Chapter 7 - THE BRACELET AND THE BLOOD
The shrieking of the fire alarm echoed through the hospital corridors. Strobe lights flashed blindingly white.
In the fraction of a second that Vanessa flinched, Luca kicked the gun out of her hand.
He didn't wait to see where it landed. He lunged at the man in the cheap suit, driving his elbow into the man's throat and throwing him through the glass door of the hospital room.
Luca grabbed Elena’s wheelchair. "Hold on!"
He sprinted down the hallway, pushing the chair through the chaotic stream of nurses and patients evacuating the floor.
He burst through the emergency exit doors into the alley just as Maria threw open the back door of the SUV.
"Mom!" Maria cried, helping pull the frail woman into the vehicle.
"Drive, Luca! Drive!" Elena gasped.
Luca slammed the car into gear, tires squealing as they tore into the street.
In the backseat, Maria held her mother, tears streaming down her face. "How did you set off the alarm?" Maria asked Luca over the roar of the engine.
"I didn't," Luca said, glancing in the rearview mirror.
"I did," Leo chimed in quietly from the very back row. He held up a red emergency pull-station handle he had ripped off the wall. "I sneaked in behind Daddy. You said we protect our family."
Luca felt a surge of overwhelming pride, mixed with terror that his son had been so close to the gunfire.
"You did good, buddy," Luca said thickly. "But you never leave the car again, understand?"
"Yes, Daddy."
"Where are we going?" Maria asked, bandaging a fresh scrape on her knee.
"To Captain Miller’s precinct," Luca said. "We have the photograph. We have Elena’s testimony. It's over."
But as he looked in the mirror, his stomach dropped.
Following them, running no headlights, were three blacked-out sedans.
"Hold on!" Luca shouted, swerving violently off the main road and down a narrow industrial street.
The sedans followed, accelerating. Gunfire erupted, shattering the back window of the SUV.
Maria shielded Leo and her mother with her own body.
Luca whipped the car into an abandoned shipyard, killing the headlights. He navigated blindly through a maze of rusted shipping containers, finally slamming the brakes behind a massive steel hull.
"Everyone out," Luca ordered, popping the trunk. "They have thermal imaging. The car is a target."
They spilled out into the freezing mud.
Elena couldn't walk. Maria struggled under her weight.
Luca scooped Elena up in his arms. "Maria, grab Leo’s hand. Run toward the old lighthouse."
They sprinted through the darkness, the sounds of car doors slamming echoing behind them.
They reached the base of the decaying lighthouse. Luca kicked the rotted door in, and they stumbled inside, barricading it with heavy rusted barrels.
Maria collapsed against the wall, panting.
She looked down at her hand in the moonlight streaming through a cracked window.
She was holding something.
In the chaos of pulling her mother into the car, she had snagged it on a door handle.
It was Vanessa’s diamond bracelet. Isabella’s bracelet.
But as Maria looked closely at it, her blood ran cold.
"Luca," Maria whispered, her voice trembling. "Look at this."
She held up the bracelet.
The clasp wasn't broken. It had a hidden compartment. And inside that compartment was a tiny, glowing red light.
"It’s a GPS tracker," Luca realized with horror.
Before he could throw it out the window, a megaphone crackled outside.
May you like
"Come out, Luca!" Vanessa’s voice echoed through the shipyard. "Or we burn the lighthouse down with you inside!"
TITLE: The Ticket to Nowhere
