Chapter 1 - The Wreckage at Blackwood Creek
The rain swept sideways through the beam of Officer Natalie’s headlights as she pulled up to the washed-out section of County Route 9. Below the asphalt ledge, where the ancient metal guardrail had buckled like a strip of tin, Blackwood Creek raged against the steep embankment, swollen three feet above its banks by forty-eight hours of relentless autumn downpour.
Four miles from the quiet street where neighbors had already branded Andrew Miller a monster, Natalie stepped out of her patrol vehicle into the mud.
Down in the dark ravine, wedged wedged between two fallen oak trees and half-submerged in the rushing creek water, sat the crushed cab of a blue 2012 Ford F-150.
"Natalie! Over here!" shouted Deputy Miller, shining a heavy spotlight down the fifty-foot incline. "The truck hit the tree driver-side first before rolling into the creek bed! The driver-side door was pried open from the inside!"
Natalie scrambled down the slippery, muddy slope, her boots digging into the loose earth. The smell of leaking gasoline and wet rust hung heavy in the damp night air.
When she reached the cab, she shone her flashlight into the ruined interior.
On the passenger seat lay a crushed paper grocery bag from a local pharmacy. Inside the soaked paper were three plastic bottles of electrolyte solution, a box of children's fever reducer, and a prescription bottle labeled Ashley Miller — Amoxicillin.
The receipt was stamped with a timestamp from four days ago: Thursday, 7:42 PM.
Andrew had made it to the store. He was on his way back home to his sick daughter with her medicine and drinks when the storm had washed out the unlit mountain curve.
"He didn't abandon her," Natalie whispered, her throat tightening as she looked at the crushed steering wheel. "He was fighting to get home to her."
"Officer!" a paramedic called out from twenty yards downstream, where a thick thicket of wild blackberries clung to the muddy embankment. "We found something!"
Natalie sprinted through the mud.
Lying face down in the brush, half-covered by wet oak leaves, was Andrew Miller. His canvas jacket was shredded, his jeans covered in dried blood and river clay. His left leg was bent at a terrifying, unnatural angle where his femur had fractured during the crash, and deep gouges lined his hands from crawling up the rocky bank through the dark.
For four long days and nights, while suffering from severe internal bleeding, a shattered leg, and hypothermia, Andrew had been crawling through the mud toward the road, inch by agonizing inch, trying to get back to his seven-year-old girl.
The paramedic pressed two fingers to Andrew’s neck, his face pale under his headlamp.
"Weak pulse! Extremely faint!" the paramedic yelled. "Core body temperature is down to eighty-eight degrees! He’s in severe hypothermic shock! Get the backboard down here now!"
As the rescue crew strapped Andrew to the gurney, a small leather wallet slipped from his jacket pocket into the mud. Natalie picked it up.
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Inside, protected by a plastic sleeve, was a laminated photograph of seven-year-old Ashley smiling proudly on her first day of kindergarten, holding a cardboard sign that read: My Daddy Is My Hero.
Natalie gripped the photo tightly in her gloved hand as the ambulance lights flashed against the dark forest canopy, sirens wailing into the night.
