Chapter 42 - THE FROZEN TRAIL
The smoke from the burning wreck rose high into the cloudless blue sky—an unmistakable beacon visible for twenty miles across the Adirondack foothills.
"We have twenty minutes, maybe less," Marco said, tearing the sleeve of his undershirt with his teeth to bind the puncture wound beneath his shoulder blade. He hissed in pain, his knuckles whitening as he pulled the knot tight. "Salvatore had sleeper cells stationed at every major junction between Westchester and Lake Placid. When that GPS signal went dark, they started rolling."
I wrapped Hope tightly inside my down jacket, pressing her against my chest so my own body heat would shield her from the sub-zero air. Her crying had softened into frightened whimpers. "Where do we go? We're fifty miles from the Canadian border and our car is a smoking crater."
"Off the road," Marco said, checking the tactical sidearm holstered at his hip. "Daniel had a fall-back site. Not the estate, not the vault. An old logging cabin off the contour maps, three miles west through these woods. No power, no cellular grid, no heat except a cast-iron stove."
"Can you make it three miles with that shoulder?"
"I don't have permission to die yet, Sarah," he replied coldly, though the pale sheen on his forehead betrayed his agony. "Vincent gave me an order: keep you and the child breathing. Now move."
The trek was a nightmare of endurance. The snow was knee-deep in the ravines, crusty on top and powder underneath, dragging at our boots with every step. I held Hope with both arms, my back aching fiercely from my recent labor, my breath ragged and short. Every snapped twig in the forest sounded like a cocked hammer.
Behind us, in the far distance, came the distinct, low thrum of twin-engine rotor blades.
"Chopper," Marco muttered, stopping dead beneath a dense thicket of old-growth pines. He grabbed my arm, pulling me deep into the shadow of the boughs. "Search pattern. Infrared."
"If they have thermal scanners, they'll see our heat signatures against the snow," I panicked, watching Hope's tiny clouds of breath vanish in the frigid air.
Marco didn’t hesitate. He knelt, scooping up double handfuls of half-frozen pine needles and wet dirt from the base of a tree, smearing it rapidly over the hood and back of my coat, then doing the same to his own. "Get down. Cover the baby with your stomach. Don't look up."
The helicopter passed directly overhead, the downdraft whipping the hemlock branches into a frenzy, showering us in freezing powder. Through the gaps in the evergreen needles, I saw the sleek black silhouette of a private chopper—no tail numbers, no civilian markings. A Syndicate death squad.
They hovered for ten agonizing seconds over the clearing fifty yards ahead, the thumping blades vibrating through my ribcage. Hope squirmed beneath me. I held my breath, praying with every shred of my soul.
May you like
Then, with a heavy tilt of its rotors, the aircraft banked hard to the east, chasing the road toward the burning wreckage.
Marco exhaled slowly, rising to his feet and pulling me up with his uninjured arm. "They think we ran downhill toward the river. We have ten minutes before they realize there are no footprints on the ice."
