Chapter 8 - The Hostage
Pure, unadulterated adrenaline completely overrode the agonizing, sharp pain in my badly battered body.
David staggered to his feet and aggressively flagged down a passing local patrol car, commandeering the vehicle using his federal badge.
We left the violently burning wreckage of our SUV completely behind and raced directly toward Westbridge General Hospital.
The hospital emergency room was an absolute chaotic scene of screaming nurses and terrified, confused patients.
I completely bypassed the yellow police tape and ran blindly directly toward my mother's private, secure room.
The two private armed security guards I had personally hired were lying completely motionless on the hallway floor in pools of blood.
Their duty weapons had been violently stripped, and their communication radios were completely smashed to pieces.
I rushed frantically into the sterile room, finding the hospital bed completely empty and the heavy IV lines violently ripped from the monitors.
A single, highly visible bloody fingerprint stained the pristine white bedsheets.
Dr. Aris suddenly appeared in the doorway, shaking violently in absolute, unfiltered physical terror.
He stammered that Dana and Michael had casually walked in wearing stolen medical scrubs and carrying silenced weapons.
They brutally forced my frail mother into a stolen wheelchair and took her down the hidden freight elevator to the underground parking garage.
I aggressively grabbed the doctor by his coat and demanded to know the final results of the toxicology screen.
Dr. Aris confirmed with a trembling voice that my mother had incredibly lethal, toxic levels of digitalis in her system.
If she did not receive the specific chemical antidote within the next two hours, her damaged heart would completely and permanently stop.
Michael and Dana did not just kidnap her to use as a simple bargaining chip.
They were purposefully taking her away to a secure location just to watch her die.
David quickly accessed the hospital's internal security feeds on an abandoned nurse's computer station.
We watched the grainy, black-and-white footage of Michael roughly shoving my frail mother into the back of a dark gray van.
David expertly zoomed in on the vehicle's license plate, instantly running it through the secure federal database.
The van was legally registered to a dummy shell company owned entirely by Captain Ross.
Ross had not just been sitting helplessly in federal custody; he had been actively orchestrating this escape from inside his cell.
I realized with absolute horror that they were heading straight to the private, secluded marina on the very edge of the city limits.
Ross secretly owned a massive, deep-water yacht that could easily reach untraceable international waters before sunrise.
They desperately needed my mother's biometric thumbprint to fully unlock the offshore accounts before her heart stopped beating.
I forcefully grabbed the digitalis antidote from Dr. Aris's trembling hands and securely shoved it deep into my coat pocket.
David and I sprinted wildly back out to the commandeered police patrol car.
We had absolutely less than ninety minutes to find them and save her life.
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As we sped dangerously toward the marina, the police radio suddenly crackled to life with an emergency broadcast.
The frantic dispatcher announced that Captain Ross had just brutally murdered two federal agents and completely escaped the precinct.
