates right now. Do not trust local units. Repeat: do not trust local units.
A wave of profound, overwhelming relief washed over me so hard I felt dizzy. Federal marshals. Actual oversight. People who couldn't be bought off by a suburban real estate developer with offshore accounts.
We’re in the drainage culvert behind the Oak Ridge trail reserve, I typed back rapidly. Arthur Vance is inside my house right now. He’s looking for a flash drive with the asset transfer ledgers.
Hold tight, Clara, Elena's reply came back instantly. We’re ten minutes out.
Ten minutes. We just had to survive ten minutes.
I pulled Lily into my lap, holding her tight against my chest as the first heavy drops of rain began to filter through the canopy above us.
Then, through the steady patter of the rain, a sound drifted down from the upper ridge of the trail.
Crunch.
May you like
A footstep on dry gravel.
Then another. Heavy, deliberate, and moving directly toward the drainage culvert.
