Chapter 6 - The Blood Trail
Z
The dawn sky above Boston was the color of a bruised plum as Karen and I burst through the glass doors of the State Police Headquarters. Rain was falling in heavy, icy sheets. The world was waking up, oblivious to the fact that my life had transformed into a psychological war zone.
David was locked in a high-security holding cell, stripped of his medical clothes, wearing an orange jumpsuit. But even behind bars, he held all the cards. My father—an eighty-five-year-old man suffering from advanced heart failure—was out there somewhere in the hands of David’s disgraced brother, Stephen, being prepped for an illegal medical flight out of the country.
"We have twelve hours, Karen," I said, my voice shaking as we stood beside her car in the parking garage. "If that plane leaves the tarmac, my dad dies in some unnamed clinic in foreign soil. I know how David operates. Once he gets the money cleared from escrow, my father becomes a dangerous liability. He won't keep him alive."
"He won't leave the country, Rachel," Karen said, her face set in hard, merciless lines as she opened her trunk and pulled out a heavy black leather bag. "Because we aren't going to play by David’s legal rules anymore. The legal system is slow. It takes hours to get search warrants, hours to track wire transfers. We don't have hours."
She unzipped the bag. Inside were two high-powered satellite tracking tablets, a frequency scanner, and a set of heavy-duty tactical breach tools.
"Karen..." I stared at her in shock. "Where did you get this?"
"Before I was a corporate litigator, Rachel, I spent six years as a federal prosecutor working with the US Marshals Task Force," Karen said flatly, pulling out a small black device with a flashing green LED light. "And I knew David was a rat the moment I saw his financial filings. When I met Marcus at that roadside diner two days ago, I didn't just take his statement. I gave him a duplicate key to David’s Mercedes and had him plant a magnetic GPS tracker under the rear bumper."
My jaw dropped. "You tracked his car?"
"I tracked his car, his coat, and the fake medical transport van he brought to my house last night," Karen smiled, a cold, ruthless expression. "Look at the screen."
She handed me the tablet. On the map, three small red dots were blinking. Two were stationary—parked at the police impound lot where David’s Mercedes and the transport van had been towed.
But the third dot was moving. Fast.
"What is that third dot?" I asked, my heart pounding against my ribs.
"That's Stephen’s personal vehicle—a black Ford F-150," Karen said, zooming in on the map. "I had my investigator drop a second tracker on Stephen’s truck while he was attending a funeral service yesterday afternoon. He’s currently driving northbound on Interstate 95, heading toward a private airfield in Lawrence, Massachusetts."
"He’s moving my father now," I gasped. "He’s not waiting twelve hours! David lied to us in the holding cell! He was stalling for time!"
"Exactly," Karen said, throwing the bag into the backseat and hopping into the driver's seat. "Get in. We’re taking Interstate 93 to cut him off before he reaches the airfield."
I threw myself into the passenger seat, buckling my seatbelt as Karen slammed her foot on the accelerator. The Audi’s engine roared, tearing out of the parking garage and merging into the slick morning traffic like a missile.
"Call Marcus," I told her, pulling out my phone.
"Why?"
"Because Stephen doesn't know what Marcus looks like," I said, a dangerous idea taking shape in my head. "Stephen thinks Marcus is just some homeless teenager David bribed. If Stephen is at that airfield, he’s going to be paranoid about police cruisers. He won't be looking for a kid in a hoodie."
I dialed Marcus’s number. He answered on the second ring, his voice alert.
"Marcus," I said quickly. "Where are you?"
"I’m still at Ms. Karen’s house with the troopers," he said. "Are you okay, Mrs. Rachel?"
"Marcus, I need your help one last time," I said, my voice filled with desperation. "David lied. He’s holding my father alive, and his brother is taking him to Lawrence Municipal Airport right now to put him on a plane. I need you to get the trooper to drive you to that airfield immediately. We need eyes inside the private hangars before we arrive."
"I'm on it," Marcus didn't hesitate for a single second. "Trooper Walsh is right here. We’re turning on the sirens now."
For thirty minutes, Karen drove like a woman possessed, weaving through commuter traffic at ninety miles an hour, the rain hammering against the windshield in a deafening roar. My hands were clenched so tightly in my lap my nails were digging into my palms.
Three years. My father had been held captive for three long years. I thought about all the nights I had cried over his grave, all the anniversaries I had spent laying flowers on a stone that covered nothing but hundred-pound bags of sand. The sheer cruelty of it was unbearable. David hadn't just stolen my father’s freedom; he had stolen my grief, my closure, my sanity.
"We’re five minutes out," Karen called out, checking the digital map. "Stephen’s truck just pulled off the highway at Exit 45. He’s entering the industrial perimeter of Lawrence Airport."
Suddenly, my phone buzzed. It was a text message from Marcus.
Attached was a blurry, zoomed-in photograph taken from behind a chain-link fence.
It showed a sleek, twin-engine private charter plane parked inside Hangar 4. A ramp was extended from the cargo door. Two men in dark suits were wheeling a gurney up the ramp.
On the gurney lay an old man, thin, frail, wrapped in blankets, an oxygen mask strapped to his face.
My heart shattered into a million pieces. Even through the blur of the photo, I recognized the thick white hair, the slope of the shoulders, the gold wedding band still on his left hand.
It was my father.
Mom, they’re loading him onto the plane now! Marcus texted. The engines are starting! They’re getting ready to taxi!
"Karen!" I screamed, showing her the screen. "They’re loading him! Drive faster! They're taking off!"
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Karen didn't answer. She slammed the gear shift into sport mode, slammed her foot to the floor, and turned the steering wheel sharply, veering off the highway ramp and blowing straight through a red light into the perimeter access road of the airport.
In the distance, across the wide expanse of the rain-drenched runway, the twin propellers of the private plane began to spin, throwing up a massive spray of mist into the gray morning air.
