Continue the story and find out what happens next.

-6-

The steam tunnels beneath Columbus were a forgotten city of brick arches, dripping condensation, and forgotten infrastructure. For over an hour, Leah crawled and stumbled through the dark, guided only by the small, failing beam of Mae’s penlight. Every movement sent waves of agonizing pain through her lower body, but the primal fear driving her forward acted as a narcotic, deadening the worst of the physical trauma.

In her arms, the baby had quieted down, lulled by the steady thump of his mother’s heartbeat and the rhythmic motion of her crawl.

“We’re coming up to the maintenance ladder,” Mae whispered, stopping before a vertical shaft that rose out of the brick floor. A rusted iron ladder disappeared into the ceiling overhead. “This leads up to an old brick storage warehouse on Front Street. It’s abandoned, but the back exit opens into an alley behind a 24-hour diner.”

Leah looked up at the vertical ladder, her arms trembling with exhaustion. “I don’t know if I can climb that with him.”

“You can, and you will,” Mae said, stepping ahead of her and testing the rungs with her weight. “I’ll go first and wait at the top to take him from you. Then I’ll haul you up by your wrists. Ready?”

Leah nodded, though her stomach churned with nausea. She tucked the baby securely inside the front of her oversized wool coat, buttoning it to the top to protect him from the drafts, and gripped the first cold iron rung.

The climb was an exercise in pure agony. Every pull of her arms strained her torn abdominal muscles; every step on the rungs sent fresh trickles of blood down her legs. By the time her head broke the surface of the warehouse floor, her vision was swimming with black spots, and the edges of her consciousness were fraying into a dangerous, cotton-wool haze.

Mae’s strong hands grabbed her wrists, hauling her the rest of the way through the floor hatch just as Leah’s knees gave out completely.

They collapsed onto the dusty wooden floor of the abandoned warehouse, panting in unison. Shafts of pale, pre-dawn light filtered through the cracked, grimy windows high above, illuminating the empty space filled with rusted shelving units and old pallets.

“We made it,” Mae breathed, wiping a streak of soot and sweat from her forehead. She unbuttoned Leah’s coat slightly, peering down at the bundle inside. The baby was sleeping peacefully, his tiny chest rising and falling in a steady, miraculous rhythm. “He’s a fighter, Leah. Just like his mother.”

Leah managed a weak, exhausted smile, leaning her head back against a wooden crate. But the relief was short-lived. A sudden, sharp vibration in her pocket made her jump.

It was her cell phone—the burner phone she had kept in her canvas bag for emergency calls to her estranged sister in Chicago, completely separate from the family plan Nathan controlled.