CHAPTER 5: The Stranger Who Refused the Reward
CHAPTER 5: The Stranger Who Refused the Reward
The spotlight locked onto them like the eye of a predator.
Sarah instinctively threw herself over Dominic.
The helicopter circled once, its rotors whipping loose snow into a blinding white storm.
"They've found us!" she shouted.
Elena grabbed Dominic under one arm.
"Move!"
They stumbled toward the tree line just as a loudspeaker crackled overhead.
"DO NOT RUN!"
The voice echoed across the valley.
"STATE POLICE!"
Sarah froze.
State Police?
Dominic didn't.
"They're bought."
He pulled Sarah behind a cluster of snow-covered pines.
"Keep moving."
Within seconds, the helicopter banked away.
Instead of landing, it continued following the drainage ditch farther downhill.
Elena frowned.
"They're not tracking us."
"What do you mean?"
"They're searching the wrong direction."
Sarah cautiously looked up.
The helicopter disappeared beyond the ridge.
For the first time in hours, they had a few precious minutes.
Unfortunately, Dominic no longer did.
His steps became slower.
His breathing shallower.
Halfway down the mountain, his legs simply gave out.
He collapsed face-first into the snow.
Sarah dropped beside him.
"Dominic!"
His skin felt ice-cold.
His pulse was weak and racing.
She opened his coat.
The bandage was completely soaked through.
Internal bleeding.
Worse than before.
"We have to stop it."
Elena looked around desperately.
"In the middle of a forest?"
Sarah's eyes landed on an abandoned hunting shed fifty yards away.
Its roof sagged under the snow, but the walls were still standing.
"There."
Inside the shed, Sarah transformed a dusty workbench into an operating table.
There were no surgical instruments.
Only fishing line.
A pocketknife.
Boiling water heated over an old cast-iron stove.
Elena stared at the supplies.
"Tell me you're not thinking what I think."
Sarah didn't answer.
She was too busy sterilizing the knife in the boiling water.
Dominic, barely conscious, watched her.
"You've never done surgery alone."
"No."
"You could kill me."
"Yes."
Silence.
Then Dominic gave the faintest nod.
"If we do nothing..."
"I know."
"...I'll die anyway."
Sarah closed her eyes for one second.
When she opened them again, the frightened housekeeper was gone.
The nursing student had returned.
"Elena."
"Yes?"
"I need clean towels."
She nodded.
"Dominic."
He looked at her.
"This is going to hurt."
A tired smile crossed his face.
"I assumed."
For the next forty minutes, the world narrowed to blood, breathing, and impossible choices.
Sarah worked with trembling hands that gradually became steady.
She found the damaged artery.
Applied pressure.
Stopped the worst of the bleeding.
Removed fragments of torn fabric that had been pulled into the wound.
Every lesson she had ever learned came back as if her instructors were standing beside her.
"Clamp."
There was no clamp.
She improvised.
"Suction."
There was none.
She adapted.
When Dominic screamed, Elena gripped his shoulders to keep him still.
When he nearly lost consciousness, Sarah forced him to keep talking.
"Stay with me."
No answer.
She slapped his cheek.
"Dominic!"
His eyes fluttered open.
"You..."
A weak grin.
"...are definitely bossier than any doctor."
She almost smiled.
"Good."
"Means you're still arguing."
Finally...
The bleeding stopped.
Sarah leaned back, exhausted.
"I think..."
She checked his pulse again.
Strong.
Stronger than before.
"I think you're going to live."
Dominic whispered,
"I was planning on it."
An hour later, they heard a truck approaching.
All three tensed.
Elena reached for her pistol.
The pickup stopped outside.
An elderly man wearing a thick flannel coat stepped out carrying a sack of animal feed.
He opened the shed door.
Then froze.
His eyes moved from Sarah...
...to the blood...
...to Dominic...
...to Elena's pistol.
Nobody spoke.
The old man quietly set the feed sack on the floor.
"I've seen enough winters to know when people are running from something."
Sarah slowly stood.
"Please..."
"We're not here to hurt you."
The man studied Dominic's face.
Recognition flashed across his eyes.
"You're on every television in the state."
He looked at Sarah.
"The news says you kidnapped him."
Sarah's heart sank.
So Lorenzo had already created another lie.
The old man reached into his coat.
Elena instantly raised her pistol.
"Don't."
The old man slowly pulled out... a folded newspaper.
The front page showed Sarah's employee photo from Rossi Manor.
Across it, in bold black letters:
MAID SUSPECTED IN BILLIONAIRE HEIR'S MURDER.
Below the headline was another line.
$5,000,000 REWARD FOR INFORMATION LEADING TO HER CAPTURE.
Sarah felt the room spin.
Five million dollars.
More money than the old farmer could earn in several lifetimes.
He looked at the newspaper.
Then at Sarah.
Then at Dominic lying barely alive on the workbench.
For a long moment, no one breathed.
Finally, the old man walked to the potbellied stove.
Without a word...
He tossed the newspaper into the fire.
The flames swallowed Sarah's photograph.
"I don't know who you folks really are," he said quietly.
"But I know what fear looks like."
He looked directly at Sarah.
"And that young lady has the hands of someone trying to save a life."
He extended his weathered hand.
"My name's Walter."
A faint smile crossed his face.
"My truck's old."
He glanced toward the snowy road outside.
"But it'll outrun men who think money buys everything."
Just then, the crackling police scanner clipped to Walter's belt came alive.
A dispatcher's urgent voice echoed through the shed.
"Attention all units. New orders from command. The female suspect, Sarah Jenkins... is to be taken alive. Under no circumstances is she to be harmed before Mr. Lorenzo Rossi arrives personally."
The smile disappeared from Elena's face.
Dominic slowly opened his eyes.
Sarah felt a cold knot tighten in her stomach.
Lorenzo wasn't just hunting them anymore.
He wanted Sarah alive.
May you like
Which meant she had become far more valuable...
...than anyone had yet explained.
