Chapter 6 - The Midnight Escape Down Route 9 and the First Contraction That Reminded Harper She Was Running Out of Time
The old Ford truck bounced violently as its worn suspension hit a deep pothole on the unplowed stretch of Route 9, throwing Harper against the cracked passenger-side window.
The impact sent a fresh wave of agony radiating from her lower back down into her thighs, so sharp and blinding that she let out a choked gasp, her fingernails digging deep into the cracked vinyl seat.
Beside her, Tom gripped the steering wheel with weathered, calloused hands, his eyes darting nervously between the icy ribbon of road ahead and Harper’s pale, sweat-slicked face illuminated by the amber dashboard lights.
"Good Lord, Harper," the old man muttered, his voice gravelly and thick with disbelief. "You’re shivering so hard your teeth are rattling. And your feet... girl, where are your shoes? It’s six degrees below zero out there."
"Just drive, Tom," she managed to whisper, her voice trembling as she curled inward, pressing her palms flat against her swollen stomach. "Please. Just keep driving north. Don't stop for gas, don't stop for lights. Just get us past the county line."
"I seen Damian Vale’s security cruisers parked at the intersection three miles back," Tom said, his knuckles whitening as he fought to keep the truck from sliding into a snowbank. "If they catch us on this road, they’ll run us off the asphalt without blinking twice. That man owns half the judges and all the state troopers between here and Albany."
"He doesn't own this truck," Harper said, her dark eyes flashing with a fierce, burning resolve as she clutched the heavy 2018 ledger tighter against her chest. "And he doesn't own what’s inside this book."
Tom glanced sideways at the thick, weather-beaten leather volume resting on her lap.
Even in the dim light of the cab, the faded gold lettering on the spine looked ominous.
"What is that?"
"His life," Harper said simply. "Or at least, the part of it that's going to put him behind bars for the rest of his natural-born days."
A heavy silence fell inside the cab, broken only by the rhythmic, deafening thwack of the truck’s failing windshield wipers fighting against the relentless sheets of wet snow.
Harper closed her eyes, trying to regulate her breathing the way the Lamaze instructor had taught her four weeks ago, back when she still thought her life was normal, back before she knew her marriage was a front for a criminal cartel.
In through the nose for four seconds... hold it... out through the mouth.
It didn't work.
The baby was shifting again, dropping lower, pressing against her pelvis with an insistent, rhythmic pressure that made her entire body tense up.
She was seven months pregnant.
She knew, intellectually, that thirty-two weeks was premature, that babies born this early often spent weeks in neonatal intensive care units hooked up to tubes and monitors.
She also knew that staying at the Vale estate meant signing her son’s death warrant—not physical death, but something much worse. Damian would have raised the boy to be a replica of himself: cold, ruthless, devoid of empathy, treating human beings like collateral damage in a relentless march toward power.
I’d rather die on this floor than let him have my son, she thought fiercely, resting her forehead against the freezing glass of the window.
Outside, the dark, snow-choked forests of the Hudson Valley blurred past in a monotonous streak of white and black.
They had ten miles to go before they reached the old county line where Damian’s municipal jurisdiction ended and the state police barracks—run by men who owed their allegiance to the state rather than local real estate developers—began.
May you like
Ten miles.
In this weather, in a truck that sounded like it was about throw a rod at any second, it might as well have been a thousand.
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