Chapter 17 - The Storm over Waukegan
The sky over Lake Michigan had turned the color of bruised iron as the summer storm rolled in. Lightning splintered across the dark horizon, illuminating the isolated runway of the Waukegan private airfield.
Julian’s SUV blasted through the unmanned security gate, splintering the wooden barrier into kindling.
At the far end of the runway, a sleek Gulfstream private jet sat with its twin turbines whining, building up thrust. Parked beside the jet was a mobile pediatric life-support ambulance.
"There!" I shouted, pointing through the rain-lashed windshield.
Julian slammed his foot on the accelerator. The SUV surged across the wet tarmac, cutting across the runway diagonally to block the jet’s takeoff path.
The jet’s cockpit lights illuminated our car as Julian pulled a hard handbrake turn, sliding the vehicle sideways across the center line, fifty yards ahead of the aircraft's nose.
The jet's engines suddenly throttled down.
From the open hangar beside the runway, figures emerged.
Adrian Vance stepped out into the pouring rain, wearing a long trench coat, surrounded by three armed private security guards. Behind him, being wheeled by a terrified nurse, was a pediatric mobile stretcher carrying a pale, fragile little boy with oxygen tubes hooked to his nose.
Little Leo. The boy whose chest contained Chloe's heartbeat.
My breath hitched in my throat. My hands gripped the dashboard.
"Clara, stay in the car," Julian commanded, drawing a licensed firearm from his holster—a side of the polished attorney I had never seen before. "The police are two minutes out."
"No," I said, throwing my door open into the roaring storm. "I am not staying in the car."
I stepped out onto the soaked tarmac. The wind whipped my wet hair across my face, the freezing rain drenching my clothes in seconds.
Vance saw me. His face contorted with unadulterated madness.
"You just don't know when to die, do you, Clara?!" Vance roared over the howl of the storm, gesturing violently with his cane. "You lost your daughter! Accept it! You were meant to lose!"
"You stole her, Adrian!" I walked steadily toward him, closing the distance, unafraid of the armed men flanking him. "You stole a child's life to buy your family an extra few years of stolen breath! Look at your grandson! Look at him!"
The little boy on the stretcher stirred, looking up weakly with wide, innocent brown eyes. He had no idea what crimes had been committed to keep him alive. He was just a child, frightened by the lightning and the screaming men.
"He is my legacy!" Vance screamed, his voice breaking into hysterical rage. "He is the continuation of the Vance name! What was your daughter? The offspring of a bankrupt coward and a shopkeeper’s girl!"
"She was my whole world," I whispered, though my voice carried through the rain with the weight of an executioner's blade.
Sirens wailed in the distance—dozens of them, approaching like an incoming tidal wave. Blue and red lights reflected off the low-hanging storm clouds.
Vance’s security guards looked at each other, panic spreading across their faces.
"Dr. Vance, we have to board now!" the lead guard shouted, lowering his weapon. "The feds are on the airfield perimeter!"
"Shoot them!" Vance ordered, pointing his trembling cane at Julian and me. "Shoot them both and get the boy on the plane!"
The guard threw his gun onto the wet tarmac. "I'm not doing twenty years for capital murder. We're done."
The guards turned and fled toward the back perimeter fences, leaving Vance alone in the rain with the nurse and the stretcher.
Vance watched his paid mercenaries run. A guttural, animalistic shriek ripped from his throat.
He lunged toward the stretcher, grabbing the emergency brake release, trying to manually push the heavy medical bed up the jet's boarding ramp himself.
"Leo! We're leaving! We're leaving now!" Vance screamed, pulling at the steel frame.
"Adrian, stop!" I lunged forward, grabbing the front handle of the stretcher, planting my feet into the slippery asphalt. "Look at him! You're disconnecting his monitors! You're going to kill him!"
The cardiac monitor on the stretcher began to beep frantically. Leo began to wheeze, his small hands clutching at the blankets, crying out in terror.
"Let go of him!" Vance shrieked, raising his heavy silver-headed cane and bringing it down toward my head.
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Julian stepped in, catching the cane with his bare left forearm. The wood cracked against his bone with a sickening thud, but Julian didn't flinch. With his right hand, Julian delivered a single, crushing blow straight to Vance’s jaw.
Vance spun and collapsed onto the soaked tarmac, skidding several feet into a puddle of rainwater, his cane clattering away into the darkness.
