Chapter 15 - THE DEVIL'S RUN
I didn't think; I didn't breathe; I didn't wait for the police sirens wailing faintly in the far distance.
I sprinted down the stairs, flying over the steps two at a time, driven by pure primal maternal instinct.
"Nora, wait!" Ryan screamed behind me, clutching Lucas tightly to his chest. "Don't go out there alone!"
I didn't care.
My baby girl was in the hands of a madwoman.
I burst through the shattered glass of the sunroom, sharp fragments cutting through the soles of my bare feet.
I didn't feel the pain.
The freezing night air hit my face like a wet towel as I charged into the backyard.
The muddy grass was marked with deep, hurried footprints leading straight toward the dense woods bordering our property.
"Sophie!" I screamed into the darkness, my voice echoing off the pine trees.
A muffled cry answered from thirty yards ahead, deep within the tangled underbrush.
I threw myself forward into the thorny branches, brambles tearing at my nightgown and scratching my arms.
Ahead of me, a beam of moonlight pierced through the thick forest canopy.
Brianna was stumbling through the mud, her breath coming in ragged, wheezing gasps.
She was clutching my daughter against her swollen belly, one arm wrapped tightly around Sophie's torso.
Sophie was kicking her tiny legs, screaming for me with every ounce of breath in her lungs.
"Mama! Mama!" the little girl shrieked into the cold night air.
"Brianna, stop!" I roared, lunging through a thicket of blackberry bushes.
Brianna whipped around, her face twisted into a grotesque mask of sweat, mud, and madness.
She backed up against the rusted chain-link fence that separated our land from the old rock quarry.
Beyond the fence was a steep, sixty-foot drop onto jagged limestone boulders and stagnant black water.
"Stay back, Nora!" Brianna screamed, her voice cracking into high-pitched hysteria.
"Give me my baby, Brianna!" I begged, dropping to my knees in the wet muck, holding my hands out. "Take whatever you want! Take the trust fund, take everything!"
"You think this is about the money now?" Brianna cackled, a wild, unhinged laugh that curdled my blood. "You ruined my life! You put me in a cage!"
"You put yourself there!" I cried, crawling forward an inch at a time. "Please, she's an innocent child!"
"And mine isn't?" Brianna screamed, slapping her own swollen stomach with her free hand. "They were going to take my baby the second it was born! Evelyn told me!"
My breath caught in my throat as her words hung in the freezing air.
"What did you say?" I asked, keeping my voice low and steady.
"Evelyn," Brianna sobbed, tears cutting pale tracks through the grime on her cheeks. "She petitioned for guardianship of my unborn child! She was going to take my baby and ship me to an institution!"
Behind me, the sound of heavy boots crunching through the brush signaled the arrival of help.
Flashlights danced wildly through the trees, their beams slicing through the fog.
Brianna panicked, her eyes darting toward the steep drop-off behind the rusted fence.
"They won't take her from me," Brianna whispered, shifting Sophie higher against her chest. "They won't take either of them."
May you like
She turned her body toward the gaping hole in the rusted chain-link fence.
***
