CHAPTER 4
"She's calling the cops!" Lorraine barked sharply, pointing at my hands. "Take the phone from her!"
One of the security guards lunged forward, but I reacted on pure maternal instinct and survival panic.
I grabbed the heavy glass Chardonnay decanter off the marble counter and swung it with all my strength, shattering it directly across the guard's face.
The man stumbled back with a roar of pain, clutching his bleeding cheek as red wine and glass exploded across the white counter.
I bolted toward the guest bedroom, slamming the heavy solid-core oak door shut and sliding the brass deadbolt into place just as the second guard slammed against it.
"Caroline! Open this door right now!" Daniel shouted from the hallway, hammering his fists against the wood. "You are completely out of your mind! You can't win this!"
Inside the bedroom, I rushed to the window, looking down at the rainy streets of downtown Seattle twenty stories below.
My hands shook violently as I pulled up the Instagram profile of Sophie Whitaker—my seventeen-year-old daughter—staring at her bright, smiling face in the blue light of the screen.
She was currently attending a private tennis academy in Bellevue, completely unaware that the wealthy parents who raised her had purchased her like a commodity.
"I'm coming for you, Sophie," I sobbed silently, pressing the phone against my chest as the bedroom door frame began to splinter under the guards' heavy shoulders.
I opened the window leading to the narrow emergency fire escape platform, stepping out into the cold, pouring Seattle rain.
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Below me, the metallic stairs wound down the back alley of the high-rise building toward the street level.
As the bedroom door finally burst open behind me, I climbed over the wet iron railing and disappeared into the gray, stormy mist.
