Chapter 5 - THE MOUNTAIN RETREAT
The white transport van rounded the sharp hairpin turn before the Chestatee Creek bridge, its high beams illuminating the guardrails. The driver tapped his brakes as the narrowing concrete approach came into view, completely oblivious to our presence.
"Mark," Roman spoke calmly into his throat mic.
Instantly, both of our Suburbans flipped on their high-intensity roof-mounted light bars. Blinding, surgical white light engulfed the windshield of the transport van. Roman slammed his vehicle across the bridge entrance, sealing off the front, while our secondary unit roared out from a hidden gravel embankment, cutting off their reverse lane.
The van's tires shrieked as the driver slammed on his anti-lock brakes, sliding to an abrupt halt barely fifteen feet from our front bumper.
"Federal compliance and civil protective order!" Roman shouted through his vehicle's PA system, his security team spilling out in full tactical gear, high-powered flashlights painting the van's cabin. "Turn off the ignition! Hands on the ceiling! Driver, kill the engine now!"
For five agonizing seconds, nothing happened. I stood behind Roman’s vehicle, my phone broadcasting a secure live stream directly to Marcus Vance’s office server in Atlanta.
Through the glare, I saw the driver reach frantically toward the center console.
"Driver is reaching!" a security operative barked.
Before the guard could retrieve whatever was inside the glove box, Roman stepped forward, leveled a non-lethal pepper-ball launcher directly at the side window, and fired three rapid shots. The driver's side glass shattered with explosive force. Clouded orange irritant filled the cab.
Both guards began coughing violently, throwing their hands out of the open window frames, gasping for air.
"Unlock the rear doors! Move!"
Roman’s men yanked the driver and passenger from the front seats, pinning them face-down onto the damp asphalt and securing them with zip-ties. Roman personally ripped open the rear cargo doors of the van.
Inside, coughing from the drifting irritant, a young medical orderly was cowering against the wall. And on the central gurney, strapped down with heavy canvas restraints, lay Damian Herndon.
My breath caught in my throat.
Damian looked nothing like the vibrant, smiling older brother pictured in the silver frames throughout the Buckhead mansion. His face was gaunt, his cheeks hollow, his skin an unnatural, pasty gray. His dark hair was matted with sweat, and his eyes fluttered beneath half-closed lids, glazed over from heavy pharmaceutical sedation. An IV line was taped to the back of his bruised hand, dripping clear liquid from a suspended plastic bag.
"Cut the restraints! Get that IV out of his arm!" I shouted, climbing into the rear of the van.
"Miss Wellman, let my medics handle him," Roman cautioned gently.
"I need to see him," I insisted, kneeling beside the gurney. "Damian... Damian, can you hear me?"
Damian’s head rolled toward me. His dry, cracked lips parted, releasing a low, raspy groan. He couldn't focus his eyes, but his fingers twitched weakly against the gurney mattress.
"Bri... Brianna...?" he mumbled, his voice thick with heavy sedatives.
"Brianna is safe," I whispered, gently squeezing his cold hand. "Brianna sent me to get you. You're out, Damian. Your father and brother are finished."
A single tear cut through the grime on Damian's hollow cheek. He let out a trembling, shuddering breath, his head slumping back against the pillow as our medical contractor stepped in to administer an emergency counter-agent to flush the sedatives from his bloodstream.
"We checked the transport manifest," Roman said, handing me a clipboard recovered from the passenger seat. "Look at this destination."
I looked down at the document. It wasn't an abandoned hunting lodge.
It was a private airfield in Cherokee County. Under the flight schedule was a tail number for a private charter flight departing at 4:00 AM, bound for a remote coastal town in Belize. Under passenger custody notes, signed in Elijah Herndon's unmistakable, rigid handwriting, was a chilling instruction: Patient to be transferred into permanent residential care. No repatriation authorized. Terminate all domestic records upon arrival.
They weren't just hiding Damian. They were deporting him permanently under a false identity. If we had waited even four hours longer, Damian Herndon would have vanished into Central America, erased from the world forever.
"Take him directly to Northside Hospital under Marcus’s private protective detail," I instructed Roman, my pulse pounding with righteous rage. "Register him under a Jane Doe protocol. Armed guards outside his room twenty-four hours a day. Nobody enters without my personal iris scan or Marcus’s authorization."
"What about these two?" Roman gestured to the two coughing transport guards on the ground.
"Search their phones. Back up every call, every text, every GPS coordinate. Then hand them over to the Georgia State Patrol along with the illegal transport manifest. Let Elijah Herndon wonder why his private flight to Belize took off with an empty cabin."
I climbed back into my SUV, watching the red taillights of the medical transport carry Damian safely toward Atlanta.
I checked the dashboard clock: 1:45 AM.
I needed to be back in my Midtown apartment before dawn. I had to shower, wash the smell of mountain rain and tear gas from my hair, slip back into my silk robe, and be sitting across the breakfast table from Gavin when his eyes fluttered open.
May you like
The monster was still sleeping in my bed, dreaming of my company's millions.
And I was going to serve him coffee with a smile.
