Chapter 3 - THE HIGHWAY CHASE
The digital clock on the dashboard read 8:44 AM by the time we hit the state line into West Virginia. The morning sun was burning through the mountain fog, lighting up the green ridges in long, golden shafts. Emily sat in the passenger seat, her knees pulled up to her chest, her hands wrapped around a paper cup of black coffee we had picked up at a Texaco station twenty miles back.
In the extended cab behind us, Titan lay across a pile of old moving blankets, his deep, rhythmic breathing the only constant sound in the truck.
"Dad," Emily said, her voice small, cracked from hours of crying and the dry air of the heater. "He’s going to come after us. You don't know how Graham gets when he loses control of something. He thinks everything in Virginia belongs to his family's corporation."
"He can think whatever he likes, Emmy," I said, keeping my eyes on the rearview mirror. I had been checking the glass every thirty seconds since we left Charlottesville. "He’s a bully who relies on gates and servants to do his bleeding for him. When a man like that gets challenged by someone who doesn't care about his money, his first instinct isn't to fight—it's to call a lawyer or a fixer."
As if on cue, a dark shape appeared in the distance behind us. A black Range Rover with tinted windows and Virginia plates was gaining ground fast, its high beams flashing aggressively in my mirrors. It was moving at least ninety miles an hour, cutting through the morning traffic with a reckless, frantic energy.
"It's him," Emily whispered, her coffee cup shaking so hard the brown liquid spilled over her knuckles. "Dad, please don't stop. Don't let him pull us over."
"I'm not stopping, sweetheart," I said, my right foot pressing the accelerator down, the old V8 engine under the hood groaning as the truck shifted gears to climb the steep grade of Route 50.
The Range Rover accelerated, pulling parallel to my driver’s side window. The tinted glass rolled down, revealing Graham’s face. His hair was wild, his tie loosened, his eyes wide with a manic, unhinged fury. He was shouting something through the wind, waving a heavy piece of paper toward me—likely the marriage certificate or some legal document his mother’s firm had drafted before breakfast.
He yanked the steering wheel to the right, deliberately veering his three-ton luxury SUV into the side of my old truck. The heavy steel bumper of my Ford caught the Range Rover’s passenger door with a loud, grinding screech of metal on metal. The impact jarred the cabin, but my truck was built of thick, mid-century American iron; Graham’s fiberglass panels shattered, leaving a long, silver gouge down the side of his expensive vehicle.
"Titan! Alert!" I barked over my shoulder.
The German shepherd sprang into the window space between the seats, his chest expanding as he let out a series of deep, guttural barks that shook the glass. His teeth were bared, his eyes fixed on Graham through the parallel windows.
When Graham saw his own guard dog roaring at him from the inside of a rusted pickup truck, his face drained of color. The psychological shock of seeing his ultimate weapon turned against him made him hesitate. He slammed on his brakes, the Range Rover swerving wildly across the centerline before spinning into the gravel shoulder, its hazard lights flashing automatically as a cloud of white dust obscured it from view.
I didn't slow down. I held the truck steady at seventy-five miles an hour, navigating the twisting mountain turns until the dust cloud faded into the distance.
"He's done for the morning, Emmy," I said, looking over at her. Her hands had stopped shaking. She was looking out the back window at the dog, who had settled back onto his blankets, his chin resting on his paws like nothing had happened.
May you like
"Where are we going, Dad?" she asked. "We can't go back to your house in Columbus. That’s the first place his mother’s lawyers will look."
"We're not going to Columbus," I said, reaching into the glove box and pulling out an old leather-bound ledger. "We're going to the old K-9 training camp in Hocking Hills. The land is still under the police retirement trust umbrella. No corporate lawyer from Virginia can touch a square inch of that dirt without a federal warrant."
