Chapter 22 - The Signal in the Dark
The massive four-ton diesel truck slammed through a fallen pine branch, the iron brush-guard obliterating the wood into splinters that clattered against the windshield. Rain was coming down in blinding sheets now, turning the steep mountain cut into a river of brown clay and sharp shale. Inside the cab, the smell of hot motor oil, wet wool, and copper blood hung thick in the air.
Ethan was in the passenger seat, his shaking fingers pressing a stained rag against his temple, while Margaret sat jammed between him and Tommy, holding the cracked receiver of Tommy’s high-frequency handheld radio.
"Dispatch to Unit 4, do you copy?" a woman’s voice crackled through the static. "The marine patrol cutter out of Pine Point cannot launch. Gale-force winds on the lake have capped the waves at eight feet. I repeat, water pursuit is aborted."
"Useless," Tommy growled, his knuckles white on the steering wheel as he wrestled the truck around a hairpin curve sixty feet above the surging waters of the gorge. "They play by the book, and by the time the book is opened, the plane is in Canadian airspace."
"He won't take off in this wind," Margaret said, her eyes fixed forward through the rhythmic sweep of the windshield wipers. "Julian is arrogant, but he isn't suicidal. Floatplanes can't lift off in an eight-foot cross-swell on Black Ridge Reservoir. He’ll be pinned at the old loading docks waiting for the storm front to pass."
"How do you know that?" Ethan asked, turning his bloodshot eyes toward her.
Margaret reached into her coat pocket and pulled out her old, battered cell phone. The screen was cracked, but the display was glowing. "Because when I walked into Noah’s nursery three weeks ago, I didn't just unplug the camera. I took the serial number off the transmitter base. And when Tommy's friend hacked the internal router at the fortress, I had him mirror the IP address to my cloud account."
Ethan stared at her. "You... you have the live feed?"
"I have the audio," Margaret said grimly.
She tapped the screen. A blast of harsh white noise hissed from the tiny phone speaker, followed by the deep, rhythmic thrum of a high-performance marine engine. Then, cutting through the mechanical drone, came a small, terrified whimper.
*"Daddy? Nana?"*
Ethan’s breath hitched in his throat. A sob tore through his chest, and he buried his face in his hands, his shoulders convulsing violently. "He’s calling for me. God, Mom, he’s calling for me and I’m the one who let them inside our house. I let Vanessa sleep in our bed. I signed the corporate papers without reading them. I did this to him."
"Stop it, Ethan," Margaret snapped. Her voice wasn't gentle; it was a slap in the dark. She grabbed his arm, her fingers digging through his wet sleeve down to the bone. "Guilt is a luxury we don't have right now. You want to atone for what you did? You want to be his father again? Then you wipe that blood off your eyes and you look at this map. Noah doesn't need your tears. He needs you alive, and he needs you ruthless."
Ethan looked up, startled by the sheer steel in his mother's glare. He swallowed hard, wiped the blood from his cheek with the back of his hand, and nodded once. "Where is the dock?"
"Two miles ahead," Tommy said, downshifting. The engine screamed as the tires gripped the muddy incline. "Just past the old sawmill. But there's a problem."
"What problem?" Margaret asked.
Tommy pointed his high-beam lights through the trees. Ahead, where the dirt trail met the water’s edge, a heavy metal boom-gate blocked the road, locked with an industrial chain. And parked just on the other side of the gate, its headlights off, was an unmarked black SUV.
"Julian didn't come alone," Tommy said quietly. "He left an ambush at the perimeter."
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As if on cue, the windshield of the truck spider-webbed with a deafening *CRACK!* A high-caliber bullet punched clean through the glass, missing Tommy's ear by two inches, embedding itself in the rear cab wall.
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