Chapter 5 - The Deep Woods
The forest behind the subdivision was an untamed tangle of blackberry briars, fallen oak limbs, and marshy hollows that drained into the Des Plaines River a mile to the west.
In the pitch black of a midnight storm, it was a labyrinth designed to disorient and trap anyone foolish enough to enter without a flashlight. But Eleanor knew these woods—or woods very much like them. She had grown up hiking the state parks of northern Wisconsin with a father who taught her how to navigate by the silhouette of the tree crowns against the gray northern sky.
"Grandma, my feet are cold," Chloe whispered, her teeth chattering so violently she could barely form the words.
"I know, sweetie, I know," Eleanor panted, shifting the little girl higher onto her hip. Her arms were trembling from the physical toll of carrying a six-year-old through knee-deep mud and tangled brush. Her wool coat was soaked through, heavy as lead, dragging her down with every step. "Just keep your arms around my neck. We’re going to find a road. We’re going to find help."
Behind them, through the curtain of falling rain and swaying branches, a faint beam of light cut across the darkness.
Flash.
A powerful, high-intensity LED beam swept through the lower canopy of the trees, turning the falling raindrops into millions of flashing silver needles.
Julian was out here. He had grabbed a tactical flashlight from his car and was tracking them into the timber.
"Mom! You can't outrun me out here!" Julian’s voice echoed through the wet woods, distorted and unnatural, bouncing off the tree trunks like a ghost’s whisper. "You don't know the trail maps! You're walking straight into the retention basin marsh!"
Eleanor stopped dead in her tracks behind the thick trunk of a massive, centuries-old bur oak tree. She pulled Chloe down into the muddy ferns at the base of the roots, dropping to her knees to shield the child with her own body.
The beam of light swept past them, illuminating the ferns just ten feet to their left. The smell of ozone and wet wool hung heavy in the air.
"Mom, think about this rationally!" Julian called out, his voice closer now, moving along the higher ridge of the trail. "If you go to the police, what are you going to tell them? That my wife and I staged a funeral? Do you have any idea how much money and legal influence I have in this county? The judges are on my country club board! The coroner is my fraternity brother! They’ll lock you away in a psychiatric ward for elderly delusions before they even look at the casket!"
A cold spike of dread pierced Eleanor’s chest.
He was right—at least partially. Julian was well-connected in suburban legal circles. If they walked into a local precinct in this jurisdiction without physical evidence, without a recorded confession, Julian’s money and institutional insulation might buy them enough time to bury the truth permanently.
Unless...
Unless they didn't go to the local police.
Unless they went straight to federal jurisdiction—or better yet, straight to the State Police headquarters in downtown Chicago, twenty-five miles away, where Julian’s country club cronies had zero jurisdiction.
"Grandma," Chloe whispered, her small fingers clutching Eleanor’s wet sleeve. "I’m scared."
"Don't be scared, Chloe," Eleanor whispered back, pressing a cold kiss to the top of the child's wet hair. "Your grandma is right here. Nobody is ever going to hurt you again."
She scanned the darkness. Through a gap in the pine branches about fifty yards ahead, she could see the faint amber glow of streetlamps and the occasional sweep of headlights on Route 45—the four-lane highway that skirted the western edge of the forest preserve.
If they could cross the highway, they could flag down a long-haul trucker or reach the 24-hour truck stop station three miles down the shoulder.
"Can you walk for just a little bit, Chloe?" Eleanor asked gently, setting the little girl down on a patch of relatively flat moss. "Just until we reach the road?"
Chloe nodded bravely, her small face pale and pinched with exhaustion, but her dark eyes filled with a fierce, stubborn determination that looked so much like Julian’s used to look before ambition and greed rotted his soul.
"I can walk," Chloe whispered.
Eleanor took off her heavy, soaked wool coat and wrapped it entirely around Chloe’s shoulders like a cloak, leaving herself in just her thin silk blouse. She grabbed Chloe’s small, ice-cold hand in hers.
"Let's go," Eleanor said.
They broke cover from the oak tree, moving at a fast, stumbling jog toward the highway lights flickering through the trees.
Behind them, a sharp snap of a broken twig echoed through the dark.
"There!" Julian’s voice shouted, bursting through the brush thirty yards behind them. The bright beam of the LED flashlight locked directly onto their backs, turning the rain-soaked woods into a blinding stage. "Stop right there!"
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"Run, Chloe! Run!" Eleanor screamed.
They broke through the final line of sumac bushes and barbed wire, tumbling down a steep grassy embankment and sliding directly onto the muddy shoulder of Route 45 as a massive semi-truck roared past at sixty miles an hour, kicking up a wall of spray and wind.
