Chapter 3 - Night in the Shadows
The Audi’s red taillights dissolved into the gloom, leaving behind only the deafening roar of the fire and the rising chorus of sirens echoing from town.
“He looked right at the fire,” Eli whispered, his voice trembling so violently his teeth clicked together. “Mom… he didn’t even try to see if we were inside.”
I pulled Eli tightly against my chest, wrapping my arms around him beneath the thick canopy of spruce needles. His clothes were damp with sweat and soot, and his small body was shivering uncontrollably from the freezing wind.
“Don’t look back, Eli,” I said, my voice hardened by a fierce, maternal resolve I hadn’t known I possessed. “Your father made his choice. Now we make ours.”
My clinical mind was racing through an immediate triage checklist. We were barefoot in twenty-degree weather, suffering from the lingering effects of an unidentified neurotoxin, smelling of smoke and natural gas, with no phones, no money, and no identification. If we simply walked out onto the street and flagged down the arriving fire trucks, Jared’s plan would be interrupted—but it wouldn't be stopped.
He was a wealthy, respected man with powerful friends, a pristine public reputation, and an army of lawyers. If he found out we survived, he would find another way. A cleaner way. A fatal dose in a hospital room, a staged medical complication, or a hit-and-run.
To survive this, Jared had to believe his plan had worked. We had to remain dead. At least for tonight.
“We need to move,” I said, helping Eli to his feet. “The fire department will set up a perimeter soon. If they search the tree line with thermal scopes, they’ll spot us.”
“Where are we going?” Eli asked, stumbling on a hidden pine root. I caught him by the elbow, taking his weight. The poison was still wreaking havoc on his motor control, but the freezing air and adrenaline were acting as temporary stimulants, forcing his blood vessels to constrict and keeping him conscious.
“To Mrs. Gable’s house,” I replied.
Evelyn Gable was an eighty-two-year-old retired schoolteacher whose property bordered the southern ridge of the gravel quarry, a quarter-mile through the woods. She lived alone, had no internet, rarely watched television, and was profoundly deaf without her hearing aids—which she invariably took out at eight o'clock every night. More importantly, Evelyn kept an old, rusted Ford Ranger in her detached carriage barn, and she kept the keys hanging on a nail inside the potting shed.
We trudged through the undergrowth, the frozen pine needles slicing into the soles of our bare feet. Every step sent a jolt of sharp pain through my legs, but the physical agony was a blessing; it kept the narcotic fog of Jared’s poison from reclaiming my brain.
Ten minutes later, we broke through the treeline into Evelyn’s unkempt backyard. The house was pitch-black, dark against the star-filled sky. Across the ridge, a massive plume of black smoke rose into the atmosphere, lit from below by the furious orange glow of our burning home.
I led Eli to the weathered potting shed behind the carriage house. The wooden latch was frozen shut, but I threw my shoulder against it with a dull thud, snapping the rusted screws from the frame.
Inside, the shed smelled of dry potting soil, fertilizer, and motor oil. On the wall beside the door, hanging from a corroded nail just as I remembered from helping her with gardening last spring, was a brass ring holding two keys.
“Sit here, Eli,” I whispered, guiding him onto an overturned plastic tub. “Cover yourself with these burlap sacks. Stay silent. I’m going into the house through the basement window to get us shoes and coats.”
“Mom, don’t leave me,” he choked out, clutching the hem of my torn sweater.
“I will be back in three minutes. Not a second longer. If you hear anyone other than me, you hide behind the potting bench and stay dead still. Do you trust me?”
Eli swallowed hard and nodded. “I trust you.”
I slipped out of the shed and crept toward Evelyn’s basement bulkhead doors. They were secured with an old padlock, but the weathered pine frame was completely rotted. I grabbed an iron garden spade from the ground, wedged the flat blade beneath the lock hasp, and levered my weight down. The rotted wood gave way with a muffled *crack*.
I slipped down the concrete steps into the cool, dark basement. Moving by memory and touch, I found the stairs leading up to the mudroom.
Inside the back entryway, I found what we needed: a pair of Evelyn’s oversized winter boots, an old pair of her late husband’s work boots, two heavy wool coats from the coat rack, and an emergency first-aid kit from the laundry room cabinet.
On the kitchen counter, next to a bowl of decorative ceramic fruit, was a leather coin purse and an old, pre-paid flip phone that Evelyn kept in case her landline failed during winter storms.
I grabbed the purse, opened it, and found three twenty-dollar bills and a handful of quarters. I slipped the flip phone into my pocket, grabbed the coats and boots, and crept back down the stairs into the night.
Total elapsed time: two minutes and forty seconds.
When I returned to the shed, Eli was curled tightly beneath the burlap, his eyes wide and fixed on the door. When he saw me, the tension melted from his small shoulders.
“Put these on,” I ordered gently, kneeling to pull two pairs of thick wool work socks onto his freezing feet, followed by the oversized work boots. I wrapped him in the heavy wool coat, pulling the collar up over his soot-stained neck. I jammed my own feet into Evelyn’s rubber boots and threw the second coat around my shoulders.
We moved quietly into the carriage barn. The 1998 Ford Ranger sat under a thick layer of dust, smelling of aged gasoline and mouse droppings.
I opened the driver’s side door, slid behind the wheel, and pulled Eli into the passenger seat beside me. I inserted the key into the ignition, my heart pounding in my ears. If the engine backfired, or if the battery was dead from the cold, we were trapped.
I closed my eyes and turned the key.
The starter whined—a slow, strained, mechanical groaning.
*Come on,* I begged silently. *Come on.*
With a sudden, rattling roar, the old V6 engine caught, sputtering violently before settling into a loud, vibrating idle. I didn't turn on the headlights. I shoved the floor shifter into reverse, dropped the clutch, and eased the truck out of the barn into the dark gravel lane that led toward Route 32.
As we reached the paved road, I glanced into the rearview mirror.
Two fire engines and three state police cruisers were speeding down our old road in the distance, their red and blue strobe lights painting the smoke clouds with frantic color.
Beside me, Eli pulled the flip phone from my coat pocket. “Mom… who are we going to call?”
I gripped the steering wheel until my knuckles turned white.
May you like
“Nobody who knows Jared Vance,” I said, turning the truck south, away from the sirens, away from our old life, and toward the only person in the world who understood how to make a body disappear without a trace.
***
