Chapter 3 - The Flight Across State Lines
One hundred and fifty miles away, in a quiet, working-class neighborhood, Martha—Nick’s aging aunt—was nervously sweeping her front porch. She was a woman worn down by life, who had taken Nick in out of a sense of reluctant obligation after his parents vanished, only to watch him slip away into the streets when the house became too toxic to bear.
Now, sleek black sedans with tinted windows were circling her block.
Inside her small, cluttered living room, Nick sat on the edge of a sagging sofa, his backpack packed with the few clean clothes Valerie had bought him. He clutched an old, cracked smartphone—the very device that had captured Daniel’s voice threatening his son.
“Nick, you need to listen to me,” Martha said, hurrying inside from the porch, her face pale with terror. “There are men outside. Two men in suits. They asked if you lived here. I told them you were at school, but they didn't believe me. They’re watching the back alley, too.”
Nick’s heart hammered against his ribs. The streets had taught him one absolute law above all others: when the wolves start circling, you run.
“I’m not staying here to put you in danger, Aunt Martha,” Nick said, his voice hard, stripped of any childhood innocence.
“Where will you go? They’ll catch you before you reach the highway!”
May you like
“They won't catch me if they’re looking in the wrong direction,” Nick replied. Without another word, he slid through the kitchen window, dropping quietly into the overgrown garden behind the house. He scrambled over a rotting wooden fence just as the heavy thud of boots echoed against the front porch door.
He ran through the industrial back alleys of the district, his lungs burning with the familiar, metallic taste of fear. He didn't head for the bus station; he knew terminals were death traps covered in security cameras. Instead, he slipped into the open loading dock of a long-haul refrigerated transport truck bound for the city center. As the heavy metal doors slammed shut behind him, plunging him into freezing, pitch-black darkness, Nick pulled his knees to his chest and whispered a silent prayer that he would make it back to the only people who had ever looked at him and seen a human being.
