Chapter 8 - The High-Speed Run
The storm was unrelenting on the highway. Sheets of rain reduced visibility to less than fifty feet as Ethan pushed his heavy armored Range Rover through the dark roads at eighty miles an hour.
In the passenger seat, Claire breathed heavily through another wave of intense pain. “Ethan… he’s coming. I can feel it.”
“Hang on, sweetheart,” Ethan said, his knuckles white on the steering wheel as he navigated the slick asphalt. “We’re twenty minutes from the city.”
Suddenly, traffic on the highway ground to a complete halt near the Westchester border. Red brake lights stretched for miles into the darkness. A jackknifed tractor-trailer had blocked all four lanes.
“No, no, no,” Ethan growled, slamming his hand against the wheel.
With cell service still down due to the storm, they were trapped in a parking lot of frozen traffic.
Claire groaned in pain, squeezing her eyes shut. “Ethan… please.”
Ethan looked at the shoulder of the highway. It was narrow, littered with debris, and bounded by a guardrail. But his Range Rover had heavy-duty off-road suspension.
Without hesitation, Ethan cut the wheel, forcing the SUV onto the muddy shoulder, engine roaring as he bypassed the miles of stalled cars, throwing mud and gravel against the metal barrier as he sped toward the nearest emergency exit.
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He called Dr. Sterling’s private satellite line through the vehicle’s dash comms.
“Dr. Sterling! This is Ethan Mercer. Claire is in active labor—thirty-four weeks. We’re ten minutes from Westbridge. Have the trauma neonatal unit standing by at the ambulance bay!”
