Chapter 5 - Shadows in the Back Bay
The rain beat down like lead shot against the black asphalt of the alleyway as Maxwell lowered Eleanor and Sophie into the back of an idling, nondescript black town car parked illegally beside a dumpster.
Julian Vance—Maxwell’s loyal, battle-hardened chief of security—slammed the driver’s side door and hit the gas, sending the vehicle shooting out into the dark, rain-slicked streets of Boston before the hospital security guards could even reach the alley.
“Are you bleeding, boss?” Julian asked through the rearview mirror, glancing back at Maxwell, who was clutching a nasty gash on his forearm where glass had grazed him during the climb.
“Drive,” Maxwell spat, wrapping his handkerchief tightly around his arm. He turned his attention to the back seat.
Eleanor was kneeling on the floorboards, holding Sophie close against her chest. The little girl’s breathing was finally slowing down, the emergency pediatric dose of antibiotics Julian had smuggled into the car finally taking effect.
“She’s... she’s resting,” Eleanor whispered, her voice shaking uncontrollably as she looked up at Maxwell. Her clothes were soaked through, her dark blond hair plastered against her cheeks, but she looked like a war survivor who had just crawled out of a trench. “Max... where are we going? Every hospital in Boston is tied to the Callahan Trust. If we go to another medical center, Pendelton’s security will flag us within ten minutes.”
“We’re not going to a hospital,” Maxwell said, his voice cold and hard as iron.
“Then where?”
“To my father’s old boathouse on the Charles River,” Julian chimed in from the front seat, tapping the steering wheel. “It’s off the grid. Built before the smart-city grids were installed. No corporate cameras, no digital logs, and my team secured it an hour ago.”
Maxwell nodded, looking out the rain-streaked window as the neon lights of Back Bay blurred past them in a wash of red and yellow.
“My mother thought she owned everything,” Maxwell murmured, his fingers curling into a fist. “She thought her money, her trusts, and her lawyers could erase three years of my life and bury my daughter before she even learned how to walk.”
He turned to Eleanor, reaching out to gently brush a wet strand of hair from her forehead. She didn't flinch away. For the first time in three years, she leaned into his touch, her eyes swimming with unshed tears.
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“Max, they have the board,” Eleanor said softly. “They have the police connections, the judges, the media. How do we fight a fifty-billion-dollar ghost?”
“We don't fight her ghost,” Maxwell replied, his gray eyes flashing with a dangerous, brilliant light. “We dig her up.”
