Chapter 14 - The Motel in Maine
We drove for six hours straight, avoiding every interstate, sticking to unpaved logging roads and back-country state routes through Vermont and New Hampshire.
By midnight, the blizzard had cleared, revealing a canopy of cold, brilliant stars over the coastal pine forests of southern Maine.
I pulled the SUV behind a dilapidated, neon-lit motel called The Gull's Rest. I paid the sleepy night clerk in cash from the stack of bills I’d salvaged from the floor safe, gave a fake name, and led my broken family into Room 14.
The room was warm. It smelled of cheap pine disinfectant and old cigarette smoke, but to us, it was a palace.
I sat Clara and Lily on the edge of the double bed, stripped off their filthy, soot-stained clothes, and ran a steaming hot bath. For the first time in five years, Clara washed her hair with warm water and lavender soap. She sat in the tub, splashing water over her knees, giggling quietly at the bubbles.
Lily sat beside the tub, holding a washcloth, carefully scrubbing the dirt from Clara’s elbows.
"You have nice eyes," Lily whispered to her. "Like Daddy's."
"You have nice hair," Clara replied shyly. "Like a princess."
In the main room, Maya sat on the edge of the mattress, wrapping a tensor bandage tightly around my fractured forearm. Her hands were still bruised, but her touch was steady and gentle.
"Does it hurt?" she asked softly.
"I can't feel a thing," I lied, looking into her face.
The years of trauma were etched into the lines around her eyes, but underneath the scars, she was still the woman I had loved on that hood of my Civic in Cleveland.
"What do we do now, Ryan?" she asked, looking at the titanium flash drive sitting on the nightstand beside the motel Bible. "Aegis has billions. They have politicians, judges, private military contractors. We can't run forever."
"We're not running," I said, leaning forward. "We have the files. We have the DNA logs. We have the addresses of every Aegis research bunker in North America."
I picked up the burner phone from the safe and dialed a ten-digit number from memory.
A number I hadn't called in eleven years.
The phone rang four times. Then a gravelly, exhausted voice picked up:
"Special Agent Marcus Hayes, FBI Civil Rights Division. Who is this?"
"Marcus," I said, my voice steady. "It's Ryan Vance. Ten years ago, you told me if I ever found out what really happened to Maya Lindsay, to call you directly."
A dead silence hung on the line for five full seconds.
May you like
"Ryan?" Hayes whispered. "Where the hell are you? The state police just found your house burned to the ground. They found three bodies in the wreckage. They think you're dead."
"I'm not dead, Marcus," I said, looking over at Maya and the two little girls laughing in the bathroom. "And I have the evidence that will put every executive at Aegis Neurological in a federal supermax for the rest of their lives."
