Chapter 4 - The Pursuit on I-95The thunderstorm rolled in hard as I hit the entrance ramp to Interstate 95, sheeting heavy rain against my windshield in blinding waves. The wiper blades beat a furious rhythm against the glass, barely keeping up with the torrents of water falling from the ink-black sky.
On the dashboard, Brian’s tablet was mounted on a phone grip, its screen glowing with the relentless tracking app.
The green dot was still moving south, maintaining a steady seventy miles per hour.
I checked my speedometer: eighty-five. My old truck vibrated beneath me, the tires humming against the slick asphalt as I tore through the darkness, passing long-haul semi-trucks that sprayed rooster-tails of blinding mist across my lane.
My mind raced back through the four years Marissa had been in our lives.
When Brian first brought her home two years after his first wife passed away from cancer, I had wanted to like her. I desperately wanted my son to be happy again, and I wanted Lily and Mason to have a mother figure in their lives.
But there had always been subtle, disturbing red flags.
The way she subtly isolated Brian from his old high school friends. The way she insisted on taking over all family finances within three months of their wedding. The way she looked at Lily and Mason—not with hatred, but with a cold, clinical detachment, as if the children were mere line-items on an expense report that she was desperate to audit out of existence.
“She’s just practical, Dad,” Brian had told me once when I expressed concern over how strictly she restricted the kids' allowance and playdates. “She’s helping me get our future organized.”
Organized.
She wasn't organizing a future. She was clearing the board.
I glanced down at the tablet. The green dot was slowing down.
It pulled off I-95 onto Exit 42—a desolate, low-density stretch of highway dominated by shuttered gas stations, abandoned truck stops, and miles of dense pine forests.
"What are you doing, Marissa?" I muttered under my breath, my knuckles turning white against the steering wheel as I took the off-ramp, my truck leaning heavily into the turn.
Exit 42 led onto Route 17, a narrow two-lane road with no streetlights. The rain was so thick here that my high beams could barely cut through thirty feet of downpour.
I reduced my speed, watching the green dot on the tablet screen.
I was closing the gap. Three miles. Two miles. One mile.
Up ahead, through the curtain of gray rain, I caught the faint red glow of taillights.
It was a blue Ford Expedition, moving slowly along the shoulder of the deserted country road, its hazard lights blinking rhythmically.
My chest tightened. I turned off my headlights, relying only on the faint moonlight filtering through the storm clouds to keep my truck on the road. I drifted up behind her, keeping a distance of fifty yards.
The Expedition pulled off the pavement entirely, rolling onto a muddy access trail that led deep into the pine tree tree-line—an old logging trail long abandoned by the county.
I stopped my truck at the entrance of the trail, tucked behind a thick cluster of wild bushes. I pulled my heavy steel flashlight from under the passenger seat and slipped my pocketknife into my jeans.
I stepped out into the pouring rain, the cold water drenching my jacket instantly.
Silently, I sloshed through the thick mud, following the tire tracks left by the Expedition into the pitch-black woods.
Two hundred yards up the trail, the Expedition had stopped in a small clearing surrounded by towering pines. The engine was still idling, exhaust rising like gray smoke into the rain.
Through the rear window of the SUV, lit by the interior dome light, I saw Marissa.
She had stepped out of the driver's side and opened the rear tailgate.
She was hauling something heavy out of the trunk—a large, black industrial storage drum.
My blood ran cold.
Beside the drum sat two five-gallon cans of gasoline.
May you like
She wasn't just fleeing with my son. She was preparing to stage a terrible car accident in the woods—a crash, a fuel leak, a horrific fire that would consume the vehicle, my unconscious son, and any remaining evidence of her crimes.
"Not tonight," I whispered, gripping the heavy flashlight until my fingers went numb. "Not while I'm still breathing."
