Chapter 12 - The Lone Road
Clara emerged from the dense pines, her eyes wide with terror until she saw Ryan standing. She rushed toward him, catching him as his knees buckled under the weight of exhaustion and blood loss.
""You're hit,"" she whispered, her hands covered in his blood.
""Just a graze. Flesh wound,"" Ryan lied through gritted teeth, breathing hard. ""The truck. We need to get to Thomas’s truck.""
Leo was shivering violently, huddled under Clara’s sweater, his small body burning with fever even as his skin felt ice-cold to the touch. The asthma attack had passed, but the exposure to the freezing storm water was rapidly pushing him into acute pneumonia.
Ryan dragged himself up the embankment toward the underpass. The beat-up blue pickup was exactly where Thomas had said it would be. Ryan reached under the driver's side front wheel well, his fingers finding the magnetic key box. He pulled the key free, unlocked the cab, and pushed Clara and Leo inside.
The smell of old coffee and diesel inside the truck was the sweetest scent Ryan had ever encountered. He turned the ignition key. The old starter motor wheezed twice, sputtered, and then the V8 engine roared to life with a comforting, steady rumble.
""Where do we go?"" Clara asked, wrapping an old wool blanket from the back seat around Leo. ""The hospitals in this county belong to the Sterling medical foundation. Eleanor’s name is on every wing. The moment we check him in, they’ll lock the doors and call her.""
""We cross the county line,"" Ryan said, slamming the truck into gear and spinning the tires out onto the flooded two-lane highway. ""There’s a small clinic forty miles west in Oakhaven. It’s an independent practice run by a doctor who hated my grandfather.""
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As the truck sped into the blinding rain, Ryan adjusted the rearview mirror.
Far down the dark mountain road, two pairs of high-intensity halogen headlights cut through the storm, accelerating rapidly behind them. Eleanor’s main convoy had cleared the estate gates.
