Chapter 2 - The Ambush
The men in the dark suits stared at us with cold, dead eyes.
They were clearly hired muscle, paid to make sure my brother-in-law’s mother finished her sick job.
My brother-in-law immediately stepped backward, shielding his newborn son with his own body.
His mother laughed from the hallway, completely confident that she had won the twisted game.
She ordered the men to take the baby and eliminate us permanently.
I knew we could not fight two armed men in a narrow hallway.
I grabbed the heavy bottle of liquid laundry detergent from the nearby shelf.
I hurled it directly at the head of the first armed man.
The heavy plastic jug struck him in the face, bursting open and blinding him with thick blue soap.
He screamed in agony and dropped his weapon to the hardwood floor.
My brother-in-law did not hesitate for a single second.
He kicked the heavy front door shut, slamming it violently into the second man’s face.
He locked the deadbolt and slid the metal security chain into place.
We were trapped inside our own house, but at least we had a momentary physical barrier.
The mother-in-law shrieked in anger and tried to run toward the back door to let them in.
I tackled her to the floor before she could reach the brass handle.
I dragged her kicking and screaming into the hallway closet and locked her inside from the outside.
She pounded her fists against the wooden door, screaming threats that echoed through the entire house.
We needed to escape, but the front and back doors were now completely compromised by the gunmen.
My brother-in-law looked at me and pointed frantically toward the basement stairs.
There was an old storm cellar door hidden beneath the back deck that they might not know about.
We ran down the wooden stairs in total darkness to keep the men from seeing our shadows through the windows.
The baby remained miraculously quiet, as if he knew our survival depended on his absolute silence.
We reached the rusty cellar doors and pushed them open just a fraction of an inch to check the perimeter.
We crawled out into the muddy grass, hiding behind the thick green hedges of the backyard.
We ran toward my old sedan parked on the street a block away from the danger zone.
I started the engine, praying the men had not seen our desperate escape.
We sped away toward the industrial park where my sister’s crash alert had originated.
The drive felt like an eternity of pure, unadulterated panic.
We finally arrived at the abandoned warehouse district just as the sun began to set.
We saw my sister’s car wrapped horribly around a thick concrete pillar.
Smoke was billowing from the crushed hood, completely obscuring the shattered windshield.
My brother-in-law leaped out of the moving car before I even put it in park.
He ran toward the wreckage, screaming his wife’s name with tears in his eyes.
May you like
He pulled the mangled driver's side door open with all of his adrenaline-fueled strength.
The driver's seat was covered in blood, but my sister was nowhere to be found.
