Private Investigator Near Me In High Speed Pursuit – Greensboro North Carolina
Chapter 4
The tires of my smoke-belching Corolla cried out in protest as I whipped the sedan off Rivermont Avenue and onto the entrance ramp for I-40, the blistered asphalt a black ribbon cutting through the inky Greensboro night.
My right foot leaden on the accelerator, I wove through the sporadic trickle of late-night traffic with reckless abandon, frantically making my way towards the decrepit Oakridge Lodge – the rendezvous point I’d urgently relayed to Franklin just minutes before. With each rushed mile that fell away, distant tendrils of woodsmoke and something more acrid rode the crisp spring breeze in through the cracked window, stoking an ominous unease.
As I merged off the interstate and onto the deserted stretch of Cornwallis Drive, a hellish amber glow began piercing the shadows up ahead, the roadside trees whipping into stark silhouette relief. Thickening plumes of charcoal colored smoke billowed upwards, backlit by smoldering flashes that could only be ravenous flames hungrily consuming what I feared was Franklin’s stately manor home.
Hurtling around the final blind curves, the full horror came into panoramic focus – the picturesque Brook Ridge estate was indeed fully enveloped in a pyromaniac’s delight. Ravenous licks of orange fire rapaciously lashed out from every arched window and embrasure. The searing heat and swirling smoke already caused the luxurious motor court’s stonework to blister and pop.
Fighting the crescendoing dread, I scanned the spectacle desperately seeking any sign of Franklin – or for that matter, any sign of Marissa and her deeply compromised political cohort, Peter Hardaway. Had their unforgivable greed and treachery finally climaxed in a burned-offering of Franklin’s life? The thought of my friend and client succumbing to their fiendish scheme caused my blood to boil.
I vaulted from the sputtering Corolla, its rattled steel gasping for mercy after my frantic, red-lined transit across town. My eyes instantly froze on an eerily placid scene, divorced from the maelstrom consuming the once-stately manor only yards away. There, stoically seated on an ornamental cast-iron bench amidst the conflagration’s throaty roar, was Franklin Calhoun, his ashen face agape in catatonic horror as agile flickers of amber light and inky smoke battled across his vacant stare.
“Franklin!” My voice was little more than a strangled croak over the demonic crescendo of crackling and snapping as the priceless 19th-century structure ravenously devoured itself. Bolt upright now, he turned slowly, his eyes finally focusing on me with a chilling look of resigned desolation etched on his sweat-streaked brow.
I had seen that emotionally disassociated thousand-yard stare before – it was the face of a man who had wandered too far into inconceivable darkness to ever find his way back to the light. My gut recoiled as the full gravity of the situation’s depravity washed over me like an ice deluge.
Chapter 5
Instinctively, I bounded towards Franklin’s catatonic form, the searing heat of the insatiable inferno now radiating in full-blast across my sweat-drenched skin. His slate eyes remained locked in a hollow, dissociative trance as I firmly gripped his shoulders, shaking him with escalating intensity to no avail.
“Franklin! Snap out of it! We’ve got to get out of here before the whole damned place comes down on us!” I hollered over the deafening roar.
After several futile attempts at rousing him, the pallid mask of despair finally cracked, his gaze refocusing on my sweat-soaked face with a fleeting look of frantic lucidity.
“She…she did this,” he stammered, every halting syllable dripping with disbelief. “My own flesh and blood. After everything…”
Another deafening concussion rocked the ground as a secondary explosion ripped through the eastern wing of the manor, a towering fireball of searing cinders and flaming detritus vaulting skyward. Instinctively, Franklin and I crumpled to the ground, shielding ourselves from the raining tsunami of scorched destruction.
“We don’t have time for this!” I shouted over the mounting maelstrom. “I need you with me here – we’re leaving, right now!”
Giving him a forceful shove towards the haphazardly parked Corolla, Franklin mercifully found his feet beneath him. But it was only once we’d hurled ourselves into the dubious sanctuary of the creaking sedan that he finally revealed what new depths of treachery this nightmare had plumbed.
“You don’t understand…” he wheezed as I cranked the balky ignition, the terror of his recounting dancing in the flickering amber lightshow. “They weren’t just trying to take everything from me financially. They…they set this whole place ablaze to erase…her. Any proof of what she’d become.”
I felt the blood turn to ice in my veins as Franklin’s abject despair morphed into harrowing realization, his tooth-gnashing anguish now overtaking any self-preservation instincts.
“My God…Lilian! They…they murdered my baby girl!”
The rending impact of his affirmation detonated within me like a physical trauma, the concussive force of its implication doubling me over as surely as any bludgeoning. In their escalating depravity to not only betray and defraud Franklin but to obliterate any potential obstacles, Marissa and Peter had apparently sacrificed the innocent life of Franklin’s beloved only child.
As the Corolla’s straining engine barked into life, I violently wrenched the gearshift into reverse, the tortured chassis protesting loudly at the notion of retreat from the smoldering Calhoun estate. But even before I could put the pedal down to make our final escape, the staccato bark of automatic gunfire erupted from the tree line off the main drive!
I slammed the rickety compact’s bulk speed in reverse, the fusillade mercilessly shredding the rear windshield into a million crystalline platelets as I fought to angle us away from the conefire of flashing muzzle lights stabbing out of the shadowy tree line up ahead.
With nowhere to safely maneuver, I had no choice but to send the sturdy Detroit relic hurtling directly towards the main wrought-iron entrance gates, the howling bullets tracking our every jarring inch of velocity. I braced for the terminal impact, silently praying the brawny old beast would hold together long enough for Franklin and I to pile through the main gate with whatever momentum remained.
The shattering report of compacted steel and glass exploded in my ears as the Corolla’s prow accordioned against the heavy metalwork with brutal force. I felt the air abandon my chest cavity as the relentless momentum whipped me violently against the useless restraints, the world flashing into tunnel-visioned kaleidoscope fragments for a sickening, isolated moment.
Then…silence and stillness.
The only sensations were the crackle of flames hungrily licking all around us and the taste of copper in my mouth from a violently lacerated lip. I blinked hard, trying to reorient myself back to the waking world even as the disassociative fog of shock set in. Only one instinctive thought brought me fully back into the fight:
Franklin.
I turned to see him slumped inertly against the shotgun door, a crimson leaf unfurling across the shoulders of his seersucker sport coat. Terror coursed through my veins as I pulled him upright to face me, his lower face an obscene rictus grin of shredded flesh and gritted teeth.
Somehow amidst the frenzied gunfire and the Corolla’s bone-crunching impact with the estate’s egress, Franklin had failed to clear the windshield bursting inward. My eyes traced the starburst of deep crimson that was blossoming through his once-immaculately pressed shirt and rapidly soaking the luxuriant fabric.
I felt for a pulse in the wasteland of his throat as Franklin’s head lolled obscenely against my shoulder, the unmistakable odor of evacuated bowels wafting up in the cramped confines of the shattered vehicle. He was fading, and fading fast – the artless butcher’s work of the gunmen had all but ensured that he would soon be reunited with his precious Lilian.
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