Chapter 7 - The Voice from the Grave
The sound of my dead wife's voice completely paralyzed me.
I stopped breathing as the impossible reality crashed down around me.
Sarah asked me if I liked the little game she had set up for me in Dallas.
I screamed into the phone, demanding to know why she had faked her death and abandoned our daughter to starve.
She laughed, a cold, mechanical sound that I had never heard from her before.
She explained that she needed to disappear to take over her father's criminal empire.
A dying housewife with medical debt was the perfect cover for a permanent exit.
She had paid my mother to keep Maya miserable so that I would eventually snap and return to Austin.
The entire tragedy of our family was nothing but a masterfully orchestrated stage play.
Sarah told me to look out the window of the rusted train car.
I slowly peered through the broken glass into the dark, moonlit forest.
Dozens of tactical laser sights suddenly appeared, painting the walls of the train car in bright red dots.
We were completely surrounded by heavily armed mercenaries.
Sarah's voice crackled through the phone, completely devoid of any maternal love or human warmth.
She offered me a terrifying choice to end the night.
I could walk out of the train car alone and surrender myself to her men.
If I did that, she would let Maya live and place her in a luxury boarding school.
If I refused, they would simply blow the entire train car to pieces with us inside.
I looked down at my terrified daughter, realizing I had failed her in every possible way.
I kissed her forehead and told her to close her eyes and count to one hundred.
I stood up, dropped my empty pistol on the floor, and prepared to walk out the door to my death.
Suddenly, a massive explosion rocked the forest, but it didn't hit our train car.
The explosion completely obliterated the mercenary transport vehicles parked on the access road.
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A voice boomed over a hidden loudspeaker, echoing through the burning trees.
The voice belonged to my mother, Evelyn, ordering her own men to wipe out Sarah's hit squad.
