Chapter 30 - THE EYE IN THE REARVIEW MIRROR
"Run!" Claire screamed, grabbing Daniel’s jacket and hauling him to his feet.
They scrambled out of the creek bed, dragging Lily between them, bursting through the thick treeline onto the old logging path that bordered the state highway. The black SUV was tearing up the dirt track toward them, gravel spraying from its four spinning tires, its brush guards gleaming in the rain.
"Get in the ditch!" Daniel yelled, shoving Claire and Lily into the deep, grass-lined drainage culvert beside the road.
Julian didn't jump.
He stood in the center of the narrow logging road, holding the open iron lockbox high above his head, staring down the roaring grille of the oncoming truck.
"Julian, no!" Daniel screamed, reaching out from the ditch. "Get down!"
"She can't own us if there's nothing left to buy!" Julian roared into the headlights.
With all his strength, Julian hurled the iron box directly through the SUV’s windshield.
The glass exploded in a web of safety-shatter. The driver swerved violently, tires losing traction on the slick mud, the heavy vehicle fish-tailing across the narrow road before rolling over onto its side with a catastrophic crunch of metal and shattering glass. The SUV slid twenty yards on its roof, sparks showering into the darkness, before slamming into an ancient oak tree and coming to a dead, smoking halt.
Silence descended over the road, broken only by the hiss of steam escaping the crushed radiator and the rhythmic patter of rain against the overturned chassis.
Julian was thrown into the brush by the impact, gasping for air, clutching a fractured collarbone, but alive.
Daniel pulled himself from the ditch, running to his brother, helping him sit upright against the embankment. "Julian... God, Julian, you crazy bastard..."
Claire emerged from the culvert, holding Lily close. Lily was shivering, but her eyes were clear, looking at Daniel with a soft, steady gaze. "Daddy? Is the monster gone?"
Daniel looked at his daughter, tears cutting clean lines through the mud on his face. "Yes, Lily. The monster is gone."
From down the highway, the faint wail of police sirens began to echo through the valley—the local sheriff’s department, alerted by the alarm or the neighbors who heard the gunfire. Safety was less than two minutes away. The nightmare was finally over.
Daniel reached into the wreckage of the overturned SUV to pull the driver’s radio, ensuring no more men were on their way. He leaned through the shattered driver-side window.
The driver was unconscious, pinned beneath the crushed steering column.
Beside the driver, on the center console, lay a burner smartphone. The screen was cracked, but illuminated, displaying an active call on speakerphone that had been running for twenty-six minutes.
From the phone's tiny speaker, a voice spoke.
It wasn't Margaret.
It was a man's voice—raspy, wheezing through an oxygen tube, carrying the distinctive, slow cadence of an old man speaking from a hospital bed.
"Danny?" the voice whispered from the phone.
Daniel froze, his hand trembling as he lifted the phone to his ear.
"Who is this?" Daniel breathed.
A faint, rattling laugh came across the line, followed by the steady, rhythmic sound of an iron pipe being tapped with a metal ring.
*Tap.*
*Tap.*
*Tap.*
"You always were Margaret’s favorite tool," the old man’s voice wheezed from the speaker. "You buried an empty pine box thirty years ago, Danny. Margaret didn't kill me. She paid me to disappear. But now that she’s in a cell... I’ve come back for my granddaughter."
Across the road, through the rain-streaked trees, Claire let out a bloodcurdling scream.
Daniel spun around.
May you like
The rear door of a second, silent vehicle—parked in the shadow of the covered bridge fifty yards behind them, with its lights completely off—slid open.
A pair of gloved hands reached out from the darkness, pulling the mud-spattered hemlock branches aside, and pointed a red laser dot directly at the center of Lily’s chest.
