Chapter 42 - The Safehouse
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"It's buried in a biometric safety deposit box at a private Swiss-affiliated bank downtown," I told her. "But we can't go near it yet. If Thorne has men watching the house, he has the bank under surveillance."
Julian arrived ten minutes later, pulling his battered sedan into the garage to avoid being seen from the street. When he walked into the kitchen and saw the grim expressions on our faces, he didn't ask questions.
"Pack your bags," Julian ordered. "Ten minutes. Essentials only. We need to get you to the safehouse."
"We don't have a safehouse anymore," I reminded him. "The feds burned our old locations."
"I never burned mine," Julian smirked, though there was no humor in it. "I kept a heavily fortified cabin up in the Adirondacks under a dummy LLC. It's off the grid, no smart tech, completely dark."
Amy didn't argue. She moved with ruthless efficiency, packing a single duffel bag of clothes, Frederick's favorite blanket, and my encrypted laptop. Within eight minutes, we were loading into the back of Julian's sedan.
I placed Frederick in his car seat. He looked up at me with wide, innocent eyes.
"Are we going on an adventure, Daddy?" he asked, his small voice breaking my heart.
"Yes, buddy," I smiled, fighting the lump in my throat. "A big adventure."
We pulled out of the garage. Julian drove with intense, hyper-vigilant focus, taking a maze of backroads and narrow alleys to avoid major intersections.
For the first twenty minutes, we seemed clear.
Then, as we merged onto the desolate stretch of the northbound interstate, a pair of headlights materialized in our rearview mirror. They were moving too fast, closing the distance with predatory aggression.
"Julian," I warned, gripping the door handle.
"I see them," Julian said, his knuckles turning white on the steering wheel.
May you like
The vehicle, a heavy, reinforced black SUV, suddenly surged forward and violently rammed the back bumper of our sedan. Amy screamed, instinctively throwing her body over Frederick's car seat to shield him from the impact.
"Hold on!" Julian roared, slamming the accelerator to the floor. The engine whined in protest as we shot forward, plunging headfirst into a high-speed pursuit in the dead of night.
