Chapter 12 - The Driveway Sprint
The distance between the garden shed and the service gate was barely seventy yards through the laurel hedges, but to Clara, it looked like an insurmountable salt flat. Every step sent a jolt of pain through her pelvis that threatened to buckle her knees. She kept one arm wrapped protectively over the infant buried beneath her sweater, her head down, moving along the dense border of the evergreen shrubs.
Fifty yards away, the delivery driver had climbed back into his cab. The yellow indicator light on the van's roof began to flash, signaling his intention to reverse back down the narrow access road to the main highway.
""Wait,"" Clara tried to call out, but her voice was a dry croak that didn't carry past the leaves.
She forced herself into a stumbling run, her bare feet tearing against the jagged stones of the gravel path. Blood stained her shorts, and her breath came in ragged, wheezing gasps. She broke through the final cluster of shrubs just as the guard emerged from the front door of the gatehouse, holding a coffee mug.
The guard froze, his eyes widening in total disbelief as he registered Clara—covered in dirt, blood, and sweat, carrying a moving bundle against her chest—sprinting toward the iron fence.
""What the hell—"" the guard shouted, dropping the mug onto the concrete. He reached for the heavy baton on his utility belt and lunged forward to cut her off from the service gate.
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Clara didn't try to outrun him. Instead, she threw her entire body weight against the emergency egress lever mounted on the pedestrian turnstile—a mechanical safety release required by fire code that bypassed all smart-home electronic overrides.
The heavy iron turnstile swung outward with a screech of ungreased metal, pitching Clara out onto the asphalt of the public lane just as the guard’s fingers caught the frayed edge of her cardigan.
