Chapter 6 - The Long Way Home
The steel door swung open. Kira stood there, holding a heavy iron wrench in her hand, her eyes wide with shock and relief as she saw Dax and Rowan standing in the hallway.
"Are you guys okay?" Kira choked out, looking at the blood on their faces.
"We’re alive," Rowan said, stepping back into the room. She immediately rushed to the mattress where Wren was clutching her daughter tightly beneath the blankets, shaking violently.
"He’s secure, Wren," Rowan said softly, kneeling beside her and wrapping her arms around mother and child. "Arthur is restrained. He can never hurt you again."
Wren let out a long, ragged sob, burying her face into Rowan’s shoulder as the adrenaline crash swept through her body.
Dax knelt near the open medical bag, pulling out the portable satellite-linked radio unit they had brought down from the ambulance. With Arthur’s jammer broken upstairs when the power grid failed, the signal icon on the digital screen flickered back to life, showing two green bars.
Dax grabbed the microphone, his hand shaking slightly as he pressed the push-to-talk button.
"Dispatch, Medic 43! Emergency traffic! Do you copy?!"
Static crackled over the speaker, followed by the anxious, relieved voice of the main dispatcher. "Medic 43, Dispatch! We copy you loud and clear! What is your status? Sheriff’s units are entering the driveway now!"
"Dispatch, send every available unit and a heavy rescue team to our location!" Dax ordered, his voice echoing through the basement corridor. "We have secured the scene. Suspect is in custody, armed with a shotgun. We have two patients: a nineteen-year-old female post-parturient and a healthy newborn infant girl!"
"Copy, Medic 43! EMS supervisors and tactical response units are rolling to your position! Hold tight!"
Within ten minutes, the heavy thud of tactical boots echoed down the basement stairs.
A team of six county sheriff's deputies, dressed in full body armor with rifles raised, swept into the corridor. The lead officer, a veteran deputy named Miller, stopped dead in his tracks when he saw Arthur Pendelton bound on the floor, the shotgun laying safely in the corner, and the three paramedics standing guard over the basement room.
"Holy mother of God," Deputy Miller breathed out, lowering his rifle. "Medic 43... you guys took down the suspect alone?"
"He gave us no choice, Deputy," Rowan said calmly, stepping out of the room holding the baby wrapped securely in sterile thermal blankets. "We need a trauma transport gurney down here immediately. The mother is stable but needs full hospital admission."
As two deputies moved in to formalize Arthur’s arrest, hauling the groggy, defeated kidnapping suspect up the stairs in steel handcuffs, Deputy Miller looked at Rowan with profound respect.
"Rowan," Miller said quietly. "We ran the name you gave dispatch over the tactical radio... Elena Vance."
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Rowan stopped, looking up. "Did you reach her father?"
Miller smiled, his eyes wet with emotion. "Retired Detective Thomas Vance is being escorted by state police cruisers right now to St. Jude’s Medical Center. He’s waiting for her."
