Chapter 6 - The Highway
The blinding yellow beams of the pickup truck swept across the asphalt behind us, illuminating the bare trees lining the suburban street.
“Into the woods! Lily, jump!” I gasped, throwing my body over the low wooden fence that separated our development from the county nature preserve.
We tumbled down a muddy embankment, rolling through wet leaves, thorns, and cold earth until we hit the creek bed below.
Above us, the truck’s tires screeched to a halt along the shoulder of the road.
The driver-side door slammed shut.
“Claire!” Daniel’s voice echoed through the dark woods, distorted by his broken nose, sounding hollow and terrifying. “You can’t run out here! You don't have shoes! You’re going to freeze!”
I pressed my hand over Lily’s mouth, pulling her tight against my side beneath the roots of a massive fallen oak tree. The mud was freezing, soaking through my clothes, but I barely felt the cold. My entire body was operating on pure, primal adrenaline.
Lily was terrifyingly still. She didn't cry. She didn't twitch. She sat in the mud, her small body curled into a ball, relying on the survival instincts she had perfected over years of abuse.
From the road above, the beam of a high-powered flashlight swept across the tree canopy.
Step. Step. Step.
Daniel’s heavy boots crunched through the dry leaves at the top of the ridge. I could see his silhouette against the moonlight—his head bandaged with a rag, holding a heavy iron tire iron in his left hand.
“I know you’re down there, Claire,” Daniel called out, his voice unnaturally calm, dropping into the conversational tone he used when explaining household chores. “You think you’re saving her, but you’re just making this worse. If the county finds out what Eric did, they’ll investigate the whole family. They’ll take my license. They’ll ruin everything I’ve built.”
He took a step down the embankment.
“Eric took photos, Claire,” Daniel continued, his flashlight beam creeping closer to our fallen oak tree. “Dozens of them. He kept them in a metal box under the floorboards in the farmhouse. If you take her to the police, those photos will become public record. Do you really want that for Lily? Do you really want her face plastered across courtrooms for the rest of her life?”
My heart stopped.
The Polaroid wasn't just a single slip-up. It was part of an organized, systematic record. Eric Vance hadn't just been an emergency foster parent—he had been running an illegal, hidden operation out of his isolated farmhouse, and Daniel had been his accomplice, using his position as a respected corporate accountant to hide the financial paper trail.
And now, they needed Lily quiet because she was the only living witness who could link Daniel directly to the house on Old Concord Road.
The beam of light flashed across the mud two feet from my elbow.
CRACK.
A dry branch snapped twenty yards to our left.
Daniel’s head snapped toward the sound. “Claire?” he called out, instantly turning his flashlight toward the sound of a deer bounding through the brush.
He scrambled along the ridge, following the noise, his boots sliding through the dirt as he moved away from our hiding spot.
I waited five agonizing seconds.
“Come on,” I whispered into Lily’s ear.
We crawled out from under the root system, keeping low, moving in the opposite direction toward the distant hum of the main state highway.
We stumbled through the dark brush for ten agonizing minutes until the trees suddenly gave way to a four-lane asphalt highway.
An eighteen-wheeler truck was rumbling down the road, its yellow clearance lights glowing through the fog.
I ran out onto the shoulder of the highway, waving my arms frantically in the air.
“HELP! PLEASE! HELP!” I screamed at the top of my lungs.
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The truck’s air horn roared—a deafening, magnificent blast that shattered the night air. The massive vehicle hissed, its brakes screaming as it skidded to a halt fifty yards down the asphalt.
I didn't look back. I grabbed Lily and ran toward the glowing cab of the truck.
