Chapter 6 - The Ghost Route
The highway was a void.
Claire gripped the oversized steering wheel with both hands, her bleeding knuckles white from the pressure. The truck’s heater blew lukewarm air that smelled of old dust and burnt oil, but it did little to warm the freezing cab.
Beside her, Eli had finally stopped crying. The rhythmic hum of the heavy diesel engine seemed to soothe the child, his tiny hand reaching out from the thick folds of her torn coat to clutch a silver button on her blouse.
Claire looked in the cracked side mirror every five seconds. Every set of headlights behind her felt like a death sentence. She knew she couldn't take the main interstate; Damian Cross's men would have cars monitoring the toll plazas and ramps. She had to take the back routes—the old industrial roads through South Chicago that were littered with abandoned steel mills and dark railyards.
Her phone was gone. The truck had no GPS. But Claire Bennett’s memory was a vault of mapped details.
For two years, as part of her risk-assessment duties for Kane Global, she had audited the fuel expenses and delivery routes of the company's inland transit fleets. She knew every side road, every weight-restricted bridge, and every unmonitored access lane between Hammond and the safe zones of Lincoln Park.
"Turn right on 106th," she whispered to herself, her voice raspy and strange in the small cab. "Cross the river at the turning bridge. Avoid the harbor security gate."
Her head dropped forward for a fraction of a second, her eyelids heavy as lead. Adrenaline, the cold fuel that had kept her moving for the past three hours, was beginning to burn out. Her left shoulder felt as though it were on fire, and the blood from her cut forehead was drying into a stiff, dark crust near her temple.
"No," she slapped her own cheek hard, the sting forcing a sharp intake of breath. "No sleeping. You don't get to sleep."
She looked down at Eli. The baby opened his dark blue eyes—eyes so shockingly similar to Gabriel Kane's that it made her heart ache.
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"Your uncle is going to be so mad about this truck," she whispered to the baby, a tiny, fractured smile breaking through her exhaustion. "He’s going to ask for three forms of documentation for the damage."
She drove through the storm, a solitary ghost in a battered white van, pushing through thirty miles of dark, dangerous territory to reach the only place she knew was safe.
