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But he was relieved that they were at least leaving Bridell themselves as the three SUVs, with the middle SUV housing the boss and his wife, formed a convoy to the airfield. Max, in the middle SUV, was riding shotgun beside Ed on the front seat, small-talking with him, while the other two SUVs were traveling front and back of the central vehicle. Joy sat quietly on one side of the back row, while William sat quietly on the other side. It wasn’t a tense quiet, but a somber one.

Joy was looking out of her side window as they rode through the streets of her hometown for what could very well be the last time. It was already painful there. It was too painful now.

But William wasn’t looking out of his window. He was looking at Joy. Because he knew her, and he knew she was blaming herself. He knew what had to have been going through her mind.

It took some time, but she finally verbalized it. “None of this would have happened if it wasn’t for me.”

William wanted to interrupt her right then and there and tell her how none of this was her fault, but he knew it would do no good. If Joynetta was anything, she was an honest young lady. She called a spade a spade even if she was the spade that needed to be called out. He let her talk.

“Everybody that I know in Bridell, they all seem so content. Even Gramps wouldn’t leave when we offered him the world. He didn’t want the world. He wanted to stay right here in Bridell.”

She looked at William. Her big, doleful eyes weren’t filled with tears, but with circumspection. As if what happened at Gramps’ house caused her to rethink her beliefs. As if she was having an epiphany. “When I used to look at those middle-aged ladies who’d been working at Maylene’s since they were teenagers,” she continued, “I thought they were losers. I thought they were stuck. I thought what pitiful people they were to live their whole lives in the same spot. It was everything I hated. And I wanted out so badly.”

Then she frowned, as if her epiphany had caveats. “And maybe they wanted out, too, but when they didn’t get out maybe they learned to make the best of what they had. And after years of that knowledge, maybe they decided it wasn’t so bad after all. They were fine right where they were. But I thought the grass was so much greener on the other side. I thought this was the life over here. When it’s just life over here just like it was just life over there. It’s painful here, just like it was painful there. But only over there, it was bearable pain.”

Tears appeared in her eyes. “But I can’t hardly bear it over here, William.”

William hurriedly slid over to Joy and pulled her into his arms.

“I can’t bear it,” she said as she sobbed in his arms. “If I would have stayed in Bridell, at Maylene’s, and let those dreams of mine go, Gramps would be free today and his brother would be free today and his brother’s son wouldn’t be dead. My mother wouldn’t have let your mother and Cassidy pay her to lie on me and we would have still at least been talking to one another.” Then she looked up at William. “I caused all of this. I set all of this in motion. I caused all of this, William. I caused . . .”

When she couldn’t speak another word, William drew her closer to him. He didn’t speak a word either. It would have been fruitless. Later he would let her have it about all of this blaming herself bullshit. But not now. Right now she needed a shoulder to cry on. Right now she needed her husband. William held her as they rode the rest of the way to the airfield in total and complete silence.

The airfield, located in a rural stretch of highway near Fort Wayne, was getting nearer when their silence was suddenly interrupted by the sound of squealing tires behind them. When they all looked back, they saw the back SUV tilt forward, with its front grill smashing into the pavement, and then the entire vehicle began flipping wildly along that highway.

“Get down, Boss, we’re under attack!” Max yelled out and got on his two-way radio to alert the driver of the front SUV and their crew waiting at the airfield: “Under attack!” he yelled. “Initiate protocol. Initiate protocol. We are under attack!”

William grabbed Joy as soon as he saw what was happening to the back SUV and forced her to the floor. He then placed his big body on top of her, completely covering her, as Ed Rivers, his longtime driver, was already initiating protocol and falling out of formation to make them a harder target to hit.

But there was nowhere to hide because gunmen were prepositioned in those thick woods that blanketed that stretch of highway and they were already getting riddled with bullets.

Then it got even scarier when a surface missile was launched at both the middle and the front SUVs, causing the front SUV to buckle and flip just as the back one had done. But Ed Rivers was able to avoid the missile launched at their vehicle when he swerved wildly and ended up on the side of the road coughing up dirt and gravel as he was still driving fast as he could to get everybody in his SUV out of harm’s way.

“Stay down!” Max was yelling at the boss and Joy as he continued to try to see where the attackers still where. But then their driver was hit in the head.

“Gotdammit, Ed’s been hit!” Max yelled out. And as soon as he did, William ordered Joy to stay right where she was and quickly began crawling towards the front to help Max.

But as William was crawling up front, and as Max was trying to move Ed out of the driver’s seat so that he could take the wheel, Max was struck near his chest by a bullet, and fell back into his own seat.

“I been hit, Boss!” Max cried out, and when Joy heard those words she looked up too. When she saw Max incapacitated and William trying to move Ed out of the way, she got up and crawled toward the front too.

Max, still in pain, tried to help William move Ed, but Ed felt like dead weight and Max had no strength left. It was harder to move dead weight than either man could manage. But somebody had to take that wheel or they all would die!

When Joy got up front, she was able to pull Ed by the legs and forced him toward the back with her. She helped get him out of the way just enough for William to take control of the steering wheel.

Once William got behind that wheel he began driving them, upwards of a hundred-and-twenty-miles-per-hour, out of harm’s way and toward the airfield.

As they drew even closer to the airfield, the two SUVs that had been guarding the plane and its crew came speeding down the highway to assist the boss. They had gotten word of the ambush from Max’s radio. But when the drivers saw that the boss was behind the wheel of the central SUV, they quickly turned around and escorted William and his passengers to his plane.

The guards in the additional SUVs got out and tried to get William and Joy out first.

“Get Ed and Max,” William insisted. “They’ve both been shot!”

“What about the others?” asked one of the crew members.

“We don’t know. They’re in the wreckage.”

But William had to get his wife out of there. While the guards grabbed Max and Ed, he grabbed Joy and ran with her up the airstairs and into the plane which, per protocol, was already ready for takeoff. As soon as Max and Ed were carried onboard, the plane took off. The guards remained to go see if any of their men survived on that road, and to call for more backup.