Chapter 5 - Trapped in the Dark
"How did you know I was here?" I breathed, my back pressing hard against the cold metal of the industrial shelving unit.
Rachel smiled, a tight, humorless curve of her painted lips. She stepped slowly into the unit, her heels clicking rhythmically against the concrete floor.
"Mark may be locked in a holding cell, Sarah, but he’s not entirely useless," she said smoothly, keeping the gun pointed dead at my chest. "He had a GPS tracker wired into the master keycard ring. When you swiped into Building C twenty minutes ago, my phone buzzed with the exact coordinates."
"You're insane, Rachel," I whispered, desperately scanning the cramped space for an exit, a weapon, anything. But the unit was a dead end. There were no windows, and the heavy rolling door was half-closed behind her.
"I'm practical," Rachel corrected sharply, stopping three feet away. "You should have stayed out of it, Sarah. You should have taken Emma and gone to live with our aunt in Ohio like I suggested three years ago. But no, you had to play detective. You had to go crawling to Baltimore to find Malcolm."
"Malcolm is going to tell the police everything," I lied, trying to buy time, keeping my eyes locked on the barrel of the gun. "The FBI already has copies of these files."
Rachel let out a soft, mocking laugh. "The FBI doesn't care about a local divorce dispute and some missing pharmaceutical stock, Sarah. By the time they sort through our corporate shell companies, you won't be around to testify. A tragic accident in a storage unit. A break-in gone wrong. It writes itself."
She raised the gun slightly, her finger curling around the trigger.
My mind raced. Every instinct I had as a mother—as a woman who had spent the last week fighting for her child’s honor—flared up with blinding fury. I wasn't going to let this monster win. I wasn't going to let Emma grow up without a mother because her aunt and uncle were greedy cowards.
"You think killing me will stop the investigation?" I challenged, my voice rising, steady and sharp. "Mark already turned on you, Rachel. In exchange for a lighter sentence, he gave the feds the master password to your Swiss bank accounts. They’re seizing your assets as we speak."
Rachel’s composure cracked for a split second. Her eyes flicked upward in genuine panic.
That single second of hesitation was all I needed.
May you like
I lunged forward, grabbing a heavy plastic storage bin off the metal rack and hurling it directly at her head.
Rachel shrieked, stumbling backward as the bin crashed against her shoulder, the gun flying from her hand and skittering across the concrete floor into the dark shadows beneath the industrial refrigerators.
