Chapter 4 - The Chase and the Video perangkat
The tunnel was narrow, damp, and suffocatingly quiet, save for the rhythmic dripping of water and the distant, muffled thumping of bass music from the gala upstairs.
Beam of the industrial flashlight cut through swirling motes of dust and spiderwebs. Hannah walked as fast as she could while carrying Lily, her boots squelching in the mud that had seeped through the floorboards of the old drainage ditch running alongside the stone path.
“Hannah?” Noah whispered from behind her, his small fingers tightly clutching her hem. “Are we going to see Mommy?”
Hannah’s heart skipped a beat. She stopped dead in her tracks, turning her head slightly in the dim, reflected light of the tunnel. “Mommy? Noah, your mom... where is she?”
The boy stared up at her with big, solemn eyes that looked hauntingly like his father’s. “She’s not in Vermont. Vanessa said she went away on a long trip. But we saw her. Before we were put in the cold box. We saw her in the west bedroom.”
“What did you see, Noah?” Hannah asked gently, crouching down so she was eye-level with the shivering boy, careful not to jostle Lily, who was beginning to stir and murmur in her sleep.
Noah reached into the oversized pocket of his pajama bottoms and pulled out a small, ruggedized child’s tablet—pink casing, cracked screen protector, completely caked in dust and lint.
“Lily has a camera on her toy,” Noah whispered, glancing nervously back down the dark tunnel as if expecting a monster to emerge from the shadows. “The night before Mommy disappeared... we heard shouting. We snuck out of our room and hid behind the velvet curtains in the hallway. Vanessa was pushing Mommy near the balcony railing. And Lily... Lily pressed the record button on her tablet because she thought it looked like a movie.”
Hannah stared at the pink plastic device in the boy’s hand.
A video.
Proof. Not just of abuse or unlawful imprisonment, but of murder.
“Is it on there?” Hannah asked, her breath catching in her throat.
“Yes,” Noah nodded fiercely. “Lily saved it in the secret folder. But Vanessa found us the next morning. She took our clothes, she locked us in the freezer, and she said if we ever told anyone, she would throw our tablet into the deep river where nobody could ever find it.”
Hannah stood up, the weight of the world settling onto her shoulders. She wasn't just a housekeeper trying to earn money for her brother’s medical bills anymore. She was the only thing standing between these two children and a woman who had already killed once to secure her place in a billionaire’s empire.
“Keep that tablet safe, Noah,” Hannah said, her voice steady and resolute. “Put it deep inside your pocket and zip it shut. When we get out of this tunnel, we are going straight to your father. No matter what Vanessa tries to do.”
Before Noah could answer, a sharp, metallic sound echoed from the far end of the cellar tunnel behind them.
Clang.
A door opening.
Then, a harsh, clipped voice shouted from the darkness near the basement entrance, cutting through the thunder like a knife.
“The freezer is empty! They’re in the cellar tunnel! Find them!”
It wasn't a security guard. It was Vanessa.
Her voice, usually so smooth and melodic at breakfast, was now laced with a manic, shrill desperation that revealed the true monster beneath the silk robes and diamond jewelry.
“Shut off the perimeter gates!” Vanessa screamed back up the stairs to someone else. “If they reach the main road, we’re finished! Search the stables! Tear the property apart!”
Footsteps—heavy, rapid, and multiple—pounded onto the stone steps leading down into the tunnel.
May you like
“Run!” Hannah hissed, grabbing Noah’s hand.
With Lily in her arms and Noah sprinting at her side, Hannah bolted forward into the absolute blackness of the underground passage, guided only by the bobbing beam of the flashlight as the storm above raged against the earth.
