Chapter 353: I Can Hear Footsteps

The moment Lucas heard Rechelle’s voice, relief and panic hit him together.

She was alive. She could still speak. That much loosened something in his chest so fast it almost hurt. Then the rest of her words landed and the relief turned sharp. Masked men. A van. The gate. She was not calling to say she was fine. She was calling because the danger he had gone out to stop had already reached her door.

"Rechelle." His hand locked around the phone. "Are you okay? Where are you?"

"I’m~ I’m hiding," she stammered. "Upstairs. I locked the door. I don’t know what to do. Lucas, I don’t know what to do."

Her voice kept breaking between the sentences. Not loud. Not screaming. Worse than that. He could hear how hard she was trying to stay steady, and how badly it was failing.

In the front seat, the driver slowed down.

His eyes went to the mirror, then the road, then the mirror again. He did not know the full story, but he could hear enough to understand this was not a normal fare. One man in the back was speaking low and hard into a phone. The other sat beaten and silent, swollen face turned slightly away, body stiff with fear. The driver eased off the gas without fully meaning to, as if a quieter car might help him catch the words better.

Lucas noticed immediately.

All the frustration with no clean place to put it turned on the old man at once.

"Step on the gas," he snapped. "Be fucking fast."

The driver flinched hard. His hands jumped on the wheel. Whatever curiosity he had been nursing died under that voice. He faced forward and pushed the taxi harder at once, shoulders tight, jaw locked, mouth shut. The city began moving past the windows at a rougher pace. Buildings blurred. Gaps in traffic became things to take, not wait for.

Lucas brought the phone back to his ear.

"I’m on my way," he told Rechelle. "Don’t cut the call. Find the safest place in that room and stay there. Away from the door if you can."

A shaky breath came through the line. For a moment there was only that ~ the sound of her trying to control her lungs. Then her voice returned, thinner than before and edged with confusion.

"I thought you said you just wanted to stroll," she said. "Where are you?"

The question hit harder than she knew.

In her mind he was still nearby. A long walk. A few errands. Someone who could turn around and reach the mansion before things got worse. That belief had been holding a piece of her together since she first saw the van and the masked men stepping out of it. She had locked the front door and run upstairs on the strength of it. She had hit his name on the phone believing distance was not the real problem yet.

Lucas hated the answer before he gave it.

"I’m a bit close."

The words came out flat. Too flat. Whatever comfort they were supposed to carry died in his tone. Even he could hear it ~ the pause under the sentence, the lack of certainty, the truth he was trying not to say directly.

On the other end, Rechelle heard it too.

Her breathing broke almost at once.

She started crying into the phone, soft at first, then harder as the real meaning landed. He was not nearby. Not close enough to matter. The men outside. The locked upstairs room. The size of the house around her. And Lucas still somewhere too far to help. The sobs came through in broken pulls, raw and scared, the kind that made her words collapse before they finished. He could hear her trying to speak through them and failing.

"Rechelle." He forced his voice to stay firm even while something in him twisted. "Don’t cry. Keep quiet. I’m on my way."

She tried. He could hear her trying. The sobs shortened, caught in her throat, came back, then shortened again as she fought for a control she did not fully have. Somewhere below her, the dinner she never turned off was still burning on the stove, smoke rising through a kitchen she had left in a hurry. Outside, men who had already come through the gate were moving across the grounds with purpose. None of that could be fixed by tears.

In the front seat, the driver had heard enough.

The shout alone had done the job. He pushed the taxi harder, running red lights where the road opened, hands locked on the wheel, eyes fixed forward. No one had offered him extra money. He did not need it. The man behind him sounded like someone who would not accept delay, and the woman on the phone sounded like she was running out of time. Whatever this was, the old man wanted it far behind him as soon as possible.

Beside Lucas, Aaron did not move.

He did not speak.

He did not explain.

He did not dare offer a single word.

He only prayed under his breath, lips barely moving, eyes down, body pressed deep into the seat as if he could disappear into the fabric. Every sob from Rechelle’s end made him sink lower. He could feel Lucas’s anger without looking at him. It filled the back of the taxi like heat. If her voice stopped ~ if the call went wrong ~ Aaron knew there would be nothing left protecting him in this car. No confession. No usefulness. No second chance.

Through the phone, Rechelle dragged air back into her lungs.

For a few seconds there was only the rough sound of her breathing and the low rush of the taxi around Lucas. Then her voice came back, wet and almost gone.

"Lucas..."

"I’m here."

"I can hear footsteps."

The line seemed to thin around those words.

"Stay quiet," Lucas said at once. "I’m on my way."

Rechelle did not answer.

She moved immediately, dropping low and sliding under the bed as carefully as she could. The space was tight and dark. Dust brushed her arms. She pulled herself in fully, phone pressed against her chest to kill any leftover sound, and went still.

From under the bed, the house became only noise.

Footsteps.

A door opening somewhere along the hallway.

Another door farther away, tried and pushed.

She stopped breathing so she could track each one.

In the racing taxi, Lucas held the phone tight enough to hurt, listening to a silence that no longer felt empty. Aaron prayed harder without a sound. The driver ran another light without daring to look back. And across the city, under a bed in a locked upstairs room, Rechelle lay motionless while boots and door handles moved closer through the house around her.