Chapter 11 - The Chase to the Border
The video clip ended, leaving Claire staring at the dark screen with trembling hands. Beside her, Thomas Drake was already analyzing the background noise in the footage.
""Listen closely,"" Thomas said, playing the audio through a tactical tablet. ""Hear that intermittent clatter? That’s not a highway. It’s the steel expansion joints of the old suspension bridge heading south toward the state line.""
Claire looked up sharply. ""She’s taking Route 9. It’s an unmonitored back road leading to the private airstrips in Fairfield.""
""There's an abandoned airfield five miles past the county line,"" Thomas agreed, pulling up satellite maps. ""Small charters fly out of there without filing flight plans. If she gets him on a prop plane, we lose them.""
""Not tonight,"" Claire said, her voice hardening like steel. ""Get the helicopter.""
Ten minutes later, the Vance corporate helicopter lifted off from the rooftop helipad of Vance Tower, cutting through the heavy rain clouds above the sleeping metropolis. Claire sat in the co-pilot seat, wearing a headset, her eyes scanning the dark ribbon of highway below through night-vision monitors.
Evelyn thought she was playing a game of corporate extortion, but she didn't realize that a mother fighting for her child has no rules, no limits, and no mercy.
""Target vehicle spotted,"" the pilot announced, zooming the thermal camera onto a yellow taxi speeding recklessly along the desolate two-lane highway below. ""Speed is ninety miles per hour. They're two miles from the airfield gate.""
""Block them,"" Claire commanded. ""Force them off the tarmac.""
The helicopter descended aggressively, its searchlight piercing the darkness and pinning the taxi in a circle of blinding white light. Down on the road, the taxi driver panicked, swerving across the gravel shoulder as the deafening roar of the helicopter blades whipped the surrounding pines into a frenzy.
The taxi slammed through the rusted chain-link fence of the airfield and skidded to a halt on the cracked asphalt runway, its tires smoking. A small twin-engine plane sat idling fifty yards away, its propellers spinning.
The taxi doors flew open. The driver ran for his life into the woods, while Evelyn stumbled out into the torrential rain, clutching baby Leo wrapped in a yellow blanket against her chest.
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The helicopter touched down twenty yards away, blowing sheets of rain across the concrete. Claire pushed the door open and leaped out before the skids fully settled, running straight through the storm toward Evelyn.
""Stop!"" Evelyn shrieked, backing toward the spinning airplane propeller, her eyes wide with unhinged terror. ""Stay back, Claire! I swear to God I'll jump!""
