Chapter 4 - The Hotel Sanctuary

I realized the police station was no longer a safe place for my family.

If the killer had access to my flight records, they could easily track me here.

I grabbed my mother's plastic evidence bag and walked quickly out of the morgue.

I collected Maya from the lobby and practically dragged her to the rental car.

I drove wildly through the city, taking random turns to ensure nobody was following us.

We finally checked into a cheap, cash-only motel on the outskirts of the highway.

I locked the heavy wooden door and barricaded it with the dresser.

Maya sat on the edge of the bed, eating a hot meal I had bought from a drive-through.

It broke my heart to see how fast she devoured the food, terrified someone might take it away.

I sat at the small desk and opened my mother's phone from the evidence bag.

I guessed her password on the second try, using my late wife's birthday.

I opened her text messages and found a thread with an unsaved number.

The messages proved my mother was being extorted by a highly organized criminal syndicate.

They had threatened to kill Maya if my mother did not deliver three thousand dollars every month.

My mother hadn't stolen the money out of pure greed.

She had stolen it to pay a ransom for a hostage who didn't even know she was a target.

I felt a sickening wave of guilt wash over me for wishing my mother dead just hours ago.

I scrolled to the very last message in the thread, sent just minutes before her murder.

The message read that the monthly payment was short, and the penalty was death.

I realized my mother was killed because I had secretly flown to Austin instead of sending the wire transfer this week.

My sudden arrival had inadvertently caused her execution.

Before I could process the crushing weight of that truth, someone knocked loudly on our motel door.

I drew the heavy pistol I kept in my travel bag and aimed it at the wood.

A voice called out from the hallway, identifying himself as Detective Miller.

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Nine years after a car bomb killed his wife

The day I went to the hospital to discuss ending my pregnancy

Nearly two hundred people watched me stand alone

I looked through the peephole and saw the detective standing there alone.

But in his right hand, he was holding a silenced weapon aimed directly at my face.