Part 4
The rain came down in sheets, turning the winding roads of the estate into black glass.
Ethan kept the headlights off.
He didn't need them. The thermal imaging display on the dashboard showed the road clearly enough, a pale green ribbon cutting through the dark forest.
In the passenger seat, Maya was typing furiously, her fingers a blur over the screen.
"We have a problem," she said, not looking up. "A big one."
"Define big," Ethan said, his hands steady on the steering wheel.
"Gerald didn't call the police," Maya said. "He called a private routing number. The signal bounced through three different servers in Zurich before dropping into a localized network right here in the city."
Ethan adjusted his mirror.
Behind them, deep in the trees, two sets of headlights appeared.
They weren't police cruisers.
They were heavy, unlabelled SUVs, moving with a synchronized, aggressive speed that spoke of professional training.
"Who owns the network, Maya?"
"A shell company called Apex Logistics," she replied, her voice tightening. "But the registration points back to a defense contractor. Ethan, these aren't security guards. They're cleaners."
Ethan looked into the rearview mirror again.
The headlights were gaining.
In the backseat, Lily was curled into a ball, her knees pulled up to her chin. She hadn't looked out the window once since they left. She was staring at the floorboards, her lips moving silently.
She was singing again.
The same melody. The one without words.
"Maya," Ethan said quietly. "Keep her eyes away from the glass."
Maya unbuckled her seatbelt, climbed into the back, and sat next to Lily, pulling a heavy wool blanket over the girl's shoulders.
"Hey," Maya said softly. "Look at me. Just look at me."
The SUV behind them accelerated, its bumper closing within inches of Ethan's rear frame.
A sudden, sharp impact shook the vehicle.
Lily gasped, but she didn't scream. She just squeezed her eyes shut.
"They're going to try a PIT maneuver," Ethan stated, his voice devoid of emotion. "Hold on."
He waited for the next curve in the road. A sharp, descending turn bounded by a steep ravine on the left and a wall of solid rock on the right.
The pursuing vehicle surged forward again, aiming for Ethan's rear tire.
Instead of fighting the turn, Ethan slammed on the brakes.
The weight of his modified SUV shifted instantly. The pursuing vehicle, caught off guard by the sudden deceleration, smashed into Ethan's armored rear bumper at full speed.
The physics were unforgiving.
The attacker's front tire blew out against the armor plating. The vehicle violently spun out of control, skidding across the wet asphalt before plunging over the edge of the ravine.
A distant crunch of metal echoed through the trees.
The second pursuing vehicle didn't slow down. It swerved around the debris, its headlights cutting through the rain, relentless.
"Ethan, there's a roadblock ahead," Maya called out from the back, her eyes on her tablet's GPS overlay. "Two miles. They've closed the bridge."
"Then we don't use the bridge," Ethan said.
He veered off the paved road, throwing the SUV into a sharp right turn directly into the woods.
The branches snapped against the windshield like gunfire.
The heavy tires tore through mud and undergrowth, the vehicle bouncing violently as Ethan forced it through the dense treeline.
Behind them, the remaining predator followed, its high beams cutting erratic patterns through the trees.
Ethan wasn't running anymore. He was choosing the ground.
He knew these woods. He knew where the old logging trails ended.
And he knew where the swamp began.
He slammed the vehicle into a low gear, driving directly toward a massive, dark expanse of standing water and dead trees.
"Ethan!" Maya shouted.
"Trust the weight," Ethan said.
The SUV hit the water at forty miles an hour, a massive wall of gray spray blinding the windshield. The specially designed deep-tread tires caught the submerged gravel path beneath the mud, moving forward with slow, brutal power.
Behind them, the lighter, faster vehicle of their pursuers hit the swamp.
It didn't have the clearance.
It didn't have the weight.
The attacker's SUV nose-dived into the mud, its engine sucking in water with a loud, metallic choke before dying completely.
Ethan didn't stop to watch.
He kept driving through the dark water, guided only by the green glow of the thermal screen, until the trees cleared and the open highway appeared ahead.
He looked back in the mirror.
Lily had stopped singing.
She was looking at him through the darkness of the cabin, her small face illuminated by the faint light of the dashboard.
May you like
For the first time, her eyes weren't empty.
They were curious.
