Side Effects

Chapter 37

I think I was eight years old when my father was kidnapped down in Brazil while on a business trip. He got lucky, and they released him when they were paid the ransom they'd demanded, but he'd become paranoid about personal safety after that episode. Part of that paranoia included building a hidden escape tunnel from the basement of the manor in Greenwich to a maintenance shed on the property next just a few hundred yards away. That property just happened to be the Round Hill Club, a very private golf club whose members were almost all residents of Greenwich. Hell, my father was still a member, and he hadn't played there in years.

I'd been shown the tunnel one day when Anna was off to college, though I was sure he'd shown it to her too. The maintenance shed had a basement with all the pumps for sprinklers around the course, and in that basement was the corresponding secret entrance to the house. Did I use that entrance to circumvent the guards at the gate when I was a teen? Of course! The last thing I needed was them telling my father I'd snuck out to a party or to see a girl.

But today we'd be using the tunnel in a way that I'm sure my father hadn't suspected. Thinking of my father made me wonder what they'd be thinking of right now. I'm sure that over the last few days they would have heard the news about our jet and that me and the flight crew were declared missing. I knew Alaya was in a similar shape, with her mom probably being a mess thanks to the news. The sooner we had Anna and Ken in custody, the quicker we could let them know that we were safe.

The local roads in the area hadn't changed much in the years I'd been gone, but the growth of the trees made getting over the wall that bordered the golf course even easier. I parked the car where I used to as a teen, and even found the same tree that I used to climb to scale the brick wall. Several of the trees that were nearby had grown enough that it was more convenient to use them than the old one, and I quickly pulled myself into the lower branches, where it was easy for me to reach down and pull Alaya and Esme up.

"Do you want me to stay here, or go to the football field?" Viola asked as she was getting into the car.

I looked among the others, before I shrugged. "Stay here. I'll have Esme call you if you need to move." The football field was under ten minutes away, so we would have time if we needed her to move.

"Okay! Be safe!" she called out. I saw her turn on the emergency blinkers, and then sat in the car, watching us get up over the wall that bordered the course.

"Stay here in the tree, I'll get down and help you over," I whispered. One of the lucky things about this particular private course is that many members are like my father, and never actually play golf there. They just had the membership for an image, and the occasional party that was thrown there. So, it didn't take long for us to realize that even with the sun still up, there was still nobody playing golf within sight of us. I stepped from the tree to the top of the brick wall, and then crouched before dropping lightly to the grass below. Alaya followed right behind me and then Esme as soon as Alaya was out of my arms.

We were in.

"Where next?" Esme

I pointed to a small pathway across the fairway. "Right there. That leads to the maintenance shed. Are you ready?"

"Yeah, let's go!" Alaya said as she kept scanning the area for golfers. None of us saw any, so we quickly jogged across the expanse of green grass that separated us from the pathway. Once we were back in the trees, we slowed down with a collective sigh of relief. "Damn, that wasn't stressful at all!"

"This is one of the craziest things I've ever done," admitted Esme. "But think of the stories we're going to be able to tell in the future!"

"Let's make sure we have that future!" I pointed out.