Chapter 17 - HUNTED THROUGH THE MARSH
The station wagon was gone, so they moved on foot.
The gale had escalated into a full-blown nor'easter. Wind whipped cold, biting rain horizontally across the salt marsh as Daniel, Clara, and Noah trudged through the knee-deep reeds. Daniel carried Noah tucked beneath his oilskin coat, shielding the boy’s face from the stinging brine. Clara walked ahead, clutching an iron crowbar she had salvaged from the shack, her senses wound tighter than a tripwire.
A sweep of blinding white light slashed across the sky.
"Down!" Daniel hissed, pulling Clara beneath the shelter of a rotted wooden duck blind.
A hundred yards out over the marsh road, two black tactical pickup trucks were crawling slowly, their roof-mounted infrared spotlights carving through the torrential rain. The low hum of their heavy diesel engines vibrated through the mud beneath Clara’s palms.
"They're using thermal optics," Daniel muttered, his mouth close to Clara's ear. "The marsh grass won't hide our body heat for long."
Noah didn't make a sound. The boy pressed his small face into the crook of his father's neck, biting the sleeve of his own jacket to keep his teeth from chattering. He had learned the terrible language of survival far too young.
Suddenly, a loud crack echoed from behind them—the snap of a heavy boot crushing a dry driftwood branch.
Clara spun around. Rising from the reeds twenty feet away was a towering figure draped in tactical wet-weather gear, a combat shotgun leveled directly at Daniel's chest.
"Well, well," the man sneered, his face illuminated by a brief flash of lightning. A jagged scar cut through his left eyebrow. "Five million dollars sitting in a puddle. Put the kid down, Daniel. Make it easy."
Clara didn’t hesitate. In one explosive motion born of pure, unadulterated motherly instinct, she swung the heavy iron crowbar upward with both hands, aiming not for the man’s weapon, but for the exposed knee joint of his tactical suit.
The steel struck bone with a sickening crack. The bounty hunter howled, his finger instinctively pulling the trigger. The shotgun blasted harmlessly into the dark sky, the deafening boom swallowed by the thunderclap above.
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Before the man could recover, Daniel lunged forward, throwing his full weight into an elbow strike across the hunter's jaw, knocking him cold into the black mud.
"Run!" Clara shouted, grabbing Daniel's sleeve. "The others heard that!"
