Chapter 3 - Flight Into the Brambles
I didn't take the driveway. The gravel was too loud, and the private lane was flanked by security cameras wired to Bradley’s phone. Instead, I scrambled down the embankment behind the garage, plunging into the thick, overgrown woods that separated the estate from the state highway two miles west.
Briars tore at my bare ankles. Sharp branches whipped across my face and shoulders, but the physical sting was nothing compared to the phantom pressure of the tube that still felt lodged in my esophagus. Every few yards, my knees gave out from sheer muscle atrophy, sending me sprawling into the wet leaves and rotting pine needles.
Each time I fell, I rolled onto my left side to shield my belly with my arms.
"Hold on, little one," I whispered into the dirt, coughing up a mouthful of bitter, copper-tinged phlegm. "Just hold on. We're getting out. Mommy is getting us out."
Behind me, in the distance, a high-pitched electronic siren began to howl.
The estate security system had detected the opened utility door.
Seconds later, the floodlights on the rear terrace of the mansion blazed to life, casting long, skeletal shadows of the trees across the forest floor. Then came the sound that made the hair on the back of my neck stand up like needles: the deep, guttural barking of Bradley’s German Shepherd, Titan, accompanied by Bradley’s furious roar echoing through the valley.
"Clara! You pathetic bitch! Get back here!"
His voice was raw with panic. Not because he cared if I lived or died, but because his entire empire—his dark web revenue, his mother’s pristine social reputation, his very freedom—was walking out into the dark inside my skull.
I scrambled up, ignoring the blood running down my shins, and pushed through a wall of wild blackberry canes. The thorns ripped my thin maternity shirt to ribbons, slicing deep lines into my forearms, but the thick brush provided cover against the sweeping beam of Bradley’s high-powered tactical flashlight.
Woof! Woof!
Titan was off-leash. The dog knew my scent, but more than that, he knew the scent of my fear.
I reached the swollen edge of Blackwood Creek. The water was waist-deep, rushing black and freezing over slick river stones. If I stayed on the bank, the dog would have me by the throat in under three minutes.
Without hesitating, I stepped off the muddy ledge and plunged into the ice-cold current.
The shock of the water took the breath clean out of my lungs. My teeth rattled so violently I nearly bit my tongue in half. The current dragged at my swollen body, threatening to pull me under, but I held the burner phone and the flash drive high above my head with one hand while clawing at the bank with the other, letting the freezing water wash downstream with me.
Behind me, on the ridge I had just abandoned, the beam of Bradley’s light cut through the brush. Titan arrived at the bank, barking furiously at the rushing water, pacing back and forth along the mud.
"Find her, boy! Seek!" Bradley yelled, his boots crashing through the underbrush.
I sank up to my chin beneath the roots of an ancient overturned willow tree, submerged in the freezing silt, watching through the tangled branches as the light swept over the water, barely five yards from my face.
Bradley stood on the bank, his face twisted into an expression of demonic rage. In his right hand, he held a heavy iron tire iron; in his left, the glowing screen of his phone.
"You won't make it to morning, Clara!" he screamed into the blackness of the woods. "You have no shoes! You have no money! If the cold doesn't kill that bastard in your stomach, I will!"
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He turned and dragged the dog downstream toward the road bridge, convinced I would follow the path.
I waited until the light vanished. Then, shivering so hard my bones clicked together, I crawled out of the freezing mud on the opposite bank and dragged myself up the steep incline toward the dark ribbon of asphalt above.