The heavy bronze candlestick was inches from the old woman's head when the front door opened. Her sweet, fake smile couldn't hide the weapon in her hand. But her husband's fury wasn't the scariest part. It was the sirens outside. / Chapter 19 / 65

Chapter 19 - The Vanishing Inmate

The emergency flares cast a flickering, blood-red glow over the snowy embankment of Route 8.

The armored state transport van lay on its side in the ditch, its reinforced steel doors blown outward by shaped tactical charges.

Two state trooper cruisers were parked across the highway, their light bars painting the surrounding forest in swirling patterns of blue and red.

Detective Miller’s sedan skidded to a halt on the icy asphalt.

Arthur jumped out before the car had fully stopped, his breath plume-like in the sub-zero wind.

"Stay back, Arthur!" Miller shouted, chasing after him.

The scene was a slaughterhouse of metal and ice.

One guard lay on a stretcher being loaded into an ambulance, his head wrapped in bloody gauze.

The other officer sat on the rear bumper of a police cruiser, shivering violently in shock.

Agent Harris was already on her knees near the blown-open rear doors of the van, inspecting the charred tire tracks leading into the tree line.

"Where is she?" Arthur demanded, his voice raw. "Where is Eleanor?"

Harris stood up, brushing snow from her knees.

"She wasn't rescued by strangers," Harris said grimly. "They knew the exact transport route. They used military-grade thermite on the rear hinges."

"Thomas," Arthur breathed.

"We found three shell casings from a nine-millimeter semi-automatic," Harris pointed toward the snowbank. "And this."

She held up an evidence bag containing a shredded, blood-stained green prison uniform.

Beside it lay a severed electronic monitoring bracelet, spark-charred and dead.

"Did they take her?" Arthur asked, desperation creeping into his voice.

"She walked out under her own power," Harris said, pointing her flashlight at two distinct sets of footprints leading toward a set of fresh tire tracks on an unplowed logging trail. "One set of heavy combat boots. One set of women's running shoes."

"They're leaving the country," Arthur said, clutching his chest. "They have millions in the Cayman accounts. They have false identities."

"They can't leave yet," Miller said, walking up beside them with his tablet in hand.

"Why not?"

"Because the Cayman accounts were frozen two hours ago by federal order," Miller said, showing Arthur the screen. "Every dollar is locked until the judicial review on Monday."

Arthur looked at the empty highway stretching south toward Fairfield County.

A terrifying realization washed over him, turning the blood in his veins to liquid ice.

"The bearer bonds," Arthur whispered.

Miller frowned. "What bearer bonds?"

"My father didn't keep all his money in offshore banks," Arthur said, his voice dropping to a horrifying murmur. "He kept two million dollars in untraceable bearer bonds in the estate vault."

"Where is the vault, Arthur?" Harris asked sharply.