Chapter 4 - Echo Creek Road
Ten minutes later, while two hundred wedding guests were standing to applaud what they thought was the bride walking down the aisle, a rusted blue pickup truck borrowed from the catering dishwasher slammed into gear and sped out through the estate's rear service gate.
Julian drove, his knuckles white on the steering wheel, while Clara sat in the middle, holding Lily close in the passenger seat.
"Where are we going?" Lily asked softly, looking out the window as the manicured lawns of the Blackwood Estate faded into the dense, foggy pine forests of coastal Maine.
"To a place called Echo Creek," Clara murmured, stroking the child's hair. "A place where time stopped twelve years ago."
As the truck winding down the coast, Clara opened the locket again. She stared at the tiny picture of her mother. Memories flooded back—smells of lavender tea, the sound of her mother playing piano on rainy afternoons, and the sudden, terrifying night when state troopers knocked on their door to announce that Evelyn's car had plunged off the cliffs into the icy waters of Echo Creek.
"Why would she stay hidden for twelve years, Julian?" Clara asked, tears streaming silently down her face. "Why let me suffer? Why let me grow up thinking I was completely alone in the world?"
"Fear," Julian replied, glancing at the rearview mirror. He tapped the brakes slightly. "Clara... look behind us."
A black SUV with tinted windows had pulled onto the two-lane highway three miles back. It wasn't speeding up to pass them, nor was it dropping behind. It was maintaining an exact distance.
"Is that Richard's security?" Clara asked, her heart dropping.
"Could be," Julian said. "He must have realized we left the suite by now. Hold on."
Julian shifted into a lower gear and accelerated into the sharp curves of the coastal cliff road. The old pickup groaned, its engine whining under the sudden strain. The fog was rolling off the ocean fast, blanketing the dark asphalt in milky gray wisps.
Behind them, the black SUV flashed its high beams once, then sped up dramatically, closing the distance between them within seconds.
May you like
"He knows," Julian gritted out. "Hold on to Lily!"
The heavy bumper of the SUV slammed into the back of the pickup truck with a violent crash of crumpling metal. Lily screamed. Clara threw her body over the child as the truck fishtailed wildly toward the wooden guardrail, below which lay a sharp three-hundred-foot drop straight into the churning Atlantic Ocean.
