Chapter264 Followed

Chapter264 Followed
The night pressed down over the Prescott estate like ink, wrapping everything in silence.
Miranda dragged herself up to the master bedroom, felt along the wall for the switch, and clicked on the lights.
Warm amber light spilled across everything she knew.
The expensive custom furniture, the carefully arranged room.
Just no Clifton.
Even the air felt wrong without the clean, faint scent of him. There was only emptiness and cold.
Miranda sat down at the vanity and looked at the pale, exhausted face staring back at her. She reached for a cotton pad, soaked it with remover, and began wiping her face slowly.
The cool touch against her skin sent a small shiver through her, and then something gave way inside her like a switch flipping.
A single burning tear hit the back of her hand without warning.
It wasn't until that moment that Miranda realized her face was already wet.
Once the tears started, she couldn't stop them.
She let her hands drop and stopped trying. She just sat there and let it come, all of it, the worry, the exhaustion, the longing she had been pressing down for days.
Her eyes went red and swollen in no time at all.
When there was nothing left, and the feeling had settled into something quieter, she pushed herself up from the vanity and made her way to the bathroom.
She couldn't fall apart.
The Prescott Group needed her. The old man in the hospital needed her.
Most of all, she had to hold on until Clifton came back.
The hot water helped, washing away some of the weight.
After her shower, Miranda came back to the bedroom, turned off the main lights, and left only the small lamp on the nightstand glowing.
She lay down and reached out of habit for the other side of the bed.
Her fingers found something smooth and cool. It was Clifton's black dress shirt, left there from some forgotten day, draped across his side of the bed.
Miranda pulled it into her arms and held it close until she fell asleep.
--
The next morning, her body clock woke her on time.
She pressed cold water to her swollen eyes, put on a careful layer of makeup to cover the worst of it, got dressed, and went downstairs.
Same as every morning: she ate breakfast at the estate, then left for the Prescott Group.
The black Bentley rolled slowly through the wrought iron gate and merged into the city traffic.
Behind her, at the second-floor window of the main house, Celeste stood watching the car grow smaller and smaller until it disappeared entirely.
She raised her phone and let a slow, vicious smile settle on her face.
"She just left," she said to the person on the other end. "Go."
--
Miranda was about halfway to the office when she caught something in the rearview mirror.
Two black SUVs. Following at a careful, consistent distance. They had been there since she left.
She kept her expression neutral and pressed the accelerator slightly, picking up speed.
They matched her without hesitation, holding the same gap.
A cold feeling settled low in her stomach.
She was still deciding whether to floor it or pull somewhere crowded when the two vehicles dropped the pretense entirely.
One of them gunned its engine and surged forward, cutting hard around her side and slamming into position directly in front of her.
The other locked onto her rear bumper.
Boxed in. Front and back.
So they were definitely here for her.
Miranda's expression went flat and stayed there. Her hands stayed steady on the wheel as she looked for any gap on the right to break through, and activated voice control at the same time.
"Call Mia."
A mechanical voice responded from the speakers.
"Sorry, no network signal detected. Unable to place your call."
A signal jammer.
That left one option. Force her way through.
Miranda wrenched the wheel toward the right gap. The front vehicle anticipated it perfectly, sliding right to block her off before she had even committed to the move.
She tried twice more. Both times, shut down instantly.
Whoever these people were, they had planned this, and they were better drivers than her.
Then, on a stretch of road with almost no other cars, both vehicles braked hard at the same time.
The pressure closed in.
Miranda hit the brakes, tires screaming against the asphalt.
As the doors of the two vehicles began to open, she saw the gap, a fraction of a second, and floored it.
A heavy impact jolted the car so hard she lost the wheel. The front end veered sideways into the landscaping strip.
They had shot out her tire.
The seatbelt snapped her back against the seat as the car stopped, and pain bloomed across her chest.
Before she had taken a full breath, knuckles rapped sharply on the driver's side window.
Miranda looked up.
A man in a black suit, mask and sunglasses, stood outside watching her with no expression at all.
She locked the doors and kept thinking.
She could stay in the car for now, but they weren't going to walk away. They would break the window eventually.
Her only real option was time. Wait for another driver to notice, wait for someone to call the police.
The man outside seemed to read her.
He reached into his jacket and pulled out a window punch, pressed it to the corner of the glass, and struck it cleanly.
The tempered glass dissolved into a cascade of fragments.
He reached inside, unlocked the door from within, and swung it open.
The barrel of a gun pressed toward her face.
"Get out."
Two words. Flat. Final.
Miranda got out of the car.
The moment her feet touched the ground, someone grabbed her roughly from behind. A black hood came down over her head and everything went dark.
Panic rose like a tide. Her hands were wrenched behind her back, tied tight, and she was shoved into a vehicle.
The door slammed.
Miranda pushed the panic down and started to breathe. She focused on what she could observe: the direction of every turn, the time between them, the speed and rhythm of the route. She memorized it all.
--
At that same moment, back inside the Prescott estate, in the master bedroom.
Celeste was sitting comfortably on the sofa with a cup of coffee, watching a man type rapidly on a laptop he had set up at Miranda's vanity.
"Where are we?" She took a sip, unhurried.
"Done." The man adjusted his glasses and turned the screen toward her. Several chat windows were open. "I've sent messages from Miranda's accounts to the hospital and to her assistant Mia."
"The hospital was told she has an emergency board meeting today and won't be coming in."
"Mia was told that Prescott's condition has worsened and Miranda will be at the hospital all day. Mia is to handle everything at the office."
"No one will notice she's gone."
Celeste's smile widened. She set down her cup and walked over, studying the messages on screen with open satisfaction.
"Good." She clapped the man on the shoulder. "Well done."
Miranda, she thought, there is no way out this time.