Chapter 2 - The Fake Ambulance
I stared at the deadly weapon pointed precisely at the center of my forehead.
Nathan slowly extended his empty hand toward me.
"Give me the journal and I might let you live to see tomorrow," he commanded.
I knew he was lying because our family never left loose ends.
I slowly raised the leather book as if I was going to surrender it to him.
Instead of handing it over, I threw the heavy journal directly into his face with all my strength.
The thick leather smacked against his nose, causing him to flinch and pull the trigger blindly.
The suppressed gunshot shattered the glass display cabinet right next to my shoulder.
I lunged forward and tackled Nathan fiercely to the hardwood floor.
We rolled across the expensive Persian rug as he desperately tried to aim the gun at me again.
I drove my elbow heavily into his jaw, instantly stunning him.
I grabbed the dropped journal from the floor and sprinted out of the study.
I ignored the shouts of the police officers in the living room and ran straight out the back door.
I vaulted over the garden fence and rushed toward my rental car parked on the street.
My only priority was getting to the city hospital to protect Claire from any more harm.
I drove recklessly through the empty night streets, breaking every single speed limit.
I slammed the brakes in front of the emergency room entrance and sprinted inside.
"My wife Claire was just brought in by ambulance," I told the triage nurse frantically.
The nurse typed her name into the hospital database with a confused frown.
"We have not received any patients by ambulance in the last two hours," she replied calmly.
I felt all the blood drain entirely from my face.
"That is impossible because I watched them drive her away from my mother's house," I argued.
The nurse called the central dispatch office to verify the transport logs.
She looked back at me with a genuinely terrified expression.
"Sir, there was no emergency vehicle dispatched to your mother's address tonight," she whispered.
I realized with pure horror that the paramedics at the house were completely fake.
Evelyn had hired her own people to pretend to rescue Claire just to get her away from me.
My phone suddenly vibrated in my pocket with an incoming text message.
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The message contained a single GPS coordinate and a chilling photograph.
It was a picture of Claire strapped to a surgical table in a dark, concrete room.
