The Heritage Paper

Chapter 68



Veronica had pushed her way to the front gate of the Kingston estate. She doubted her children were inside, but she was sure that Jim Kingston knew their whereabouts. She needed to talk to him.

But as the afternoon grew long, the gates opened and a stretch limo headed out. It stopped just outside the gate and a window electronically rolled down. Veronica strained to look in.

She saw Kingston sitting next to Sterling.

Kingston shouted out a statement to his supporters, who were surrounding the vehicle. A few reporters yelled questions to him, but his only response was a thumbs-up. He flashed his charismatic smile as the limo pulled away.

The obvious reaction would’ve been to follow Kingston, but something told her to stay. Zach read her eyes and agreed. As if he had a choice.

About an hour later, she appeared prophetic, when the most unbelievable thing happened. The front door opened and two small children ran out, followed by an elderly man.

Maggie and Jamie!

They were shouting, “Help!” at the top of their lungs as they moved toward the front gate. Veronica tried to will them to safety like she was using some Jedi mind trick. But it had the opposite effect.

Youkelstein fell to the ground and the kids stopped and ran to help him. “No!” Veronica shouted out. All that crap she taught them about helping others was coming back to bite her in the ass.

The security guards on the grounds of the estate—the ones with the machine-guns—began to move toward them. And Maggie was pointing a gun at them!

“No Maggie—run! Jamie!”

But as usual, her children didn’t listen to her. And in this case, they did the most horrifying thing imaginable. They ran right at the guards!

Things then changed from scary to weird. Maggie began instructing the guards like she was their superior officer. The guards strangely followed her orders, helping to carry Youkelstein to the front gate.

The children kept getting closer. She wanted to reach through the gates and pull them through. When they arrived at the gate, Maggie ordered the guards to open it. With a little urging from her gun, they obliged. As happy as Veronica was to see her children safe, the sight of Maggie pointing a gun at someone was a frightening image. It was surreal.

When the gate opened, Veronica’s kids kept it classy. Jamie stuck out his tongue at the guards, while Maggie flashed them the bird. But when they ran to her and she wrapped her arms around them, all was forgiven.

Only Zach’s desperate urging snapped her back to reality. He hoisted Youkelstein over his shoulder, still gripping that damn umbrella. Veronica took the kids’ hands and they ran all the way to the Audi. This time she couldn’t even feel her feet. The pain had gone away.

Within minutes, they were driving west on the Long Island Expressway. It was rush hour and the LIE was a parking lot. But Veronica didn’t care—her kids were safe. She didn’t want the details of how Youkelstein got shot, especially any part that might have to do with Maggie and guns. It was too much to take right now. But she did notice that Eddie wasn’t with them, and she had a pretty good idea what that meant. She wasn’t sure what to think about Eddie right now.

Youkelstein had lost a lot of blood, but his stubbornness was intact. He fought any attempts to get him immediate medical attention, urging them to get to Manhattan as quickly as possible to try to stop Kingston. He didn’t offer up any suggestions as to how they would be able to do that.

Zach compared notes with Maggie and Youkelstein. Maggie shared a conversation she had with Kingston during her capture, and despite his injury, Youkelstein was able to detail his meeting with Sterling, including the part about how he was really a German spy named Otto, and was about as Jewish as the Pope.

The rapid-fire discussion ping-ponged topics like Nazis, Israel, World War III, and 9/11—it was like Veronica was attending a conspiracy theory trade show.

But like most mothers, she was skilled at narrowing things down to just the important facts. Bottom line, Kingston and Sterling were the bad guys, and they had to be stopped to keep her children safe.

Attempting to drown out the heated conversation, she turned on the radio. It was now 6:30 in the evening and the exit polls in Michigan and Ohio were showing an overwhelming Kingston victory. Maggie informed the adults that these two states were in the heart of Baer territory. The election was starting to look like a landslide. But while Kingston might have been on his way to winning the election, he seemed to have lost the support of Maggie Peterson, who frowned upon hearing the report.

They crossed over the Whitestone Bridge. Nobody discussed where they were going—it was understood. They were headed to the devil’s den. Veronica glanced back at her children and fury pulsed through her veins. The devil was about to face an adversary that could match his fire.

An angry mother.