Chapter 11 - The Escape and The Ambush
The rain was coming down in blinding sheets as I sprinted across the dark lawn toward the greenhouse.
The cold water soaked through my thin clothes in seconds, plastering my hair to my face. In my arms, wrapped inside two plastic garbage bags, were the complete municipal embezzlement files, the trust fund contracts, and Clara Evans’ diary.
I reached Kelsey’s small blue hatchback, hit the unlock button, and threw the evidence onto the passenger seat.
The engine turned over with a quiet purr. I slammed the shifter into reverse, spun around the greenhouse gravel path, and punched the code *9114* into the keypad at the service gate.
The iron gates swung open into the blackness of County Road 12.
I tore onto the two-lane asphalt highway, my wipers slapping furiously against the downpour. Des Moines was ninety miles southwest. If I could make it to the state capital before dawn, the Sterling empire was finished.
Ten miles outside Cedar Falls, where the cornfields stretched endlessly into the stormy horizon, headlights suddenly flared in my rearview mirror.
Bright, high-beam halogen lights. Gaining fast.
My heart leaped into my throat. I pressed the accelerator to the floor, but Kelsey’s four-cylinder hatchback couldn't outrun the twin-turbo engine of Brad’s black municipal SUV.
Within two minutes, the heavy SUV was riding my bumper, its steel grille filling my entire back window.
*CRASH!*
The impact jerked my seatbelt tight across my collarbone, sending the hatchback fishtailing across the slick road.
“You crazy bastard!” I screamed, fighting the steering wheel to keep from spinning into the flooded ditch.
The SUV pulled alongside me in the oncoming lane. Brad rolled down his tinted window, his face illuminated by the dashboard glow—a mask of pure, bloodthirsty madness. He swerved hard to the right, slamming his two-ton truck directly into the driver’s side door of my car.
The sound of shearing metal was deafening. Glass shattered, spraying my arm with shards.
My hatchback spun out of control, tires screaming across the wet asphalt, careening off the shoulder and plunging nose-first into a flooded cornfield ditch.
The car slammed to a halt in two feet of muddy water. The engine died with a hiss of steam.
Dazed, with blood trickling down my temple where my head had struck the window frame, I fought against the jammed seatbelt. Outside, through the cracked windshield, I saw Brad’s SUV pull over onto the shoulder.
His door slammed.
He stepped out into the pouring rain, holding a heavy tire iron in his gloved hand, walking slowly toward the ditch like an executioner.
“Megan!” he screamed over the thunder. “Get out of the car!”
Panic screamed in my ears, but beneath the panic was seven years of rural grit. My father had taught me never to corner an animal, and never to let an animal corner you.
I grabbed the utility knife from my boot, slashed through the jammed seatbelt webbing, snatched the plastic garbage bag containing the files, and kicked open the passenger door, tumbling out into the mud.
“There you are!” Brad roared, sliding down the muddy embankment toward me, raising the tire iron. “You think you can destroy my family? You’re nothing! You’re dirt from an Iowa cornfield!”
He lunged forward, swinging the heavy iron bar at my head.
I ducked, dropping into the mud. The bar whistled through empty air, throwing Brad off balance on the slick clay soil.
Before he could recover, I drove the steel heel of my cowboy boot straight into the side of his right knee with all the strength in my body.
There was a sickening *pop*.
Brad let out a bloodcurdling howl of agony, dropping the tire iron and collapsing into the knee-deep muddy water, clutching his torn knee joint.
I scrambled to my feet, covered in mud and blood, standing over him in the storm.
Brad looked up at me through the rain, his face twisted in pain and sudden, pathetic shock. The arrogant aristocrat was gone; beneath the expensive clothes, he was just a broken bully drowning in a ditch.
“Megan... please...” he choked out, holding up a trembling, muddy hand. “We can make a deal... I’ll give you half the trust fund... seven hundred thousand dollars... just don't do this...”
I looked down at the man who had struck me three days after promising to cherish me.
“I told you three days ago, Brad,” I said, my voice steady, cold, and clear over the rumbling thunder. “I’m not your maid. And I’m not your punching bag.”
I grabbed the tire iron from the water, swung it back, and smashed it through the front grille of his SUV, piercing the radiator with a deafening hiss of steam that killed his engine for good.
May you like
Then, holding the evidence tightly against my chest, I turned my back on him and began walking down the dark, rainy highway toward the distant glow of the state interstate.
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