Trapped in a Night Rideshare Driven by My Father-in-Law Heading Straight to a Dark Cemetery
👉 Previous Decision: You chose to leave Arthur in the car, steal the satchel, and run on foot toward the main highway to call the police.
Panic clawed at my throat. The approaching headlights spurred me on. I couldn’t risk being caught with Arthur, not if he was truly part of some sick scheme. My fingers tightened around the satchel.
I scrambled from the crashed car, my legs aching, and began to run. Two miles in the pitch black, through the woods and along the deserted cemetery road, before I reached the main highway.
A lone LAPD cruiser, its lights a distant beacon, slowly made its way down the road. I waved my arms wildly, my voice a ragged shout in the night. The car squealed to a halt.
“He tried to kill me!” I gasped to the officers, my chest burning. “My father-in-law, Arthur Pendelton. He’s at Pine Ridge Cemetery, crashed his car. He’s involved in organ trafficking, I know it!”
The officers were skeptical but followed me back. The crash site was there, the twisted metal of the transport vehicle, the broken fence. But Arthur was gone. The driver’s seat empty. The car’s trunk, which I hadn’t checked in my haste, was completely empty. No cryo-case, no other satchel.
A Metro Healthcare rapid response team arrived moments later, calm and professional. Their lawyers, already on the phone, presented a prepared statement. Dr. Reynolds, they claimed, had suffered a psychotic break. He had stolen confidential company files from a logistics vehicle while Arthur Pendelton, a long-standing employee, was simply performing a routine disposal run.
I was arrested on the spot for felony grand theft and computer trespass. The satchel I held contained nothing but innocuous hospital forms, its earlier contents gone.
Three days later, my lawyer posted bail. The cryo-preserved heart intended for Lily had, according to Metro Healthcare, exceeded its viable ischemic window. It had been destroyed.
I sat in a sterile holding cell, the police report clutched in my hand. Arthur Pendelton was listed as a missing person. My daughter’s last hope, gone. My distrust, a poison.
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