Chapter 22 - Blood in the Rearview
The crash was a symphony of tearing steel, shattering safety glass, and the violent deployment of high-pressure airbags that sounded like shotgun blasts inside the enclosed space. The transport vehicle rolled three times down the seventy-foot ravine, flattening birch trees and shearing off its external mirrors before violently slamming upside down against a jagged granite outcropping fifty feet above the roaring black water of the reservoir.
Silence descended, heavy and suffocating, broken only by the hiss of ruptured coolant lines and the smell of battery acid.
Julian hung inverted from his floor harness, the blood rushing into his temples with the force of a hydraulic jack. His handcuffs had wrenched his shoulders nearly out of their sockets, but the sheer violent inertia of the final impact had sheared the welded anchor ring clean off the floorboard.
Beside him, the two marshals hung limp, their necks twisted at unnatural angles against the deformed ceiling of the van, unconscious or dead.
Julian coughed, expelling blood-flecked bile onto the shattered windshield. Every rib felt bruised, but nothing was broken. He reached down with trembling, handcuffed hands, feeling the blood-slicked vest of the nearest officer until his fingers closed around the release key of the tactical restraints. With a sharp twist, the steel cuffs fell away with a muffled clink.
He lunged for the evidence bag. Inside, the knitted rabbit was covered in glass dust, but the tiny red LED diode in its inner stitching pulsed with a rhythmic, sinister cadence.
Julian snatched the marshal’s Glock 19, jammed two spare 15-round magazines into his torn leather jacket, and kicked out the shattered rear cargo door.
He dropped into the icy midnight mud, rain immediately soaking through his clothes. The air smelled of sulfur and wet pine needles. Looking up through the dense forest canopy, he saw no sirens, no flashing lights on the highway far above. The vehicle had vanished from the state route completely undetected, swallowed by the dense valley mist.
*This wasn't an accident,* Julian realized, wiping rain and blood from his eyes. *The crash was programmed.*
His satellite receiver clicked. The miniature speaker in the toy rabbit sputtered to life.
"Julian," Claire’s voice breathed through the static, cool and detached, showing neither panic nor relief. "You have nine minutes before the local sheriff's department triangulates the transport's transponder. Take the abandoned mining road behind the weir. Walk toward the old pump station. And Julian... leave the gun. If you come armed, Victoria’s men in the sky will terminate Lily’s life support before you take another breath."
Julian stared down at the Glock, his knuckles whitening around the checkered grip. "Claire! What the hell is this?! Where is our daughter?!" he screamed into the tiny microphone, his sanity fraying at the edges. "I saw Victoria on that phone! She was on a private jet! How is she free?! How are you alive?!"
"You married an empire of butchers, Julian," the voice replied, chillingly calm. "And you paid for it with our daughter’s flesh. Nine minutes. Walk."
May you like
The speaker went dead.
Julian looked back at the mangled wreckage of the van, then thrust the Glock deep into the waistband of his trousers beneath his sweater. He wasn't walking into the dark unarmed. Not again. Turning his collar against the freezing gale, he plunged into the black shadows of Blackwood Gorge.
