North Star

Chapter 16

Jack rushed out the door without telling his mother or kids where he was going. He didn't want to worry them not yet.

His phone was still in his hand, Elsa's name glowing on the screen. He tried to call her, his voice urgent as he started to say, "Elsa, I'm on my wa—" But the words caught in his throat.

In his panic, his grip slipped, and the phone fell from his hand tumbling into the gutter, swallowed by the rushing water below.

 Jack curse and threw himself into the car, breath sharp in his chest. The door slammed shut harder than he meant to. His hands fumbled with the keys. Then the engine coughed, caught, and roared awake.

He didn't hesitate. 

Shifted into gear. Hit the gas.

Not just rain sheets of it, pounding the windshield so hard the wipers couldn't keep up. His tires slipped, caught, squealed.

None of it mattered.

All he could hear was that scream raw, distant, too short. Not pain. Or not just pain. There had been something else buried in it, something deeper.

Fear.

The kind you didn't fake. The kind that came when you felt the air change in the room—when you knew you weren't alone anymore.

What the hell had she seen or heard?

His chest tightened as he pushed harder on the accelerator. He'd never heard her make a sound like that. Not even close.

And now God, now every second felt like a lifetime slipping through his hands.

He couldn't be too late.

He wouldn't be.

Jack slammed the brakes, tires screeching on wet pavement. He barely shifted into park before throwing the door open and spilling out into the mud, slipping but not slowing.

He reached the porch and froze.

The front door was wide open.

Not just open. Broken.

The doorframe was shattered, the lock ripped apart like it had been torn from the house with brute force.

His stomach clenched tight.

This wasn't some accident. Someone had forced their way inside.

The rain hammered down around him, but all Jack could hear was the pounding of his own heart loud and frantic in his ears.

A cold, sinking voice whispered through his mind: Too late................

Jack swallowed the panic tightening his throat. Can't think like that, he told himself. His eyes flicked around the porch, desperate for anything he could grab.