Chapter 8 - THE RUNAWAY MOTHER
The morning air hit my face like a blast of freezing water as I sprinted down the narrow concrete alley behind the row of townhouses. Behind me, the muffled shouts of federal agents echoing inside my kitchen sounded like a nightmare from which I couldn't wake up.
“Clear the kitchen! Suspect is not here! Check the back exit!”
I clutched Lily tighter against my chest, making sure her right arm—stiff and heavy in its giant fiberglass cast—didn't bang against my ribs. She woke up fully then, blinking heavy, confused eyes against the harsh daylight.
“Mommy? Where are we going? My arm hurts,” she mumbled, her lower lip trembling.
“We’re going on an adventure, sweetie,” I lied, my voice cracking as I fought back a sob of pure panic. I rounded the corner of the alley, praying that my old Honda Civic was still parked where I had left it last night by the community dumpster.
Miraculously, it was.
I unlocked the doors with trembling fingers, bundled Lily into her car seat with frantic speed, and leaped into the driver's seat. My hands were shaking so badly I dropped the ignition key twice onto the rubber floor mat before finally jamming it into the column.
The engine roared to life with a sputtering cough.
As I threw the car into reverse and peeled out of the parking space, I glanced in my rearview mirror. Two dark SUV units marked with bold, terrifying letters—FBI—pulled aggressively into the alleyway entrance, blocking off the other end.
I slammed my foot down on the gas pedal, tearing around the corner just as a federal agent leaped out of his vehicle, shouting for me to halt.
I didn't halt. I couldn't.
Fifteen years in a federal penitentiary for a crime I didn't commit? While Rachel walked free? Absolutely not. I was a mother now. My first and only loyalty was to the little girl sitting in the back seat, staring out the window with wide, frightened eyes.
But as I merged onto the highway, heart pounding a frantic rhythm against my ribs, a horrifying realization hit me with the force of a freight train.
Where was I supposed to go?
My bank accounts were tied to my social security number—the exact number the federal government was currently tracking. My credit cards would flag my location the second I swiped them at a gas station. I had less than eighty dollars in cash tucked inside my glove compartment.
I was running on fumes, with a four-year-old child with a broken arm, zero money, and the full might of the United States federal government hunting me down.
And then, amid the blind panic, a cold, hard strategy began to form in my mind.
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If I wanted to prove my innocence, running away forever wasn't going to work. Living on the run with a child was a slow death sentence. To clear my name, I needed evidence. And the only place that evidence existed—the hard-drive backups of Julian’s financial servers, the original signed notary books, the digital footprint of Rachel’s conspiracy—was locked inside one specific place.
Rachel’s downtown penthouse condo.
