Chapter 63
CHAPTER
SIXTY-THREE
Hudson needed a vehicle.
He scanned the service area and landed on a golf cart parked near the gardener’s shed. The keys had been left in the ignition—because who would steal a golf cart from a secure estate?
A desperate security agent with no other options, that’s who.
Hudson sprinted for the cart, climbed in, and turned the key. The electric motor hummed to life—quiet, but not silent. The security team would hear it soon.
He floored the accelerator, such as it was, and the cart lurched forward. Not fast—maybe fifteen miles per hour—but faster than he could run in his current condition.
The service road curved toward the main drive. Hudson could see the front gate ahead, closed and guarded. No way through there.
But he didn’t need the gate. He needed to get off the property, get to a phone, reach his team.
Hudson yanked the wheel left, sending the golf cart bouncing across the manicured lawn toward the perimeter wall. It was eight feet tall, stone and mortar, designed to keep people out.
Or in.
The cart hit a flower bed and nearly tipped, but Hudson held on, steering toward a section of wall where tree branches hung over from the neighboring property.
Behind him, security vehicles roared to life.
Fifty feet to the wall.
Forty.
Hudson heard engines gaining, shouts to stop.
Thirty feet.
He was going to make it. He had to make it.
Twenty feet.
The golf cart’s motor whined with the strain of crossing rough ground.
Ten feet.
Hudson stood up in the moving cart, balanced on the seat, and jumped as the cart hit the wall. His hands caught the tree branch, his momentum carrying him forward and up. The branch bent dangerously but held.
Below, the golf cart crashed into the wall with a crunch of plastic and metal.
Hudson pulled himself up into the tree, ignoring the screaming protest from his injured ribs, and scrambled along the branch toward the property line. Security guards reached the wall beneath him, but by then he was already on the other side, dropping into the neighbor’s yard.
He hit the ground hard, rolled, and came up running.
No phone. No weapon. No backup.
But he was free.
The world needed him.
And so did Natalie.
Her father pulled Natalie into a hug, and for a moment, he was just her father again—the man who’d comforted her through nightmares, who’d held her when her mother died.
“You’ll understand someday,” he said in her ear. “I promise.”
His words made no sense.
He was going to kill innocent people.
And not just kill them. He was going to kill them in a terrible, agonizing way.
How could he do this? How could he justify it?
She couldn’t imagine any reason why he’d be okay with this.
His actions didn’t line up with the man she knew and loved.
Before she could ask more questions, he released her and nodded to Dimitri. “Get her on board. I’ll be right behind you.”
Dimitri’s hand closed around her arm—not painful but firm and inescapable.
Natalie desperately searched the terminal with her gaze.
Surely someone would see, would help, would question why a woman was being forced onto a helicopter.
But the terminal was empty except for her father’s people. And they all looked away as Dimitri led her toward the aircraft.
Hudson, please be okay. Please find a way to stop this. I feel like I’m out of options right now.
She was trapped, powerless, being taken away from everything while her father committed an act of terrorism.
God, she prayed as Dimitri helped her into the helicopter. Please protect Hudson. Please stop whatever’s about to happen. Please let me be wrong about my father.
The helicopter door closed with a thunk, sealing her inside. Through the window, she saw her father speaking into his phone, his expression grim.
A few moments later, he pocketed the phone and climbed into the helicopter beside her.
“Let’s go,” he told the pilot.
As the helicopter lifted off, carrying her away from Norfolk, away from Hudson, away from any chance to stop Critical Mass, Natalie’s heart ached.
She’d never felt so helpless before.