Chapter 7 - The Ghost on the Dashboard
We scrambled into the icy interior of the Civic, the old engine coughing twice before turning over with a loud, rhythmic rattle that felt entirely too exposed in the quiet dawn.
I threw the car into reverse, checking the rearview mirrors for any sign of Arthur’s men, and pulled out onto the empty street without turning on the headlights until we rounded the second corner.
Leo sat in the passenger seat, wrapped tightly in his winter jacket, clutching his stuffed shark. He stared straight ahead through the frosted windshield.
"Mom?" he asked softly, his voice trembling. "Are we playing hide and seek?"
"Something like that, buddy," I lied, keeping my eyes fixed on the gray asphalt ahead. My mind raced through our options. We couldn't go to my apartment. We couldn't go to the hospital. And we certainly couldn't call the local police, who had long-standing financial ties to my family's real estate holdings.
There was only one person left in this city who owed nothing to the Vance family, and who hated my mother’s corporate empire as much as I did: Marcus Vance—no, Marcus Miller, my mother’s estranged half-brother who had been cut out of the estate twenty years ago after exposing a massive land fraud scheme.
I reached for my phone, plugged it into the dashboard aux cord, and dialed his number from memory.
It rang four times before a gruff, gravelly voice answered. "If this is a debt collector, lose the number."
"Uncle Marcus," I breathed, tears finally breaking free and spilling down my cheeks. "It’s Clara."
There was a sharp intake of breath on the other end of the line. "Clara? It’s five in the morning. What’s happened?"
"Mom hit Leo with her car last night," I said, the words tumbling out in a jagged rush. "She tried to cover it up, my sisters helped her, and now Arthur’s goons are trying to take custody of him. I have the video evidence on a flash drive, but they’re hunting us."
A heavy, furious silence hung on the line for three seconds.
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"Get off the main roads," Marcus said, his voice dropping into a cold, dangerous register. "Come to the old boathouse on Miller’s Point. Bring the drive. Nobody knows that place is still standing except me."
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