Chapter 5 - The Race to Miller’s Lake
“You’re not going anywhere, Mrs. Mercer,” Detective Vance said firmly, stepping between my bed and the door. “You just had major abdominal surgery. If you rip those stitches, you could bleed out internally.”
“I don’t care about my stitches!” I shouted, trying to swing my legs over the side of the bed. The sharp, tearing pain in my lower abdomen made me gasp, forcing me back against the pillows with a strangled cry. Tears streamed down my face. “That is my daughter out there! Luke is going to finish the transfer at noon. If we don’t stop him, she could be gone forever—out of the state, out of the country!”
Eli grabbed my hand, his knuckles white. “I’m going with them, Mom. I’ll make sure they find her.”
“No, Eli, you’re staying right here with the nurses,” I pleaded, before looking up at Vance with desperate eyes. “Please. Take me with you, or at least let Officer Davis drive me. I have to be there when my baby comes home.”
Vance studied my face for a long, agonizing moment. He saw the absolute refusal to break in my eyes. With a heavy sigh, he unclipped a portable medical wheelchair from the hallway alcove and wheeled it straight to my bedside.
“Get in,” Vance muttered, his tone stern. “We’re taking an unmarked cruiser, and we’re riding with lights and sirens. But the second you pass out from the pain, I’m turning the car around and taking you back to the ER. Understood?”
“Understood,” I whispered.
Within two minutes, we were barreling out of the hospital parking lot. Officer Davis drove, his foot pressed hard against the gas pedal as the cruiser’s siren wailed, parting the midday traffic like a wedge through water. Detective Vance sat in the front passenger seat, barking coordinates into his radio while tracking the GPS signal from Luke’s burner phone, which the tech team had managed to ping in real-time.
“Signal is moving north on Route 9,” Vance announced over the roar of the engine. “Approaching the old logging trail near Miller’s Lake. Estimated arrival time: three minutes.”
My hands gripped the armrests of the wheelchair so tightly my knuckles turned blue. The ride was a chaotic blur of jarring bumps and screeching tires, every turn sending sharp waves of agony through my healing incision, but the physical pain was nothing compared to the hollow, terrifying void in my chest.
Just hold on, June, I kept repeating in my head like a prayer. Mom is coming.
As we turned off the paved highway onto the bumpy dirt road leading to Miller’s Lake, the dense canopy of pine trees swallowed the sunlight, casting long, eerie shadows across the path. Up ahead, nestled near the edge of the dark, reflective water, sat an abandoned, rotting wooden boathouse with a rusted tin roof.
Parked right beside the rotting structure was Luke’s black Ford F-150.
“Hold your positions,” Vance ordered quietly into his radio as Davis cut the cruiser’s siren and coasted the vehicle into the thick brush fifty yards away, cutting the lights.
Through the cracked window of the cruiser, I could see two figures standing near the edge of the wooden dock that extended out over the water. One was Luke, his shoulders hunched, holding a heavy canvas baby carrier against his chest. The other was a broad-shouldered man in a dark hoodie—presumably Marcus, the rogue hospital worker.
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The man in the hoodie was holding out a leather briefcase, snapping open the metal latches to reveal neat stacks of banded hundred-dollar bills.
“There’s the payoff,” Vance murmured, unholstering his service weapon and signaling to the backup unit that had just pulled up behind us. “Let’s move in quiet, and take them before they can reach the boat.”
