Chapter 8 - The Dealership
Claire parked the sedan behind a rusty, abandoned tractor on the edge of town.
She grabbed their duffel bag and her purse.
"Come on, Lily, we have to walk for a bit," Claire said.
"It's raining," Lily complained, shivering in her thin jacket.
"I know, but we have to be brave."
Claire took off her own heavy cardigan and wrapped it around Lily’s shoulders.
They walked a mile down the muddy shoulder of the road.
Every passing car made Claire's heart leap into her throat.
Finally, they reached a run-down used car lot surrounded by a chain-link fence.
A faded banner read "Crazy Eddie's Auto Sales - Bad Credit No Problem".
Claire pushed open the door to the small, smoke-filled office.
A heavy-set man in a greasy mechanic's shirt looked up from a portable television.
"Can I help you?" he asked, eyeing Claire's expensive, though ruined, gala dress hidden under her coat.
"I need a car," Claire said.
"What's your budget?"
"Three thousand dollars. Cash."
Eddie's eyes lit up with predatory greed.
"I got a '98 Honda Civic out back."
"Does it run?"
"Runs like a dream."
"I don't need a dream, I need it to get me across state lines."
"It'll do that."
Claire pulled a stack of hundred-dollar bills from Harris’s envelope.
She counted out thirty bills and placed them on the dirty counter.
"I need the title signed over, but leave the buyer line blank," Claire instructed.
Eddie raised an eyebrow.
"You running from a bad husband, lady?"
"I'm running from worse."
Eddie shrugged and snatched the cash.
"Ain't my business."
Ten minutes later, Claire and Lily were sitting in the battered red Civic.
It smelled of stale cigarette smoke and wet dog.
But it didn't have a GPS tracker.
And Evelyn's men were looking for a ten-year-old silver sedan.
"Where are we going now?" Lily asked, buckling her seatbelt.
"We are going to a place your daddy used to love," Claire said softly.
"The cabin?"
"Yes, baby. The cabin."
It was a small, off-the-grid hunting lodge in the Appalachian Mountains.
Thomas had bought it under a dummy corporation years before they met.
Evelyn didn't know it existed.
It was the only safe place left on earth.
Claire put the car in drive and pulled out of the lot.
She merged onto the highway, heading east toward the mountains.
She checked the prepaid phone.
It was 11:45 AM.
Fifteen minutes until the deadline.
Evelyn had not called.
Evelyn had not unfrozen the bank accounts.
Claire's jaw set in a hard, determined line.
She pulled the car onto the shoulder of the highway.
"Mom, why are we stopping?"
"I have to send an email, sweetie."
Claire opened the encrypted email application.
She attached the folder labeled 'Project Icarus'.
She typed in the email address of a Pulitzer-winning investigative journalist at the New York Times.
She had found his contact info in Thomas’s notes.
The subject line read: "Harrow Enterprises - Structural Fraud and Murder."
Her thumb hovered over the send button.
Once she pressed this, there was no going back.
The Harrow empire would burn to the ground.
But they would hunt her to the ends of the earth for it.
She looked at the bruises on Lily’s wrist.
May you like
She thought of Thomas, dying alone on a dark mountain road.
Claire pressed send.
