Chapter 8: The Midnight Canal**
The storm had transformed the drainage canal into a churning torrent of brown water. Julian guided Clara and Lily down the slick concrete embankment, the freezing spray hitting their faces. Rain poured from the dark sky in relentless torrents, washing away their footprints almost as fast as they made them.
Clara stumbled, her knees giving out from sheer exhaustion and the fever burning through her veins. Julian caught her before she hit the mud.
“I can’t… Julian, my chest hurts,” she gasped, her lips turning a faint shade of blue under the streetlight’s distant glow. “Take Lily. Take the drive to the federal building in the capital. Leave me.”
“Don’t you ever say that again,” Julian snapped, his voice fierce with unyielding love. “We leave together, or we don’t leave at all.”
He lifted Clara onto his back, instructing Lily to hold tight onto the belt of his coat. With agonizing, deliberate steps, Julian trudged along the concrete ledge beneath the old stone bridges of the city.
Every muscle in his forty-two-year-old body screamed in protest. The freezing rain soaked through his coat, chilling him to the bone, but the fire inside his chest burned hotter than ever. Six years of wasted time, six years of unanswered prayers were focused into every single step he took.
Ahead, the lights of the city’s historic district flickered. Julian knew one place Kane’s men would never think to search: the bell tower of St. Jude’s—a decommissioned 19th-century church where Julian’s estranged childhood friend, Father Thomas, ran an underground soup kitchen for the homeless.
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“Hold on, Clara,” Julian whispered into the howling wind. “Just five more minutes. Just five.”
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