Chapter 28 - The Highway of Shadows
The coldness of the night air woke him.
David opened his eyes to a blur of silver trees whipping past at terrifying speed. The harsh, rhythmic thumping of tires over asphalt highway seams jarred his aching skull.
He was in the passenger seat of their Subaru Outback. Leah was behind the wheel, her hands gripping the leather so tightly her knuckles were translucent white. The speedometer needle was pinned at ninety-two miles per hour.
"David?" she choked out, glancing at him for a microsecond before snapping her eyes back to the dark ribbon of Interstate 89 South. "David, thank God. Stay still. You had a concussion."
David touched his temple. A makeshift gauze bandage had been taped clumsily above his left eye, soaked through with dark, sticky blood.
The memories hit him like a physical blow: The men in black. The ebony cane. The transport bassinet carried out into the night.
"Maya," David croaked, his voice thick with gravel.
"Julian took her twenty minutes ago," Leah whispered, tears silently streaming down her face, illuminated by the dashboard's green glow. "They put her in a black Suburban heading north toward the Canadian border. They have a private airstrip in Burlington."
David stared at her profile, his heart tearing in two. "And where are we going?"
"Boston," Leah sobbed. "The maritime terminal. We have two hours and fourteen minutes, David. Julian gave us the keycard. If we don't get Maya by sunrise, he’ll kill her remotely. He’ll stop her heart."
"And what about the other baby?!" David screamed, grabbing the dashboard as the car swerved around an eighteen-wheeler. "The girl we raised for thirteen months! You just let them take her like an Amazon package! She's a baby, Leah! She doesn't know she's an 'asset'! She only knows you as her mother! She only knows me as her father!"
"WHAT WAS I SUPPOSED TO DO?!" Leah screamed back, slamming her palm against the steering wheel until the horn sounded a brief, pathetic shriek into the empty highway. "CHOOSE BETWEEN THEM?! Tell me, David! Which daughter was I supposed to let die tonight?! The one who carried our flesh and blood, or the one they forced into my arms to cover their crime?!"
The silence inside the speeding car fell heavy and suffocating. Outside, the dark hills of New Hampshire rose like black leviathans against the pre-dawn sky.
David leaned his head against the cold glass of the window, his mind racing through the horrific labyrinth Julian Vance had built around their lives.
*Asset 409 carrying Evelyn’s synthesized stem lines.*
*The real Maya kept alive in Boston as biological collateral.*
*Evelyn locked in St. Jude’s, communicating in secret.*
Suddenly, a realization struck David with the force of an oncoming train.
"Leah," he said slowly, his voice dropping into a deadly, ice-cold register. "Pull the car over."
"What? No! We don't have time—"
"PULL THE CAR OVER NOW!"
Leah slammed on the brakes, the tires screeching as the Subaru skidded onto the gravel shoulder of the highway, hazard lights clicking on in a rhythmic, amber pulse.
David reached into his jacket pocket. He pulled out the crumpled note from Evelyn—the one he had shoved away before the break-in.
"Read the last two lines again," David whispered, his fingers trembling.
Leah snatched the paper, squinting beneath the amber hazard flash:
*Look in the crib, my boy. Look closely at the eyes of the child you call your daughter. And then ask your sweet, innocent wife what happened to the real Maya at 3:12 AM on the night the storm broke.*
"What does this prove?" Leah asked, her voice cracking. "She was mocking us!"
"No," David said, his eyes wide with terrifying clarity. "Evelyn didn't say Julian took Maya. She said *what happened to the real Maya*. Evelyn hates Julian Vance. Thirty-two years ago, he used her as an experimental subject. She spent her entire life trying to tear his syndicate down."
David grabbed Leah's phone from the center console. "When Julian was at the house... he said Maya’s suite was at the maritime terminal. But why would an international bio-trafficking syndicate keep their most valuable piece of human leverage at an unguarded port terminal in Massachusetts?"
Leah’s jaw dropped. "A diversion."
"He sent us south to Boston so we wouldn't follow him north to Burlington," David said, the horror dawning with absolute certainty. "There is no baby in Boston, Leah. The child with the mechanical heart... she was never at the terminal."
"Then where is she?!" Leah cried out, terrified.
David looked at the time on the dashboard: *04:18 AM.*
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"She’s at the only place Julian Vance truly controls," David whispered. "St. Jude’s Forensic Psychiatric Center. Where my mother has been waiting for him."
***
