2. Proof of Life
Chapter two
Proof of Life
The heat inside the truck cab pressed against the glass, threatening to bow the windows inward. I kept both hands splayed wide across my stomach, gripping the fabric of my sweater. I prayed for a flutter, a roll, any sudden movement to prove my baby had survived the smoke.
The truck’s tires dug violently into the deep ruts of the old logging road. Outside the passenger window, the mountain burned in jagged streaks of orange and black. Glowing embers hailed against the windshield. The wipers squealed, smearing the sparks into thick trails of gray ash.
“Hold on,” the man warned, his voice cutting through the roar of the flames outside.
The front tires slammed into a deep crater. My body jerked hard against the seat belt.
Instantly, a tight pressure clamped across my stomach. The muscles pulled so taut they squeezed the air from my chest. I gasped, curling my fingers into my soot-stained sweatpants as my belly grew rigid and heavy beneath my hands.
“Something’s wrong,” I choked out. I seized the edge of the dashboard, gripping the hard plastic until my fingers ached. “My stomach is cramping.”
The man pressed the gas pedal to the floor to clear a fiery ridge. He steered us sharply away from a collapsing tree line. “Where is the pain? Low in the back, or all over the front?”
“Right across the front,” I managed to say. I squeezed my eyes shut as the contraction peaked, suffocating and sharp. “It hurts. I can’t breathe.”
“Braxton Hicks,” he said. He shifted gears, his tone even and grounded over the mechanical scream of the engine. “It’s stress and dehydration. Give me four-count breaths. In through the nose.”
I shook my head, fighting a sudden wave of panic.
Between the smoke inhalation, the violent escape, and the memory of that cedar bench, my body was finally hitting its limit.
Chase had trapped me in a furnace. Now, stuck in the passenger seat of a stranger’s truck, I felt the terrifying reality of losing my daughter crash over me.
“She’s too early,” I cried out, bending forward. “We have to get to a hospital.”
“Four-count breaths,” he repeated, louder this time. He kept his eyes locked on the fiery road ahead, his hands steady on the wheel. “Breathe with me. In. Two. Three. Four.”
I followed his count out of sheer desperation. The blast of cool air from the dashboard vents hit my face, smelling strongly of burning pine resin.
“How do you know that?” I rasped. I exhaled slowly through my mouth, forcing my shoulders to drop. Gradually, the viselike grip across my belly began to loosen.
“I radioed a nurse when I pulled you out,” he said. He spun the steering wheel hand over hand as the truck crested the ridge. We finally burst through the wall of smoke, hitting a stretch of untouched forest. “Keep breathing just like that.”
Ten minutes later, the truck skidded to a halt in front of a secluded cabin built from raw timber and dark stone. The man killed the engine and rounded the hood in long strides. He pulled my door open, slid one arm behind my back and the other under my knees, and lifted me out of the cab.
He carried me up the wooden steps and crossed the threshold, kicking the heavy door shut behind us to cut off the howling roar of the distant fire. I blinked, momentarily stunned by the sudden quiet. The air inside smelled of old cedar, cool and clean.
Striding straight into the living room, he carefully lowered me onto a thick wool rug near the sofa. Desperate for the solid, unforgiving feeling of the floor beneath me, I sank into the heavy fabric, my muscles trembling.
Almost immediately, the snarl of an ATV engine tore through the silence outside.
Heavy boots hit the porch, and a woman shoved the cabin door open, bringing a gust of cold mountain air with her.
She carried a scuffed canvas medical bag.
Her weathered face was set in a look of total concentration, her steel-gray hair pulled into a tight braid.
She crossed the room in three strides, dropping the bag onto the rug right beside me.
“Wren? I’m Della,” she said, unzipping the bag with quick, efficient hands. “I delivered half the kids on this mountain. You’re in good hands. Look at me. Any dizziness? Blurry vision?”
“No,” I said, the words catching in my ash-coated throat. “My chest hurts. And I haven’t felt her move since the house.”
Della ignored the rising panic in my voice entirely. She reached into the canvas bag.
“You’ve been breathing ash and running on adrenaline,” Della said, pulling out a blood pressure cuff. “Your body is prioritizing your vital organs. Let’s find that heartbeat.”
The man stepped past me, handing Della a metal canteen. “She had a severe contraction in the truck.”
“I brought the IV,” Della replied, tossing a sealed bag of fluids onto the floorboards. “Lie back for me, honey.”
Lying back onto the wool rug, I stared up at the exposed log beams of the ceiling. Beside me, Della prepared the saline drip. She tapped the IV line and found a vein in the back of my hand with the practiced ease of a veteran nurse.
Then, Della pulled a portable fetal Doppler from her bag. She squirted the ultrasound gel directly onto my stomach. The icy shock of it made me gasp, piercing through the residual heat still radiating from my skin.
“Take a slow breath,” Della instructed, turning the dial on the device. She pressed the wand into the gel, moving it firmly across my lower abdomen.
A harsh hiss of static from the small speaker filled the room.
Five seconds passed. Then ten. Every second of near-silence made me hold my breath a little longer. I stared at the log rafters, my hands curled into tight fists, bargaining silently for a heartbeat.
“Come on, little one, stop hiding from me,” Della murmured.
Near the kitchen counter, the stranger stood still, watching the wand move across my skin.
Then, cutting through the hiss, came a rapid, galloping swoosh-swoosh-swoosh.
The sound echoed off the log walls, fast and strong. I squeezed my eyes shut. A hard sob escaped me, and hot tears spilled down my cheeks.
“There we go,” Della said, adjusting the wand to make the rhythm sharper. “One hundred and forty-five beats a minute. Strong and steady.”
“Thank God,” I whispered, the sharp spike of terror finally fading.
“She’s fine,” Della said, wiping the excess gel away with a clean towel. “You’ve got minor burns and a throat full of soot, but you are not in labor.”
“I thought she was gone,” I croaked out. “I thought he killed her.”
The stranger stepped forward. “He tried to.”
Della’s breath caught. Whatever he’d told her before, it hadn’t included the full story. But I remembered every second of it.
Chase had deliberately wedged that cedar bench under the iron handle. He had listened to me scream for our baby, and he had chosen the money. I stared down at the dark ash staining my hands. The memory of begging for my life on that porch already felt like it belonged to someone else.
I sat up slowly, pushing myself off the wool rug. The stranger had removed his canvas jacket and the rubber respirator. On the kitchen counter, next to a stack of topographical maps, sat the heavy-duty wildland safety camera he had worn on his chest harness.
“I want to see it,” I said.
He followed my gaze to the counter and shook his head. “You don’t need to see it right now.”
I wasn’t going to let him stop me. Seeing the video couldn’t possibly be worse than actually living it. “Play the video.”
Holding my stare for a long second, he walked over to the counter. He pulled the small SD card from the side slot of the camera and retrieved a battered laptop from a desk in the corner. Powering it on, he slotted the card in, then set the laptop on the coffee table and turned the screen toward me.
Della sat back on her heels. The three of us watched the screen in total silence.
The video loaded. The angle was slightly tilted, capturing the burning porch of my grandmother’s cabin. Through the small computer speakers, the distorted roar of the fire crackled into the room. Then, the brush parted at the edge of the tree line, and Chase stepped into the frame.
A wave of nausea hit me as I watched the crisp, undeniable footage.
It framed Chase from a distance as he looked through the doorway at where I was trapped inside.
His expression was locked in cold, terrifying concentration.
He dragged the heavy cedar bench across the porch boards, wedging it firmly under the iron handle of the door.
He leaned close to the glass pane. His lips moved as if speaking to me, though the camera only picked up the crackling rush of the flames.
Then, he turned his back, walked down the steps, and left me to burn.
The camera held steady from the trees as the SUV sped away, the frame finally lurching as the stranger broke into a sprint toward the porch.
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” Della whispered, crossing herself. “He trapped you.”
The video ended, freezing on the image of the barricaded door. I stared at the screen, my hands resting perfectly still in my lap. That small black SD card was the most dangerous weapon I had ever possessed.
Hours later, the wind outside howled through the pines, carrying the bitter scent of the distant burn line. The cabin was dark, illuminated only by the cast-iron woodstove and a single battery-powered lantern. Della sat at the dining table, organizing the remaining supplies in her canvas bag.
Holt walked across the room and turned on a small satellite television mounted near the corner window. He kept the volume low, flicking through the channels to check the local news for fire containment updates.
A static pop echoed through the speakers, and the screen flared to life. It showed a live broadcast from a police roadblock at the base of the mountain. Flashing red and blue lights illuminated the smoky night air. Chase stood in the center of the frame.
“Turn it up,” I said, pushing myself upright against the armrest of the sofa.
Chase had carefully curated his appearance for the cameras.
His expensive button-down shirt was dusted with ash, his collar unbuttoned, the sleeves rolled up.
He dug the heels of his hands into his eyes, forcing them to look red and exhausted.
Sienna stood tucked against his side, weeping into his shoulder, flawlessly playing the part of the ‘traumatized survivor’.
A local reporter held a microphone toward them. Chase spoke, his voice cracking with practiced, devastating emotion.
“I tried,” Chase said on the television, looking directly into the lens. “The smoke was just too thick. I tried to pry the window open, but the roof came down. I couldn’t reach her. She’s gone.”
I clenched my hands until my knuckles ached. I recognized that tone. It was the exact cadence he used to close multimillion-dollar deals at his firm. It was the voice of a man who believed he was the smartest person in the room.
Della let out a sharp breath, dropping a roll of gauze onto the table. She reached for her phone. “I’m calling the sheriff. That son of a bitch is going in handcuffs tonight.”
“No.” I swung my legs off the sofa and sat up fully. “Put the phone down, Della.”
Holt turned away from the television, his jaw tight. “Wren, that’s attempted murder. We have the footage.”
“And what happens when we hand it over?” I asked, my voice raw. “The police arrest him. Chase uses my money to post bail. He hires a lawyer who tells everyone that the fire was chaotic and that Chase just panicked. He walks right out of jail.”
I pressed both hands flat against my stomach, shielding the heavy curve of my baby. “He just locked us in a burning house. If he finds out we survived, he will come looking for me. He won’t stop until he finishes it.”
Della stared at me, her hand slowly slipping away from her phone. “So you just let him take the money?”
“I let him think he won,” I said. “If he thinks I’m gone, he stops hunting me.”
I looked back at the television screen. Chase was burying his face in his hands, soaking up the sympathy of the cameras.
“I’ll call my lawyer tomorrow and figure out how to ruin him,” I said, the deep, heavy exhaustion finally catching up to me. “But right now, the only thing that matters is keeping my daughter safe. I can’t exist.”
I leaned back against the sofa cushions, closing my eyes. “I’m dead.”