Chapter 15 - The Wilderness Flight
“Here I am,” I said, stepping fully into the living room with my hands raised above my head, my voice surprisingly steady despite the terror threatening to crush my chest.
“Let my mother go, Gregory. I’m right here; you don't need to hurt her anymore.”
Miller’s bloodshot eyes lit up with a terrifying, triumphant obsession as he looked at me standing fifteen feet away in the tactical smoke.
“Look at you... grown up into such a brave, beautiful woman,” he whispered, his lips curling into that same chilling smirk from my childhood photos.
“Keep your hands where I can see them and walk slowly toward the front entrance; don't even look at the federal agents.”
David attempted to lunge out of the stairwell to grab my waist, but Agent Harrison reached out and clamped a heavy iron hand onto David’s shoulder.
“Hold your position, son,” Harrison whispered into David's ear, his voice barely audible under the howling wind outside.
“If you interfere right now, she dies and her mother dies; we need to let him clear the threshold into the open tactical field.”
I walked slowly past Agent Harrison and the two armed Marshals, keeping my eyes locked on my mother’s terrified, tear-streaked face.
“I love you, Mom,” I whispered as I passed the brick fireplace. “Tell Dad that I love him too.”
Miller didn't release his grip on my mother's hair until I was standing directly in front of the heavy wooden front door of the cabin.
He slowly backed away from the hearth, keeping the shotgun leveled at Agent Harrison’s chest as he moved toward me with predatory grace.
“Open the deadbolt, little bird,” Miller commanded, reaching out with his left hand to grab the heavy canvas collar of my winter coat.
I reached out with trembling fingers, turned the brass deadbolt, and pulled the heavy oak door inward against the howling mountain gale.
The freezing, snow-filled wind blasted into our faces, instantly numbing my cheeks and whipping my dark hair across my eyes.
Before the FBI agents could raise their weapons to take a clear sniper shot, Miller shoved me roughly out onto the snow-covered front porch.
He stepped out behind me, using my body as a human shield as he pressed the hot, metallic barrel of the twelve-gauge shotgun directly under my chin.
“If anyone follows our tracks into the timber before dawn, I will leave her throat open in the snow for the wolves to find,” Miller shouted back into the cabin.
He slammed the heavy front door shut behind us, locking the federal agents inside the cabin for the few crucial seconds he needed to escape.
He grabbed my arm with iron force, dragging me off the wooden porch steps and plunging into the deep, waist-high snow drifts of the front yard.
We didn't walk toward the main access road where the federal vehicles were parked; instead, he dragged me straight into the dark, frozen wilderness of the eastern forest.
The blizzard was blinding, the swirling white snow making it impossible to see more than ten feet ahead through the dense pine trees.
My boots sank deep into the snow with every agonizing step, the freezing cold penetrating through my jeans and numbing my legs from the knees down.
“Where are you taking me?” I shouted over the howling wind, struggling to keep my balance as he pulled me relentlessly up a steep mountain ridge.
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“We are going to my winter camp, Sarah,” Miller shouted back, his breath pluming in thick white clouds in the freezing air.
“I built a warm little cabin up in the high timber three months ago... a place where nobody will ever find my little bird again.”
