Chapter 32 - The 60-Minute Countdown
The interstate was a blur of gray concrete and driving rain. Federal Marshal Marcus Kane glanced into his rearview mirror. He was a seasoned agent with fifteen years on the fugitive task force, but looking back at Margaret Vance made a chill run down his spine. The old woman wasn't crying. She wasn't shaking. She was staring at her phone with an intensity that could melt iron.
"Everything alright back there, Mrs. Vance?" Kane asked through the partition speaker. "ETA to the regional field office in Albany is forty-five minutes. We’ll have a trauma team waiting for the boy."
"Officer," Margaret said, her voice steady and unnervingly calm. "Noah is feeling sick. The motion of the transport. He’s going to vomit."
Kane sighed, tapping his partner on the shoulder. "Next rest stop is mile marker fourteen. We can pull over for two minutes, stretch his legs. But we don't break perimeter protocol."
"Two minutes is all he needs," Margaret said softly.
Beside her, Ethan was sweating profusely. His hand was tucked into the pocket of his jacket, gripping the cold steel of the service revolver he had quietly lifted from an unconscious security guard during the raid on Sinclair’s island. He had hidden it under Noah’s blanket when the marshals extracted them. Margaret had noticed, but she hadn't said a word. In the world they were now entering, law and order were dead concepts.
The timer on Margaret's phone blinked: **48:12.**
The armored SUV slowed, its blinker clicking rhythmically as it veered off onto the desolate, rain-slicked exit for Mile Marker 14. The rest stop was abandoned—a single flickering sodium lamp illuminating a cracked asphalt lot surrounded by towering, suffocating pine forests.
Kane pulled the vehicle alongside the closed public restrooms. "Keep the engine running, Dave," he told his partner. He unclipped his seatbelt, opened the heavy driver-side door, and walked back to the passenger side, pulling the heavy door open.
"Alright, Ethan. Let’s get him out for some fresh air, quick and—"
Kane never finished the sentence.
Ethan moved with the desperate, feral speed of a father pushed past the brink of sanity. He didn't draw the gun; instead, he slammed his full weight against the heavy armored door, smashing it directly into Kane’s face. The sickening crunch of cartilage echoed through the damp night air as the federal marshal stumbled backward, clutching his broken nose.
"What the hell—!" Dave, the driver, shouted from the front, reaching for his sidearm.
Margaret didn't hesitate. Leaning forward through the partition gap, she seized the heavy thermos of boiling black coffee resting in the center console and threw the scalding liquid straight into Dave’s eyes.
The driver shrieked in agony, dropping his weapon and thrashing against his seatbelt. Ethan lunged into the front, gripped the collar of Dave's tactical vest, unlocked the door, and hauled him out onto the wet pavement.
In less than twelve seconds, both federal marshals were disarmed, zip-tied to the steel support beams of the rest stop picnic pavilion, their radios crushed beneath the heel of Ethan’s work boots.
Kane looked up through blood and rain, glaring at Margaret. "Vance! What are you doing? Sinclair’s men are still out there! You're breaking federal custody—this is treason!"
Margaret stood over him, holding Noah wrapped in his blue blanket, resting securely against her shoulder. The child was awake now, watching with wide, solemn eyes, too traumatized to cry.
"You don't understand, Marshal," Margaret whispered, her eyes dark as obsidian. "Sinclair was just a customer. The butcher shop has always been in my backyard. And I am not letting my daughter-in-law bleed out while you people file paperwork."
Ethan slid behind the steering wheel of the armored SUV, revving the supercharged V8 engine until the chassis shuddered. "Mom! Get in! Forty-two minutes!"
Margaret climbed into the passenger seat, strapping Noah securely into the middle seat behind them. She locked the armored doors.
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The SUV peeled out of the rest stop, leaving twin black streaks of rubber on the wet highway, rocketing down Route 9 toward Millfield at ninety miles an hour.
***
