Chapter 4 - The Secret Ally
I stood shivering in the freezing mountain air while the wrecked SUV burned brightly behind me.
Without my phone, I had absolutely no way to access the cloud server containing the video evidence.
I needed an internet connection and a secure terminal before Arthur Vance realized the footage still existed.
I hiked ten miles through the rugged terrain until I reached the outskirts of El Paso.
The sun was just beginning to rise when I slipped through the back doors of the Children’s Hospital.
I stole a set of blue scrubs from a laundry cart to blend in with the morning shift change.
I navigated the sterile hallways carefully until I found Dr. Karina Sterling's private office.
She was sitting at her desk reviewing medical charts when I locked the door behind me.
She gasped in shock and instinctively reached for the telephone on her desk.
I raised my bruised and bloody hands, begging her to listen to me for just one minute.
I told her the entire truth about the money laundering, the corrupt FBI agents, and the framed assault charges.
She looked deeply into my eyes and saw the desperate, honest terror of a father trying to save his child.
She slowly moved her hand away from the telephone and nodded in agreement.
Dr. Sterling logged into her secure medical terminal and allowed me to access my encrypted cloud account.
I successfully downloaded the video file onto a small hospital flash drive.
I thanked her profusely and promised I would make sure the Vance family paid for what they did to Maya.
Dr. Sterling looked at me with a tragic, sorrowful expression.
She told me that child protective services had arrived an hour ago with a federal court order.
They had officially transferred Maya out of the intensive care unit and into state custody.
The state social worker who took her was accompanied by my ex-wife Veronica.
Veronica had legally reclaimed full custody using the fabricated story of my violent assault.
They were taking my battered daughter back to the exact same estate where she was nearly beaten to death.
I grabbed the flash drive and sprinted out of the office toward the hospital parking garage.
I hotwired an old pickup truck on the second level and sped wildly toward San Jeronimo.
I knew breaking into the heavily guarded Vance estate in broad daylight was practically a suicide mission.
As I drove down the highway, the truck's radio interrupted the morning music broadcast with a breaking news alert.
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The newscaster announced that Mark Vance, a violent fugitive, had just murdered three federal agents in a car crash.
The governor had officially authorized a state-wide manhunt with orders to shoot me on sight.
