Chapter 12 - The Tree Line
"Hold it right there! Do not move!" a voice bellowed from across the courtyard, punctuated by the heavy pounding of approaching footsteps.
I didn't look back. I turned sharply away from the sedan, carrying my daughter into the narrow service gap between the greenhouse and the high brick perimeter wall. The ground here turned from stone to muddy gravel, overgrown with wild boxwood hedges that scraped against my trousers. Behind us, shouts ricocheted off the damp stone walls, but the dense shrubbery offered immediate visual cover from the open courtyard.
"Hold onto my neck, sweetheart," I murmured, feeling her small arms tighten around my shoulders as I broke into a steady, pounding jog along the perimeter.
"Are we playing a game?" she whispered quietly into my ear, her voice trembling slightly with the cold and the shock of the chaos.
"We're going home, honey," I said, vaulting a low stone retaining wall that separated the formal gardens from the dense, unmanaged timberland beyond the estate.
We crashed through the underbrush, dry oak leaves swirling around our ankles and brambles catching at the hem of her pink floral dress. I could hear the distant roar of a heavy vehicle engine shifting gears out on the county highway beyond the tree line—our only real window of escape before the estate's private security mobilized their vehicles to seal every exit lane within a five-mile radius.
My lungs burned with the cold autumn air, and the stiffness in my limbs from the long morning tension threatened to slow my pace, but every time I felt my footing slip on the damp earth, I tightened my grip around my daughter's back and pushed harder through the gray thicket.
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We reached a rusted wire fence marking the old property boundary. I grabbed the top strand, pulled it down with my weight, and hoisted my daughter over into the tall marsh grass of the neighboring acreage. I vaulted the wire behind her, tearing the fabric of my sleeve on a jagged barb, and kept moving toward the distant ribbon of asphalt where an isolated diner sat off the interstate, its faded neon sign flickering faintly through the gray afternoon haze.
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