Chapter 5 - The Black SUV
Ethan killed the bedroom light.
“Stay down.”
Emily crouched beside Nora as footsteps entered the apartment.
Slow. Heavy. Unhurried.
Someone knew they were trapped.
Ethan grabbed the broken leg of a chair.
Emily whispered, “We should call 911.”
“I already did.”
A shadow crossed the hallway.
Then a man’s voice said, “Nora, you made this harder than it had to be.”
Nora covered her mouth.
The bedroom door pushed open.
Ethan swung.
The chair leg cracked against the man’s shoulder. He stumbled back, cursed, and drove Ethan into the wall.
“Ethan!”
Emily grabbed a lamp and smashed it across the attacker’s back.
He spun toward her.
For half a second, they stared at each other.
He recognized her.
That frightened her more than the violence.
“Don’t,” Ethan warned.
The man shoved Ethan down and ran.
Outside, tires screamed.
Police arrived less than a minute later.
Nora was taken to the hospital. Ethan gave statements until nearly midnight. Emily sat under a thin blanket in the back of an ambulance while a paramedic checked her blood pressure.
“You’re contracting,” the paramedic said.
Emily’s heart jumped. “What?”
“Not necessarily labor. Stress can trigger contractions. But you need to be evaluated.”
At the hospital, the baby’s heartbeat was strong. The contractions eased.
Ethan sat beside her bed holding her hand.
“I should have believed you without needing proof,” he said.
Emily looked at him. “You were handed a lab report that said the baby wasn’t yours.”
“I still saw doubt on your face.”
“So did I.”
He lowered his head.
Emily squeezed his fingers. “What matters is what you do next.”
A detective entered with a tablet.
“We pulled traffic cameras near Ms. Price’s apartment. The SUV was registered to a corporate security contractor.”
Ethan frowned. “Which company?”
The detective turned the screen around.
Cole Strategic Holdings.
Ethan’s family company.
He stared at the registration.
“My mother doesn’t control corporate security,” he said.
“Who does?” Emily asked.
Ethan didn’t answer right away.
Then he said one name.
“Grant Mercer.”
May you like
The family attorney.
The same man who had rewritten Ethan’s father’s will six months before his death.
