Chapter 15 - The Trap on Blackwood Ridge
The realization that my father was still breathing somewhere on this continent turned my blood into kerosene.
For twenty years, I had laid plastic flowers on a granite tombstone that held the ashes of an unknown stranger.
For five years, Julian had mocked me for being an abandoned stray whose parents had discarded her like refuse.
Now, the truth was an avalanche that threatened to crush the entire Whitmore empire into dust.
"Where is he, Ethan?" I demanded, leaning over the desk until our faces were inches apart.
"He is operating under the alias Marcus Hale," Ethan replied, pulling up a satellite feed on his encrypted tablet.
"He arrived on a panamanian-flagged container vessel forty-eight hours ago."
"He didn't come to New York because he knew Victor Sterling’s surveillance network monitors every terminal from Queens to Newark."
"He went to the old Vance hunting lodge on Blackwood Ridge, near the Maine border."
"We leave now," I said, turning toward the doorway without waiting for Eleanor's approval.
"Claire, wait!" Eleanor called out, her voice cracked with desperate terror.
"Victor’s private mercenaries monitor Blackwood Ridge night and day."
"It is a trap designed to draw you out of the city where my security cannot shield you!"
"Julian took my dignity in the storm, Eleanor," I said, pausing at the heavy double doors.
"Victor took my entire family."
"I am not hiding behind your marble walls while my father faces Victor’s butchers alone."
"I am going with her, Madame Whitmore," Ethan Cross said, checking the magazine of his service weapon with a crisp, lethal snap.
Thirty minutes later, an unmarked black SUV cut through the pre-dawn fog, heading north onto Interstate 95.
Ethan drove with clinical precision, his eyes darting between the rearview mirrors and the navigation display.
"You don't trust Eleanor, do you?" Ethan asked quietly as the concrete jungle gave way to dark, looming pines.
"Eleanor sacrificed my mother and father to keep her corporate dynasty intact," I said, looking out at the gray dawn.
"She may have rescued me from Julian, but she is still a Whitmore."
"Every kindness she offers comes with an invisible invoice."
"That makes you smarter than ninety percent of the people on Wall Street," Ethan remarked, a ghost of a smile touching his scarred cheek.
"My father was the federal prosecutor who tried to break the Whitmore smuggling ring back in ninety-eight."
"Victor Sterling had him framed for taking bribes, stripped of his license, and left to die in disgrace."
"We are both orphans fighting the same hydra, Claire."
As we climbed the winding ascent toward Blackwood Ridge, the weather turned treacherous.
Thick, freezing sleet began to hammer the windshield, echoing the nightmare of Route Nine.
The road grew narrow, hemmed in by steep rock faces on one side and a sheer cliff dropping into the ravine on the other.
Suddenly, Ethan slammed both hands against the steering wheel, veering violently to the left.
A massive, heavy-duty timber truck appeared from the blinding fog, its headlights completely blacked out.
It barreled down the narrow mountain lane directly at our hood, carrying enough momentum to crush our vehicle into scrap metal.
Ethan yanked the emergency brake, putting the SUV into a four-wheel slide across the iced asphalt.
The rear bumper struck the timber truck’s steel bull-bar with an explosion of shattered fiberglass and metal.
Our SUV spun violently out of control, careening toward the unprotected edge of the cliff.
"Brace yourself!" Ethan shouted, throwing his right arm across my chest as the vehicle tore through the wooden guardrail.
The world flipped upside down in a roar of tearing steel, freezing wind, and shattering glass.
We tumbled fifty feet down the rocky embankment, finally slamming to a violent halt against a massive oak tree.
Darkness swam before my eyes, the smell of smoking radiator fluid and scorched rubber burning my throat.
Blood dripped down my forehead from a shallow cut on my hairline.
Beside me, Ethan was unconscious, his head slumped against the deflated steering wheel airbag.
Through the cracked, spider-webbed windshield, I heard heavy boots crunching through the freezing gravel.
Three men in black tactical gear and Kevlar vests descended the slope, assault rifles held at the low-ready.
Behind them, walking with an umbrella shielded against the sleet, was Victoria Sterling.
She looked down at me trapped in the wreckage, her smile colder than the ice forming on the shattered windows.
"Did you really think you were going to have a tearful family reunion, Claire?" Victoria’s voice echoed down the ravine.
May you like
"Pull her out of the car," Victoria ordered her men without hesitation.
"Her father is waiting in the cabin above, and Victor wants both of them to sign the surrender papers before we set the fire."
