Chapter 5 - The Anatomy of a Sabotage
Mark dropped to his knees beside Lucy, his teeth chattering as he pulled out a small pocket knife from his jeans. With rapid, desperate strokes, he sawed through the tough nylon ropes binding her wrists and ankles.
"I'm sorry, Lucy... god, I'm so sorry," Mark wept, his warm tears freezing as they ran down his face. "I believed her. She showed me a letter in your handwriting... she said you took the emergency cash and left us..."
"She forged it," Lucy whispered, rubbing her raw, purple wrists. She pulled Toby tightly into her lap, wrapping her dark green jacket around his small body as best she could. "She's been embezzling from the restaurant chain for two years. When I caught her altering the supplier receipts on Thursday, she offered me fifty thousand dollars to keep quiet. When I refused... she hit me from behind in the dry storage room."
"We need to get out of here," Mark said, standing up and scanning the tiny, frozen room.
The walk-in freezer was eight feet wide by twelve feet deep. The walls were lined with heavy aluminum shelving units loaded with frozen poultry, beef, and industrial-sized cans of tomato sauce. Above them, the evaporator unit blew a continuous stream of freezing air into the space.
"The air vent," Mark said, pointing up toward the evaporator fan housing near the back wall.
"It's too small for an adult," Lucy said, her breath forming thick white clouds in the dim blue light. "And it leads into the main HVAC ductwork... it's covered by steel louvers."
"Not for Toby," Mark said, his eyes locking onto his seven-year-old son.
Toby looked up from his mother’s chest, his lips turning a faint shade of blue, his body shaking violently. "Daddy?"
Mark walked over to the shelving unit, grabbing a heavy metal spatula left behind on a prep tray. "Toby, look at me. Look at Daddy."
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Mark knelt in front of the boy, gripping his small shoulders. "I need you to be the bravest boy in the world right now. I'm going to lift you up to that fan unit. You're going to use this metal tool to bend the plastic vent blades, crawl inside, and drop down into the kitchen hallway. Then you have to find the emergency fire alarm on the wall and pull it. Can you do that for Mommy and Daddy?"
Toby looked at the dark, humming vent hood near the ceiling, then at his mother's frozen face. He swallowed hard, nodding his small head once. "I can do it."
