Chapter 2 - The Flight in the Dark
Eleanor emerged from the cellar, shivering violently, but her face was set with absolute determination. The baby was tucked deep inside her parka, completely silent, as if he knew his survival depended on it.
“They’re looking for him,” Eleanor whispered, her eyes wide with terror. “Silas, if Maya is alive... why did she leave her baby in the snow? Why didn't she come to me?”
“Because she couldn't,” Silas said, moving quickly to his gun cabinet. He pulled out a lever-action hunting rifle and a box of heavy ammunition. “If the Blackwoods are looking for this boy, it means Maya is still trapped on this estate. She smuggled him out to save him.”
Silas shoved the ammunition into his pockets and grabbed two heavy winter cloaks from the wall hooks.
“We can’t stay here,” Silas said. “Marcus will be back. Once he checks the bridge and finds the tracks leading to my cabin, he’ll tear this place down. We have to move.”
“Where?” Eleanor asked, clutching the infant tighter. “The roads will be blocked by his security men.”
“There’s an old logging camp five miles deep in the state forest, off the Blackwood property,” Silas instructed, wrapping a cloak around Eleanor’s shoulders. “It’s abandoned, but it has a woodstove and dry firewood. I know the hunting trails. The Range Rovers can’t follow us there.”
They slipped out the back door of the cabin, plunging instantly into the howling blizzard.
The cold was agonizing. The wind whipped the snow into a blinding white wall, making it impossible to see more than ten feet ahead. Silas led the way, using his deep knowledge of the terrain to navigate by the shapes of the ancient pine trees and the sound of the freezing river.
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Eleanor followed his footprints, shielding the baby with her own body. For an hour, they pushed through waist-deep snowdrifts, their lungs burning, their limbs growing numb. Every time a tree branch snapped, Silas raised his rifle, expecting to see Marcus’s security team emerging from the dark.
But the storm was their greatest ally. It covered their tracks as quickly as they made them, erasing their existence from the Blackwood estate.
