Chapter 5 - The Woman in the Shadow
The room was freezing.
A single bare lightbulb hung from a high concrete ceiling, casting long, harsh shadows across a small iron cot bolted to the floor. Sitting in the corner, wrapped in a thin grey wool blanket, was a woman.
Her dark hair was long and matted, her face terribly pale and thin, her wrist bound to an iron ring on the wall by a plastic restraint cable. But as she raised her head to block the sudden glare of the doorway lights, Lucas recognized those soft, brown eyes instantly.
"Lucas...?" she whispered, her voice barely a breath, rough from months of disuse. She blinked through the tears stinging her eyes, believing it was another hallucination brought on by the drugs they forced her to take. "Am I... am I dreaming again?"
Lucas dropped to his knees on the concrete, his hands shaking violently as he pulled a tactical knife from Captain Miller’s belt and sliced through the plastic restraint like paper.
"Clara..." Lucas wept, pulling her gaunt, shivering body into his arms, wrapping his heavy wool coat around her shoulders. "Oh God, Clara... it’s me. It’s Lucas. I’m here."
Clara buried her face into his neck, her hands clutching his shirt with a desperate, weak grip. She smelled of antiseptic and cold stone, but to Lucas, she was the only real thing in the universe.
"The babies..." Clara gasped, pulling back frantically, her dark eyes wide with panic. "Lucas! The babies! Victoria’s men came to the house in the woods three days ago! I managed to hide Lily and Maya in the root cellar, but they caught me... did Lily find you?! Did she make it?!"
"They're safe," Lucas promised, holding her face in his hands, kissing her cold forehead again and again. "Lily carried Maya all the way to the cathedral in the city. They're safe in a hospital right now, surrounded by fifty guards. They're waiting for you."
Clara let out a long, ragged sob of pure, unadulterated relief, her body finally relaxing against his chest as the terrifying nightmare of two long years finally shattered into pieces.
"They told me you were dead, Lucas," Clara wept into his chest. "Eleanor Montgomery came to my cell six months ago... she showed me newspaper photos of you and Victoria... she said if I ever tried to escape, she would kill our little girls..."
Lucas picked Clara up in his arms, standing up straight as Captain Miller stepped into the cell.
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"The facility is fully secured, Mr. Vance," Captain Miller reported. "We found ten years of illegal wire transfers from Eleanor Montgomery’s personal accounts directly to the hospital director’s private Swiss account."
"Keep the evidence intact," Lucas said, his eyes turning to steel as he walked toward the exit holding his wife. "And tell the marshals to prepare the arrest warrants. We're going back to the city."
