Chapter 8 - THE ROAD THEY COULD NOT ESCAPE
The convoy changed direction at once.
Their driver took the next exit instead of continuing toward the Ashford estate. Dana spoke rapidly into her radio while the two police vehicles behind them boxed out traffic. The black SUV remained three cars back, then disappeared behind a truck.
Maya twisted in her seat.
“Where did it go?”
“Doesn’t matter,” Dana said. “We assume hostile until proven otherwise.”
Gabriel looked at Maya. “Seat belt.”
“I’m wearing it.”
“Tighter.”
She almost snapped at him, then saw his face.
Twenty-seven years earlier, another car carrying his wife and daughter had been pursued on a road.
Now history was trying to repeat itself.
The driver turned onto a service highway leading toward a state police facility. Rain began to strike the windshield, thin at first, then harder. The black SUV reappeared in the side mirror.
It was gaining.
Dana gave orders. One police car dropped back.
The SUV swerved around it.
A metallic impact exploded behind them.
Maya flinched.
“Was that a gunshot?”
“Tire contact,” Dana said. “Stay down.”
The SUV pulled alongside the rear quarter of their car.
For one terrible second, Maya saw the driver through the rain.
An older man. Gray hair. Hard profile.
He looked directly at her.
Gabriel saw him too.
“Thomas.”
The word came out like a curse.
Thomas jerked the wheel.
Their car lurched as the SUV struck them.
Maya’s shoulder slammed against the door. Gabriel grabbed the back of her coat and pulled her toward the center as their driver fought to keep control.
Dana shouted into the radio.
The lead police vehicle braked sharply, forcing Thomas to veer away. His SUV crossed two lanes, hit a guardrail, spun once, and disappeared down an embankment.
Their driver stopped fifty yards ahead.
“No one moves,” Dana ordered.
Police rushed toward the wreck below.
Maya’s breath came too fast.
Gabriel still had one hand on her shoulder.
“You okay?”
“Yes.”
“Are you sure?”
“No.”
Neither was he.
Minutes later, a radio message came back.
The SUV was empty.
The driver’s door stood open.
Thomas had escaped into the trees before officers reached the wreck.
The realization settled like ice.
He had come close enough for Maya to see his face.
And he had chosen the same method that killed Serena.
At the police facility, detectives showed Maya an updated photograph generated from Thomas’s passport image. The man in the SUV matched.
Gabriel stared at the screen.
“He wanted us to know it was him.”
Dana nodded. “Possibly.”
“Why?” Maya asked.
“Because fear is useful,” Gabriel said.
Maya looked at him. “Then we stop giving it to him.”
The plan formed over the next four hours.
Thomas believed the Ashfords would retreat behind gates. Instead, Maya proposed something he would not expect: a public press conference at the foundation headquarters the next morning.
Gabriel immediately rejected it.
“No.”
Maya crossed her arms. “You said we do this together.”
“Together does not mean using you as bait.”
“I’m not bait. I’m taking control of the story.”
Dana considered the idea more seriously than Gabriel liked. “Public location. Controlled perimeter. Law enforcement everywhere. It could pressure him.”
“It could also give him a target.”
“He already has a target,” Maya said. “Me.”
Gabriel turned away.
Maya followed.
“I spent my whole life having other people decide where I lived, what name went on my paperwork, which school I attended, when I had to pack again. Thomas started that. I am not letting him decide whether I speak now.”
Gabriel looked at her.
The argument was over, even if he hated the result.
The next morning, cameras crowded the foundation lobby.
Maya stood behind a podium with Gabriel and Eleanor several feet behind her. She wore the same plain white shirt style she had worn while serving at the gala, but no apron. Her sleeve was rolled to the elbow.
The black eagle was visible.
Reporters shouted questions.
Maya waited until the room quieted.
“My name is Maya Reyes,” she began. “A DNA test has confirmed that I was born Lila Ashford, the daughter of Gabriel Ashford and Serena Vale Ashford.”
Camera shutters erupted.
“I am not here to discuss inheritance, wealth, or gossip. I am here because my mother died, I was abducted, and people spent twenty-seven years hiding the truth.”
Gabriel watched her with an expression Maya could not read.
“I grew up in foster care. That life shaped me. The name Maya belongs to me because I lived under it. Lila belongs to me because it was taken from me. I will not choose between them for anyone else’s comfort.”
The room became completely still.
Then Maya looked directly into the main camera.
“And to Thomas Ashford, if you are watching: I remember nothing about you. You do not own my fear. You do not own my name. You do not get to disappear me twice.”
The press conference ended ten minutes later.
Outside, police escorted Maya through an underground corridor toward a secure vehicle.
Her phone vibrated.
Unknown number.
One message.
A photograph loaded slowly.
It showed Eleanor Ashford sitting in the back seat of a car.
Her eyes were open.
A man’s hand rested on her shoulder.
Beneath the image was one sentence.
YOU SHOULD HAVE STAYED QUIET.
Maya stopped walking.
“Where’s Eleanor?” she asked.
Gabriel turned.
His face changed before anyone answered.
Dana grabbed her radio.
Eleanor’s security car had never reached the parking garage.
May you like
Thomas had not come for Maya.
He had taken the one person in the family who remembered everything.
