Chapter 42 - The Monster in the Mirror
"Stay with me, Leah! Don't you dare close your eyes!" David roared over the roar of the incoming storm, ripping off his heavy flannel overshirt and wadding it tightly against the puncture wound just below her ribcage. The pressure made her arch her back and groan in agony, her breath hitching in a strangled sob.
He reached into his pocket with trembling, slick fingers, pulled out his tactical tourniquet, and grabbed the marine first-aid kit mounted on the cabin wall. His mind operated in a state of clinical dissociation—the same survival mechanism that had kept him alive when he was eight years old hiding in the basement closet while his mother threw crystal glasses at the walls upstairs.
He wrapped a pressure bandage around Leah’s midsection, leaning all his body weight into the wound. She screamed, a ragged, airless sound, and then her head fell limply against his shoulder. Her pulse was thready, fluttering like a trapped moth against her clammy carotid artery.
"Come on, breathe... breathe!" David grabbed the boat's VHF radio console. He switched to Channel 16, clicking the mic with a bloody thumb. "Mayday, mayday, mayday! This is vessel *North Star* at the Old Mill grain pier, Duluth Harbor! I have a female gunshot and stab victim with severe arterial hemorrhage! Infant abducted! Suspects armed and extremely dangerous! Send medical evacuation immediately! Mayday!"
Static hissed back through the speaker, distorted by the towering concrete silos of the mill. Then, a broken voice crackled through: *"...copy North Star... Coast Guard Sector Lake Superior... dis... patching units... ETA fifteen minutes... weather deteriorating..."*
"Fifteen minutes she’s dead!" David slammed the mic onto the dash. He couldn't wait. Evelyn was slipping into the night with Maya. Every second he sat here in the bilge of this dying boat was another mile his psychopathic mother put between him and his daughter.
He scooped Leah into his arms, ignoring the burning agony in his own shoulder where his muscles tore under her weight. He carried her up the slick companionway stairs onto the deck. The rain was coming down in diagonal sheets now, whipped by forty-knot gale winds off Lake Superior.
He kicked open the door of Arthur’s old Ford F-250 parked at the end of the pier, laid Leah across the passenger seat, and secured her with the seatbelt. He turned the key. The massive V8 engine roared to life with an angry, mechanical rumble.
As the headlights flicked on, cutting two bright yellow cones through the torrential downpour, David caught his own reflection in the rearview mirror.
His face was streaked with soot and Leah’s blood. His eyes, normally a gentle hazel, were wide, dilated, and rimmed with red veins of pure, unadulterated rage. For a terrifying, fleeting instant, he saw the exact same manic intensity that lived in Evelyn’s eyes.
*Blood never lies.* Her voice echoed in the cavern of his skull like a death sentence.
David jammed the transmission into drive. The tires spun on the wet gravel, spewing mud and broken stones, before gripping the pavement and rocketing the truck toward the harbor exit. In the passenger seat, Leah’s phone vibrated violently against the console.
David grabbed it with one hand while keeping the steering wheel locked with the other.
It was an unknown number. A text message. Attached was a live video stream link.
David clicked it with his thumb. The screen flickered to life.
It was the interior of a luxury black SUV cruising down a paved highway. In the background, strapped into an expensive rear-facing car seat, was Maya, wrapped in a fresh white blanket, sucking softly on her thumb. Sitting beside her, stroking the child’s soft cheek with the flat side of a silver scalpel, was Evelyn.
She looked directly into the camera lens, her mouth curling into a predatory sneer.
May you like
"Duluth Memorial Hospital is four miles south, David," Evelyn’s recorded voice purred through the speaker. "The road to the Canadian border is forty miles north. Let’s see which woman you love more."
***
