Chapter 3 - The Broken Vow
By six o'clock that evening, the cabin was dead quiet. Amelia had left two hours earlier in her sedan, claiming she had an emergency meeting for her real estate staging business in town.
I stood in the bathroom, having washed the milk and grease out of my hair under scalding water. I dressed in clean dark jeans, work boots, and a plain black canvas jacket. My reflection in the mirror showed the faint scar running along my collarbone—a reminder of a high-altitude jump over the Hindu Kush ten years ago. Men who survived those drops did not flinch at county sheriffs.
My phone vibrated on the bathroom counter. A text message from an unlisted number flashed across the screen:
Packet delivered to local branch. Intercept active. Target has departed location.
It was from Special Agent Frank Morales, the JAG investigator Marcus Hayes had assigned to my case. Attached to the message was a live GPS feed tracking Amelia’s sedan. She hadn't gone toward the commercial district in town. Her car was parked behind the Vance Freight warehouse near the old rail yard on the south side of Blackwood.
I grabbed the set of keys to my beat-up 1998 Chevy pickup—the one with no GPS, no digital tracker, and an engine tuned so quietly you couldn't hear it idle from twenty feet away.
The night air had turned freezing by the time I reached the outskirts of the industrial district. The streetlights around the rail yard had been intentionally shot out or disabled, leaving the entire perimeter cloaked in heavy shadows. I parked two blocks away behind an abandoned grain silo, cut the engine, and moved on foot.
Years of low-visibility reconnaissance work take over instantly; you don't forget the rhythm of movement. Every step was heel-to-toe on the soft gravel, avoiding broken glass and dry branches. I reached the perimeter chain-link fence, found a rusted opening near the storm drain, and slipped into the yard.
A single set of halogen floodlights illuminated the loading dock of Warehouse 4. Parked right in front of the bay door was Dominic's personal black truck and Amelia's white sedan.
I scaled the metal fire escape on the western wall of the building, moving up to the second-story ventilation catwalk. A cracked pane of wired glass gave me a direct line of sight into the elevated office overlooking the warehouse floor.
Inside the brightly lit office, Dominic Vance was leaning against a mahogany desk, a glass of bourbon in his hand. Amelia sat in the leather chair across from him, laughing as she looked over a set of legal documents.
"He didn't even yell," Amelia was saying, her voice carrying faintly through the exhaust vent. "He just sat there like an idiot wiping it off. It was pathetic, Dominic."
"Told you he was soft," Dominic replied, taking a slow sip of his drink. "These guys come back from the service, get a pension, and lose their spine. He’s terrified of the badge. Once we get the signature on that deed transfer for the ridge road, our transport trucks bypass the state weigh station entirely. That's eight hundred thousand in clean shipping revenue every quarter."
"And what about my cut?" Amelia asked, tilting her head back, her expression sharp and ambitious. "I gave you his financial statements. I showed you how the property title was structured."
"You get your forty percent, sweetheart. Just like we agreed," Dominic said, stepping closer to her chair and putting a heavy hand on her shoulder. "As soon as he signs over power of attorney for the sale, we file the papers in Helena. If he refuses, I pull his business license for the garage and hit him with county zoning fines until he can't afford to pay the property taxes."
"He won't fight," Amelia sneered, leaning into his touch. "He doesn't have the stomach for it."
Up on the cold steel catwalk, I watched the scene unfold with absolute detachment. There was no anger left in my chest—only the clear, razor-sharp focus of an operative preparing an inevitable ambush.
I brought up my phone, angled the high-resolution camera through the glass, and recorded forty seconds of clear, uninterrupted audio and video. I captured the documents on the desk, the intimate physical exchange, and the explicit discussion of their extortion scheme.
I sent the video directly to the JAG secure server with a single caption:
Evidence secured. Initiate Phase Two: Federal Injunction and Asset Freeze.
Thirty seconds later, Hayes replied:
May you like
Orders received, Commander. Federal marshals mobilized out of Billings. Operation starts at dawn.
I backed away from the window, vanished into the shadows of the rail yard, and returned to my truck. The trap was set, and Dominic Vance was about to discover what happened when you tried to shake down a man whose real job had been hunting monsters in the dark.
