At Thanksgiving dinner, my son said his steak smelled strange and refused to eat it. My mother scolded him for being picky, but when my nephew reached over to take the steak for himself, my wife suddenly went pale and screamed, "No! Don’t eat that!"

The digital dashboard of my SUV flashed 3:45 p.m. as we hit Interstate 380 heading south toward the Iowa City municipal airstrip, thirty miles away.

Officer Vance had put out an all-points bulletin for Megan’s dark blue luxury sedan, but heavy holiday weekend traffic was creating a nightmare of bumper-to-bumper RVs and semi-trucks crawling through the sleet that had started falling over the cornfields.

“She’s going to make it,” Lauren said, her knuckles white as she gripped the passenger grab handle, staring ahead through the windshield wipers slashing frantically across the glass. “Daniel, if she gets out of the country, she’ll never face justice. She’ll live like a queen off the money she stole from your parents.”

“She’s not getting out,” I said through gritted teeth, pushing the gas pedal down until the engine roared in protest.

Weaving recklessly through traffic, ignoring the flashing sleet and the screaming horns of startled drivers, I kept my eyes fixed on the horizon where the distant lights of the private airfield twinkled through the grey haze.

Ten minutes later, we crested the highway overpass leading to the airfield access road.

Parked right beside the rusted chain-link gate of the private hangar was Megan’s blue sedan, its driver’s side door flung wide open, hazard lights blinking rhythmically against the falling snow.

A twin-engine charter plane sat idling on the tarmac fifty yards away, its propellers spinning in a deafening, high-pitched whine, ready for takeoff.

“She’s there,” Lauren breathed.

I slammed my SUV into park right behind her car, killing the engine before it could even settle. I threw my door open and hit the freezing ground, Lauren right behind me.

“Stay back!” I yelled over the roar of the airplane engines. “She’s desperate!”

We sprinted through the open gate onto the tarmac.

The wind whipped our jackets around like sails, the freezing sleet stinging our faces, but I didn't feel the cold. I only saw the metal boarding stairs of the charter plane, where a figure in a heavy white designer winter coat was hauling herself up toward the cabin door.

“Megan!” I roared, my voice cutting through the jet wash.

The figure froze on the top step.

Megan turned around, her hair blowing wildly across her face, her eyes wide with frantic, cornered panic. She looked down at us like we were ghosts rising from the dead.

“Stay back, Daniel!” she screamed, waving a leather briefcase frantically at the pilot inside the cockpit. “Go! Take off right now!”

The pilot, a hired gun who clearly didn't know the full scope of the federal warrants waiting for his passenger, pushed the throttle forward. The plane shuddered, its wheels beginning to roll forward along the tarmac stripe.

I didn't think. I sprinted the final twenty yards, lunging forward with every ounce of strength in my body, grabbing the trailing handrail of the moving metal boarding stairs just as they began to retract.

“Hey!” I yelled, hauling myself up onto the bottom step, the freezing wind tearing at my breath.

Megan shrieked, kicking backward with her high-heeled boot, catching me square in the chest.

“Get off me, you ruined my life!” she screamed, her face distorted into a mask of pure, rabid hatred.

Before she could kick again, Lauren materialized at the bottom of the stairs, grabbed Megan’s ankle with both hands, and yanked downward with the terrifying, irresistible force of a mother protecting her children from a monster.

Megan lost her balance, letting out a piercing shriek as she tumbled backward off the top step, crashing down onto the concrete tarmac with a sickening thud.

The briefcase flew from her hands, popping open in midair, scattering hundreds of printed financial documents, Cayman Island bank routing slips, and forged deed transfers across the freezing pavement, where the winter wind instantly caught them and blew them away like confetti across the snow.

Inside the cockpit, the pilot finally caught sight of the flashing red and blue lights of three sheriff cruisers screeching through the airfield gate with sirens wailing. He immediately cut the engines, throwing his hands up in surrender.

Megan lay on her back on the tarmac, gasping for air, her designer coat torn, the sleet melting into her hair as Officer Vance and two federal marshals descended upon her from all sides, their heavy boots splashing through the melting snow.

Officer Vance hauled her roughly to her feet, shoving her face down against the hood of a cruiser as the steel cuffs clicked shut for the second time in ten days.

As they pushed her into the back of the squad car, Megan looked out through the rain-streaked window straight at me, her expression no longer angry, but completely hollow, defeated, and dead.