Chapter 30 - Black Water and Pine
By 11:15 AM, the sleet had coated the winding mountain roads around Lake Winnipesaukee in a slick layer of black ice. The Subaru crept along the unpaved fire lane, pine branches scraping against the doors like skeletal fingers.
Khloe hadn't spoken for an hour. Nathan was asleep again, nestled securely in his fleece blanket. Khloe had tied the baby wrap tightly around her chest, securing the child against her heart, her winter coat zipped up over him so only his tiny nose peeked out into the freezing air.
"Khloe," I said as I killed the engine half a mile from the coordinates. "You stay in the car. Catherine and I will go down to the water."
"No," Khloe said, her voice terrifyingly steady.
She turned to face me. The hollow, broken expression in her eyes was gone. In its place was something ancient, cold, and lethal.
"He thinks I'm a broken woman," Khloe said, reaching into the glove compartment and pulling out a heavy steel tire iron I kept under the registration papers. "He thinks because I didn't share his bloodline, this baby belongs to him. I carried this child through bleeding, through sickness, through every kick in the dark. I am his mother. And nobody takes my son."
Catherine watched Khloe from the backseat, a strange, unreadable shadow crossing her face. For the first time, Catherine looked intimidated by her sister.
"Anthony has two private security guards," Catherine warned, her voice barely a rasp. "They're ex-military. Armed with suppressed handguns. They won't negotiate."
"Then we don't negotiate," I said, checking my phone. The live feed from the boathouse showed Anthony checking his wristwatch. Isabella hadn't moved; the water beneath her chair was rippling in the icy wind blowing off the lake.
"We have forty minutes before his deadline," I said. "Catherine, you go to the front door. You pretend you came alone with the child. Khloe and I will take the maintenance slip around the water's edge."
"He'll shoot me on sight if I don't have the baby," Catherine countered, clutching her leaking wound.
Khloe reached into the back, grabbed the spare fleece blanket from the trunk, and rolled it tightly into the shape of an infant, swaddling it in an extra woolen beanie.
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"He won't know the difference from twenty paces in this fog," Khloe said, handing the bundle to Catherine. "You want to live, Catherine? You play your part. If you sell us out... I swear to God I will drag you into that lake myself."
Catherine took the decoy bundle. Her hands shook, but she nodded slowly. "Let's finish this."
