Chapter 18 - The Ambush on the Causeway
The rain was falling in blinding sheets as Daniel’s SUV tore down the Long Island Expressway at over a hundred miles per hour. The wipers slapped frantically against the windshield, barely clearing the torrents of water.
In the passenger seat, Emily was on the phone with Detective Miller, the lead investigator on the original case who had been reinstated forty-eight hours earlier after the internal affairs probe cleared his name.
"Miller, she has Grace at the North Shore estate," Emily said, her voice eerily calm—the kind of calm that comes when a mother has already accepted that she may die tonight, as long as her child survives. "She’s at the old carriage house overlooking the bluffs. She has armed mercenaries with her."
"Emily, listen to me," Miller’s voice crackled through the dashboard speakers over the roar of the storm. "Tactical units are staging three miles out, but we cannot approach the causeway without alerting her lookouts. If she sees our lights, she will drop that baby. You have to get inside, keep her talking, and give us a window to breach from the beach side."
"We're going in," Daniel said, his knuckles white on the steering wheel. "Just don't let her leave that property alive if she touches my daughter."
They reached the private causeway—a two-mile stretch of narrow asphalt bordered by churning ocean on both sides. The wrought-iron security gates of the Whitmore estate had been blown off their hinges, hanging twisted in the darkness.
Daniel killed the headlights and navigated by the faint glow of the lightning flashes.
As they rounded the final bend approaching the carriage house, the SUV’s front tires suddenly exploded with a deafening pop. Daniel wrestled the steering wheel as the vehicle fishtailed across the wet gravel, finally slamming into an ancient stone fountain.
The airbags deployed with a concussive bang.
Dazed, his ears ringing, Daniel pushed the deflated nylon bag away from his chest. "Emily! Are you alright?"
"I'm fine," Emily gasped, blood trickling from a small cut on her forehead. She gripped the silver safety deposit key in her pocket and reached for the door handle. "Let's go."
They stepped out into the howling wind. A spike strip had been laid across the driveway.
From the shadows of the carriage house portico, two figures in dark tactical gear stepped forward, assault rifles leveled at Daniel and Emily’s chests.
"Hands where we can see them," one of the men barked, his voice distorted by a balaclava. "Strip your phones, your watches, and throw them into the fountain. Now."
Daniel and Emily complied, hurling their electronics into the churning water.
The guard frisked Daniel with brutal efficiency, finding the iron poker Daniel had tucked into his waistband and tossing it aside with a smirk. "The lady first," the guard muttered, shoving Emily toward the heavy oak doors of the carriage house.
They were led into the great hall—a massive room with a soaring cathedral ceiling, anchored by a twenty-foot stone fireplace where a violent fire was crackling. Standing before the hearth, holding Grace against her chest like an accessory, was Lauren.
Beside her stood a man Emily had never seen before—elderly, immaculate, wearing a three-piece suit with a gold pocket watch chain draped across his vest.
When Daniel saw him, his breath hitched in his throat.
"Uncle Arthur?" Daniel whispered.
May you like
Arthur Whitmore, their father’s estranged older brother—the man who had supposedly died in an offshore sailing accident fifteen years ago.
***
