Chapter 8 - THE ROAD TRAP
I hit the brakes and turned the wheel.
My truck struck the rear corner of the vehicle ahead, bounced across the center line and dropped one tire into the gravel shoulder.
The black SUV behind me closed fast.
Its front bumper slammed into my tailgate.
Metal screamed.
The impact threw my chest against the seat belt.
My phone fell into the passenger footwell, but Cecily’s voice continued through the speakers.
“Stop the truck.”
I accelerated.
The engine roared as I forced the vehicle back onto the road. The car ahead swerved sideways, attempting to block both lanes.
I drove through a ditch.
Branches scraped the doors. Mud sprayed across the windshield. For several seconds, I could see nothing but brown water and sky.
Then the tires caught pavement again.
The SUV remained behind me.
Police were supposed to be monitoring the transmitter in my belt buckle, but no sirens appeared.
Cecily must have chosen an area with poor communication coverage.
Or someone had warned her about the operation.
A gunshot cracked behind me.
The rear window shattered.
I ducked instinctively.
The truck drifted toward the opposite lane before I corrected it.
Another shot struck the bed.
“Stop,” Cecily ordered.
I reached inside my boot, pulled out Luke’s tracker and pressed the emergency button Garrett had shown me that morning.
A tiny green light appeared.
The device used a different network from the police transmitter.
It was designed for missing children, not surveillance operations.
It might be the only signal leaving the valley.
The road climbed.
Ahead, an old concrete bridge crossed a narrow river.
The blocking vehicle accelerated around me and stopped sideways at the bridge entrance.
The SUV behind reduced the distance.
I had nowhere to go.
So I did the only thing they did not expect.
I stopped willingly.
My truck slid to a halt thirty feet from the bridge.
Two men exited the SUV.
One carried a handgun.
The other wore a camouflage jacket and a white church volunteer badge, as though kidnapping a father required identification.
The driver of the blocking vehicle stepped out.
It was Pauline Webb, the corrections officer who had helped Darlene make the jailhouse call.
She had been released pending charges after claiming she was coerced.
Apparently, she had not been coerced enough.
“Hands where we can see them,” she called.
I raised my hands.
The armed man opened my door and dragged me out.
They searched my pockets, removed my phone and found the transmitter in my belt buckle.
Webb smiled.
“Darlene said you would cheat.”
“Where is Cecily?”
“Close.”
They forced me into the SUV.
A hood came down over my head.
For the next fifteen minutes, I counted turns.
Right.
Left.
Long gravel stretch.
Sharp descent.
The vehicle stopped.
They led me into a building where the air smelled like machine oil and wet stone.
When the hood came off, I found myself inside an abandoned boat-repair warehouse beside the river.
Cecily sat at a folding table.
Megan’s bracelet lay before her.
Beside it was a stack of folders.
The archive.
“You look like your wife did when she finally understood she could not win,” Cecily said.
“You’re the one hiding in an abandoned warehouse.”
“I am preserving what she tried to destroy.”
She pointed toward the chair opposite her.
I sat.
The armed man remained behind me.
Cecily pushed documents across the table.
“They transfer your trustee authority to the Whitlock Family Restoration Foundation.”
“That foundation is under investigation.”
“Organizations can be renamed.”
“You think a signature obtained at gunpoint will hold up?”
“Not alone.”
She placed a camera on the table.
“You will record a statement saying you acted voluntarily because you recognize Darlene’s superior moral claim.”
“No.”
Cecily smiled, exposing the silver tooth.
“Then we publish the archive.”
“You’ll destroy children who already survived you.”
“They betrayed the people who tried to save them.”
“They were children.”
“We were all children once. Some of us learned obedience.”
The sentence revealed more than she intended.
For a moment, I saw not only the woman who had kidnapped Hannah and Luke, but the child Ezekiel Whitlock had once confined.
She had survived by becoming exactly like him.
“You could stop,” I said.
Her expression hardened.
“Sign.”
“No.”
The armed man struck the back of my head.
The room flashed white.
I fell forward against the table.
Cecily waited until I sat upright again.
“Sign.”
I tasted blood.
“No.”
She opened the first folder.
It belonged to Rachel, Curtis’s daughter.
Inside were photographs, forced confessions and therapy notes the church had somehow obtained.
Cecily held one page near a portable scanner connected to a laptop.
“One click.”
I looked at the warehouse windows.
Black plastic covered most of them. Through a gap near the ceiling, I saw only trees.
No police.
No sirens.
The tracker might not have transmitted.
Cecily placed her finger over the keyboard.
“Last chance.”
A loud bang came from beneath the building.
Everyone froze.
Another impact followed.
The armed man turned toward the rear door.
“What was that?”
Cecily stood.
Then we heard it.
A dinosaur roar.
Thin and mechanical.
Luke’s tracker did more than send coordinates. Garrett had programmed it to emit Dino’s recorded roar when law enforcement reached the location.
The sound came from beneath my boot.
Police were close enough to activate it.
I kicked the table upward.
Documents flew.
The laptop crashed to the floor.
The armed man raised his weapon, but I drove my shoulder into his stomach. We hit the concrete together.
Gunfire exploded near the front entrance.
“Police!”
Webb ran toward a side door.
Cecily grabbed the archive folders and fled deeper into the warehouse.
I wrestled the gunman’s wrist against the floor until officers surrounded us.
Garrett pulled me away.
“Where’s Cecily?”
“Back of the building!”
Detective Bell and two federal agents pursued her through the repair bays.
The warehouse extended over the river on wooden pilings. At the far end, Cecily reached an old dock where a motorboat waited.
She threw the folders inside and untied the rope.
Bell emerged with her weapon raised.
“Cecily Vale! Stop!”
Cecily started the engine.
The motor coughed.
Failed.
She tried again.
The boat lurched away from the dock just as an agent jumped aboard.
Cecily swung a metal hook at him. He ducked, but the boat struck a piling and tilted violently.
The archive folders spilled into the river.
Cecily reached for them.
The agent reached for her.
She slipped.
For an instant, she hung from the side rail with the dark water rushing beneath her.
Bell moved to the edge.
“Take my hand!”
Cecily looked up.
“You’re saving the wrong people,” she said.
Then the rail broke.
She fell into the river.
Officers pulled her out thirty yards downstream.
Alive.
Handcuffed.
Defeated.
Divers recovered most of the archive. Digital copies were found on the warehouse laptop, but federal technicians secured them before anything could be released publicly.
Pauline Webb was arrested near the tree line.
The two men surrendered.
I was taken to the hospital with a concussion and six stitches in my scalp.
When I returned to the protected house shortly after midnight, Luke was awake on the couch with Garrett’s wife.
He ran toward me.
Then stopped when he saw the bandage.
“Did they hurt you?”
“A little.”
“Did the tracker work?”
I knelt carefully.
“It saved me.”
Luke looked at Dino.
For the first time since the cellar, he smiled.
Not a nervous smile.
Not one seeking permission.
May you like
A real one.
“I told you we needed two.”
