Chapter 4 - INTO THE WHITE OUT
The snow hit Vivian like a physical wall the moment she pushed open the exit doors of Lakefront Dynamics. The temperature had plunged well below zero, and the wind was howling off the lake with demonic ferocity, driving needles of ice horizontally across the asphalt.
She hadn't brought a winter coat—only her thin silk blouse and tailored trousers. Within three seconds, the cold had pierced her clothing, numbing her skin and stealing the breath from her lungs.
She ran toward her car, a sleek black sedan parked in the executive row. Her fingers were already so stiff she could barely grip the key fob. She pressed the unlock button twice, nothing happened, and then she realized her hands were shaking too violently to hold the metal key steady in the door lock.
"Come on," she muttered through chattering teeth, tears of sheer frustration freezing on her eyelashes. "Come on, damn you..."
A heavy hand suddenly clamped down on her shoulder, spinning her around.
Vivian gasped, stumbling backward against the cold metal of the car door. Through the swirling white blur of the blizzard, she saw Marjorie standing there, wrapped in a thick wool parka, shoving a heavy set of keys into Vivian’s hand.
"You'll never make it out of the parking lot in a rear-wheel-drive sedan," Marjorie shouted over the roar of the wind, thrusting her own SUV keys forward. "Take my Ford Explorer. Four-wheel drive, full tank, and snow chains already locked on the tires."
Vivian stared at her, stunned. "Marjorie—what are you doing?"
"I am correcting a mistake I made seventeen years ago when I let your father bury a family secret in a vault," Marjorie yelled back, her eyes fierce behind fogged glasses. "Now get in the damn truck. Daniel’s truck broke down or he’s still within five miles—he only lives off Maple Street in Evanston. If you don't catch him before he crosses the bridge, that plant goes up in flames."
Vivian didn't hesitate. She snatched the keys, wrenched open the door of the Explorer, and hauled herself into the driver’s seat. The engine cranked twice before roaring to life, the heater instantly blasting a wave of warm air across her frozen legs.
She threw the gearshift into drive, slammed her foot on the gas, and rocketed out of the Lakefront Dynamics parking lot, fishtailing wildly across the unplowed snow before surging onto the main thoroughfare.
The city of Chicago had practically ceased to exist. Visibility was down to less than ten feet. The streetlights were ghostly amber halos swallowed by blowing drifts, and abandoned cars sat half-buried along the shoulders of the highway like frozen monuments to human failure.
Vivian gripped the steering wheel so tightly her knuckles turned white. Her foot pressed the accelerator down until the engine screamed, the SUV plowing through towering snowdrifts with a heavy, rhythmic thud.
Think, she told herself, wiping the condensation from the side window with her bare hand. Where would he go?
Daniel had a daughter. An eight-year-old girl named Lily who was sitting in a drafty house in Evanston waiting for her father to come home and make hot chocolate. Daniel wouldn't stop at a hotel. He wouldn't turn back. He was a man driven by duty, by grief, and by the desperate need to protect his child.
She knew the route to the northern suburbs by heart, but in this whiteout, every landmark was erased. The expressway signs were buried under layers of ice; the exits blurred together into a continuous wall of white.
Ten minutes passed. Twenty. The fuel gauge needle hovered dangerously close to empty, though Marjorie had promised a full tank—the sub-zero temperatures were draining the battery and fuel efficiency at an alarming rate.
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And then, half a mile ahead near the old iron railway bridge over the canal, she saw it.
A pair of dim, flickering red taillights half-buried in a massive snowbank on the shoulder of the road.
