“She’s not,” Elias said, tapping a key. A grainy CCTV feed from a gas station near Aransas Pass flared to life. “She ditched the Lexus. She’s in a black Suburban now, registered to a shell company we don’t recognize. And she’s heading back to San Antonio. She’s not running away. She’s coming to finish the job.”
I felt a cold, sharp thrill of horror. My mother hadn’t just been a thief; she was a partner. She had known about David’s debt all along. She hadn’t just been “saving” him; she had been brokering a deal. She was bringing the creditors to us. She was the one who had provided the location of the hotel.
She was trading my daughter’s life for David’s freedom.
“Hue,” I said, turning back toward the bedroom door. “We have to move. Now.”
We didn’t take the main elevators. Elias led us through the service corridors, the scent of industrial laundry and floor wax thick in the air. Hue was clutching the baby, her face a mask of exhausted terror, her surgical stitches pulling with every hurried step. I kept my arm around her, feeling the frantic heat of her skin.
We reached the basement garage. A nondescript armored SUV was waiting, its engine idling with a low, predatory hum.
“Where are we going?” Hue whispered as I helped her into the back seat. “Nathan, please tell me what’s happening. Why are we running from your mother?”
“She isn’t my mother anymore, Hue,” I said, my voice as hard as the steel plating of the door. “She’s an asset manager for a group of people who don’t believe in mercy.”
We tore out of the garage, the tires screaming against the concrete. I watched the San Antonio skyline recede in the rearview mirror—the Tower of the Americas looking like a giant, uncaring needle against the dark Texas sky.
My phone rang. It was an unlisted number.
I hit Accept.
“Nathan,” my mother’s voice was calm, melodic, and terrifyingly rational. “You always were the difficult son. Always so obsessed with ‘the truth.’ But the truth doesn’t pay the interest on a ten-million-dollar marker, does it?”
“Where are you, Elena?” I growled.
“I’m exactly where I need to be,” she said. “I’m with David’s ‘friends.’ They’re very reasonable people, Nathan. They understand that a $25 million insurance payout is a perfectly acceptable form of collateral. But the policy only pays out if the insured… well, if she doesn’t survive the recovery period. And since you took her away from my ‘care,’ we have to accelerate the timeline.”
“If you touch her, if you even look at my daughter—”
“The baby is fine, Nathan. For now. She’s a Sterling. She’s valuable. But Hue… Hue is just a peasant from a village. She’s the cost of doing business. Bring her to the old ranch in Boerne. By midnight. If you don’t, David’s fingers start arriving in the mail. And after David, we start looking for the nursery.”
She hung up.
Leave a Comment