Chapter 218
The convoy peeled away and dissolved into the night.
Sixty seconds later, Hilliard’s Aston Martin roared around the corner. He slammed to a stop in front of the bodega, jumped out, and sprinted inside.
“Have you seen a woman?” he shouted at the clerk. “Blonde, injured, wearing a sling?”
The clerk stood behind the counter, staring at a smoking heap of melted plastic where the DVR had been.
“Man, I haven’t seen anything,” the clerk stammered, eyes wide. “I don’t know nothing.”
Hilliard looked at the ruined device. He looked at the wet boot prints tracked across the linoleum floor — heavy tread, not police issue. He walked back outside.
The rain fell on him, steady and indifferent.
He was too late. Again.
Someone had taken her. Someone powerful. Someone who knew precisely how to erase a trail.
Hilliard stood in the empty street, the water running cold down the back of his neck, and felt — for the first time that night — a flicker of genuine fear. He was no longer hunting a wounded, helpless woman. He was hunting a ghost protected by an army.
The gates to Kegan’s upstate New York estate were massive wrought-iron structures that looked more like the entrance to a fortress than a home.
Inside, in the master suite, Cailin lay against a mountain of pillows. Kegan’s private doctor had re-set and braced her arm. The pain was a dull roar now, muffled beneath a layer of painkillers.
The door creaked open.
“Mommy?”
Cailin’s heart leaped. She tried to sit up.
Three small figures rushed into the room.
“Gently!” Ashley warned from the doorway.
But they couldn’t be gentle. They were terrified.
Elia climbed onto the bed first, burying her face in Cailin’s neck. “You were gone. You were gone and the Bad Man was looking for us.”
Aron and Davy climbed up on the other side. They didn’t cry. They simply pressed their bodies against hers, as though trying to physically anchor her to the bed, to the world, to them.
“I’m here,” Cailin whispered, kissing the tops of their heads one by one. “I’m not going anywhere.”
Kegan stood in the doorway, leaning against the frame, watching. His expression was unreadable, but his hands were balled tight in his pockets.
“The jet is fueled,” he said quietly. “As soon as you’re stable, we leave for the Swiss Alps.”
“Thank you,” Cailin said, looking at him over her children’s heads.
“Don’t thank me,” Kegan said. “Marry me. Make it legal, so I can kill anyone who looks at you wrong.”
It was an old joke between them. Tonight, it didn’t sound like a joke.
“Sir.” A voice crackled in Kegan’s earpiece. “We have a situation at the main gate.”
Kegan tapped his ear. “What is it?”
“Hilliard Holloway. He’s demanding entry. Says he tracked his wife here.”
Cailin went still. The children stiffened against her.
“He found us?” Aron whispered, reaching for his backpack where he kept his tablet.
“No,” Cailin said quietly. “He found me.”