Chapter 5 - The Race to the North Pier
Panic surged through my veins, hot and blinding. I dropped the hammer, scrambled out of the hidden alcove, and bolted down the attic stairs, taking them three at a time. The house was a blur as I sprinted to the front door, slamming it behind me and throwing myself into the driver’s seat of the SUV.
The engine roared to life, tires spitting gravel down the suburban driveway as I tore away from the curb.
The digital dashboard clock read 3:45 AM. The hospital was twenty minutes away; the North Pier was another fifteen minutes past that in the opposite direction. If I went back to the hospital first, I might waste precious time if Evelyn had an accomplice inside the ward. But if I went straight to the pier, Jason was left unprotected.
I punched Laura’s number into the hands-free system. It rang twice before she picked up, her voice instantly alert.
“Mr. Davis? Is everything okay?”
“Laura, listen to me very carefully,” I said, gripping the steering wheel so hard my knuckles turned white as I took a sharp turn onto the highway. “Evelyn has someone at the hospital. Or she’s already there. You need to go into Jason’s room right now. Do not leave his bedside. Lock the door, call hospital security, and tell them an unauthorized person is attempting access.”
“On my way. I’m running,” Laura gasped, the sound of hurried footsteps echoing through the phone line before the connection muffled.
I pressed the gas pedal down further, the speedometer needle climbing past eighty as the dark, empty highway stretched out ahead of time. The rain had started, fine and gray, slicking the asphalt and blurring the red taillights of the few transport trucks sharing the road.
What was Evelyn’s endgame? She had wealth, property, and social standing. Why go to such extreme lengths to eliminate a nine-year-old boy?
Then it hit me—the financial documents I had seen in the hidden alcove.
Richard Vance’s estate wasn’t entirely settled. There were trust funds, massive insurance policies tied directly to survivorship clauses, and property deeds that required all legal heirs to be accounted for. As long as Jason—and previously Leo—were alive and in the picture as primary beneficiaries or obstacles, certain trusts couldn’t be liquidated. But if a child was declared permanently incapacitated or institutionalized due to severe mental instability, legal guardianship transferred entirely to the surviving spouse, granting unrestricted access to multi-million-dollar assets.
She wasn’t just a troubled woman trying to quiet a noisy house. She was a professional predator, operating in plain sight behind a veneer of culture and philanthropy.
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Twenty minutes later, the silhouette of the old North Pier loomed ahead against the dark, churning expanse of the bay. The rusted skeletal frame of the abandoned crane stood like a gallows against the stormy sky. A single vehicle was parked near the end of the concrete jetty—a sleek, dark sedan with its hazard lights blinking in a slow, rhythmic pulse.
I cut my headlights a hundred yards back, rolled the SUV to a quiet stop behind a stack of rusted shipping containers, and stepped out into the biting, salt-laden wind.
