Chapter 6 - The Pawn and the MasterTHUD!
The wooden door of Room 404 shivered as a heavy shoulder slammed against it from the outside. The deadbolt groaned, wood splintering around the frame.
"Break it down!" a voice shouted from the hall.
I didn't panic. I couldn't afford to. Harrison had my mother, he had the money, and he had the power—but he didn't have the master override. And he didn't know that I was no longer the frightened girl who used to hide in her closet while his belt cracked downstairs.
I snatched my canvas backpack, shoved my father’s journal and the microSD card inside, and grabbed the heavy wooden chair from under the doorknob.
THUD!
The door frame snapped. A tactical boot kicked through the splintered wood.
I threw the wooden chair with all my strength straight through the glass window facing the rear alleyway. Glass shattered into a thousand glittering shards, raining down into the rain-slicked alley below.
I scrambled onto the windowsill, pulled my hood over my head, and leaped onto the iron fire escape ladder attached to the exterior wall.
"She’s on the fire escape!" a man roared from inside the room.
I slid down the metal ladder, my sneakers hitting the wet gravel of the alley just as two flashlight beams cut through the darkness behind me. I ducked into the shadows behind a dumpster, slipped through a rusted chain-link fence, and sprinted toward the town's train station.
Twenty minutes later, I was sitting in the back of a dimly lit passenger train bound for New York City.
I pulled my hood low over my face, hiding my bruised features from the few sleepy commuters scattered across the car.
In my lap lay my wallet. The one-dollar bill was drying now, crumpled and worn.
Harrison thought he had trapped me. He thought holding my mother hostage was his ultimate trump card. But Harrison made one fatal mistake: he assumed my mother was a victim who didn't know the truth.
I pulled out my phone—a cheap prepaid burner I had bought with twenty dollars given to me by Arthur right before our crash on the ridge (he had slipped his spare wallet into my coat pocket during the chaos).
I dialed a number I had memorized from my father’s secret journal.
The phone rang twice before a raspy, weak voice answered.
"Hello?"
"Arthur?" I whispered into the receiver. "Are you alive?"
A heavy sigh of relief echoed through the speaker. "Maya! Thank God. I managed to crawl down the embankment before Harrison’s men cleared the wreck. Where are you?"
"I'm on a train to New York," I said, keeping my voice low. "Harrison has my mother. He’s holding her at the Grand Paragon Hotel. He told me if I don't give myself up by midnight, he’ll kill her."
Arthur was quiet for a long moment. When he spoke again, his voice was dark and laden with tragic truth.
"Maya... you need to listen to me very carefully," Arthur said softly. "Your mother isn't Harrison’s hostage."
I froze, the phone pressed hard against my ear. "What are you talking about? I heard her weeping! She was terrified!"
"She wasn't crying because she was in danger, Maya," Arthur revealed, his words cutting through me like a razor. "She was crying because she realized you found the journal. Your mother wasn't tricked by Harrison three years ago. She was his accomplice."
The air left my lungs in a sickening gasp. The world seemed to stop spinning.
"No..." I breathed, denial fighting against the cold logic in my mind. "No, she loved my dad! She loved me!"
"She loved Harrison’s wealth," Arthur corrected gently, sorrow in his tone. "Garrett found out six months before his death that your mother was feeding Harrison internal technical documents from Aether Tech. When Garrett threatened to go to the FBI, Harrison and your mother engineered the lab explosion together. She signed over the patents voluntarily, Maya. She knew everything."
Tears spilled over my eyelashes, burning my bruised cheeks. Every memory of my mother—her soft voice telling me to be quiet when Harrison was angry, her turning her back while he beat me, her endless excuses for his cruelty—realigned into a horrifying picture.
She hadn't been a helpless victim. She had been a co-conspirator. She had let Harrison abuse me to keep me quiet, to protect her luxurious lifestyle and her share of the stolen fortune.
"Maya? Are you still there?" Arthur asked nervously.
I wiped the tears from my face with the sleeve of my black sweater. My trembling stopped. The sadness inside me withered away, replaced by an icy, blinding rage.
"I'm here," I said, my voice dangerously steady.
May you like
"What are you going to do?" Arthur asked. "You can't go to that hotel alone. It’s a trap!"
"It’s not a trap, Arthur," I whispered, looking out the train window at the approaching skyline of New York City, where tall skyscrapers pierced the foggy night sky like giant silver blades. "It’s an execution. And I’m bringing the axe."
