Chapter 2 - The Road Out
I drove west instead of toward town.
Lily lay across the back seat with a blanket under her head.
“Dad?”
“I’m here.”
“Don’t take me to Bellhaven General.”
“I’m not.”
Her eyes opened.
“How did you know?”
I didn’t answer.
The satellite phone buzzed.
A text appeared.
SAFE MEDICAL SITE: 28 MINUTES. ROUTE SENT. DO NOT USE CELLULAR NAVIGATION.
Lily saw it.
“What is that?”
“Old work.”
“You fixed elevators for the government?”
“That was the version I told neighbors.”
A black pickup appeared behind us two miles later.
“Dad.”
“I see it.”
The pickup closed fast.
Then another vehicle came out of a farm road ahead of us.
Gray SUV.
My hands tightened on the wheel.
The satellite phone rang.
“Michael, gray SUV is ours. Follow it.”
The gray SUV moved between us and the pickup.
We reached a private medical clinic outside county lines.
Two nurses met us at a side entrance.
Lily looked at me while a doctor examined the bruising on her neck.
“Who are you?”
“Your father.”
“You know what I mean.”
I sat beside her.
“Fifteen years ago I worked federal corruption and witness extraction cases.”
“Like FBI?”
“Not exactly.”
“What happened?”
“I quit.”
“Why?”
I said, “I thought that life was over.”
Dana entered carrying an evidence bag.
Inside was Lily’s phone.
“We cloned the recording.”
“What’s on it?”
Dana looked at Lily.
“Enough to make Richard nervous.”
She set a tablet on the bed.
The video showed Richard shouting.
Then his mother.
Then a third voice from the patio.
Police Chief Aaron Pike.
He said, clearly:
“If she calls her father, take the phone.”
Lily went pale.
Dana paused the video.
“That is not the worst part.”
She advanced thirty seconds.
Richard leaned close to Lily and said:
“You sign the papers tomorrow, or your father gets dragged back into what happened fifteen years ago.”
I felt the room go cold.
May you like
Lily stared at me.
“What happened fifteen years ago, Dad?”
