Chapter 8 - The Tracker
I stared at the blinking red light, my heart sinking into the pit of my stomach.
My father had not just accidentally found us at the industrial park.
He had planted a military-grade tracking device on my youngest daughter.
I remembered taking Nora to the family pediatrician last week for a routine checkup.
The doctor was on my father's payroll, and he had embedded the tracker straight into the thick fabric of her coat.
I violently ripped the collar off the coat and threw the tracker out of the moving car window.
I knew that Dante and my father's hit squads were already closing in on our location.
We needed to abandon the stolen sedan and find an untraceable mode of transportation immediately.
I drove wildly toward the old rail yards on the edge of the city limits.
We ditched the car in a dark alley and sprinted across the gravel toward a slow-moving freight train heading upstate.
I lifted the girls one by one, tossing them safely into the open door of an empty boxcar.
Grace jumped in next, and I barely managed to grab her hand and pull myself up as the train accelerated.
We collapsed onto the wooden floor of the dark train car, exhausted and completely out of breath.
Grace opened her medical kit and began stitching the torn flesh of my bleeding shoulder without any anesthesia.
I gritted my teeth against the agonizing pain, watching my daughters huddle together in the corner.
I told Grace that I was ready to turn myself in and testify against my father in exchange for their safety.
She promised me that the FBI would place all of us in the highest level of the witness protection program.
We shared a brief, quiet moment of genuine trust in the freezing darkness of the train.
Suddenly, a high-caliber sniper bullet punched straight through the metal wall of the boxcar.
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The deafening crack echoed loudly as the bullet struck Grace squarely in the chest.
She was thrown backward, collapsing onto the floor in a massive pool of spreading blood.
