Chapter 8 - The Fire on the Mountain
Smoke entered the cellar before we reached the tunnel.
Ethan coughed against my shoulder while Claire held a flashlight over the narrow stone passage leading beneath the cabin.
My father had shown me the tunnel when I was nine. It had once connected the property to an abandoned copper mine. He warned me never to enter alone.
Thirty years later, I carried my son into the darkness because the men outside intended to burn us alive.
Gunfire echoed above.
“Mom,” Ethan whispered, “is Dad coming?”
“Yes.”
I did not know whether it was true.
The tunnel descended sharply. Water dripped from exposed roots and gathered in shallow pools beneath our feet.
Behind us, the cellar hatch opened.
I raised the gun.
Lucas climbed down first, followed by Arthur.
Arthur’s face was gray.
“Move,” Lucas said. “The cabin is burning.”
Flames roared overhead.
We hurried deeper into the mine.
The tunnel divided after two hundred yards.
I remembered my father’s instructions.
Left led toward a collapsed shaft.
Right led to the service road.
We turned right.
A gunshot cracked behind us.
The bullet struck the stone wall near Claire’s head.
Drake’s men had entered the tunnel.
Lucas returned fire while we ran.
Arthur stumbled.
I caught his arm before he fell.
“Leave me,” he said.
“I considered it.”
Despite the terror, a broken laugh escaped him.
The tunnel narrowed until we had to move single file. Lucas remained behind us, firing only when he saw movement.
The exit appeared as a pale square in the distance.
Then Claire stopped.
“I dropped the key.”
“What?”
She searched her pockets frantically.
“I had it when we entered.”
We heard men approaching.
“There’s no time,” Arthur said.
“That key may expose Drake,” Claire replied.
“It’s not worth your life.”
“It was worth William’s.”
She turned back.
I grabbed her wrist.
“My father would not want you to die for a key.”
“He died because I was afraid.”
“Then be brave enough to live with what you did.”
Claire looked at me.
Something shifted in her face.
She followed us.
We emerged into cold mountain air moments before the tunnel behind us filled with smoke.
The service road lay a quarter mile downhill. Lucas had arranged an emergency vehicle there before we reached the cabin, but we did not know whether Drake’s men had found it.
We moved through the trees.
Ethan began limping.
I lifted him, though my legs shook from exhaustion.
Arthur offered to carry him.
“No.”
“Teresa, you can barely stand.”
“You lost the right.”
He accepted the answer.
We found the vehicle untouched.
Lucas drove while Arthur lay across the back seat. Claire and Ethan crouched on the floor.
As we descended the mountain, three black SUVs appeared behind us.
“They found the road,” Lucas said.
The first SUV accelerated.
It struck our rear bumper.
Ethan screamed.
Lucas maintained control around the curve.
Arthur forced himself upright and looked through the rear window.
“There’s a rifle.”
A flash appeared.
The windshield cracked near Lucas’s head.
He swerved behind a logging truck traveling slowly downhill.
The truck blocked the shooter’s line of sight, but the second SUV moved into the opposite lane.
An oncoming car sounded its horn.
The SUV cut back sharply and clipped the guardrail.
It spun across the road and disappeared over the edge.
The remaining vehicles continued.
Lucas called the state police and directed them toward our route.
“We need ten minutes,” he said.
The pursuing SUV struck us again.
This time our vehicle fishtailed.
Lucas fought the wheel.
Arthur looked at me.
“When I say open the door, do it.”
“What are you planning?”
“They want me and Claire. Not you.”
“That did not stop them from burning the cabin.”
“I’ll slow them down.”
“You’ll get killed.”
“I know.”
The certainty in his voice silenced me.
Arthur had spent twelve years choosing himself.
Now, perhaps for the first time, he was prepared to choose Ethan.
He opened the rear door while the vehicle was still moving.
Cold air tore through the cabin.
The SUV behind us drew closer.
Arthur reached beneath his torn jacket and removed a phone.
“This contains account access codes,” he shouted. “Drake believes it can unlock the offshore funds.”
“Can it?”
“No.”
He held the glowing phone outside the vehicle.
The pursuing SUV moved closer.
Arthur threw the phone onto the road.
The SUV swerved to avoid crushing it, then stopped.
Both remaining vehicles braked behind it.
The delay gave us distance.
State police met us six minutes later.
Drake’s men abandoned the pursuit.
Federal agents transported us to a protected facility before dawn.
Ethan received treatment for smoke inhalation. Arthur underwent surgery. Claire entered protective custody.
The mountain cabin burned to its foundation.
My childhood photographs, my father’s furniture, and the last place untouched by Arthur’s lies disappeared in a single night.
But the key Claire lost had not been destroyed.
It was in my pocket.
I had seen it fall near the cellar entrance and picked it up before we entered the tunnel.
I did not tell Arthur.
The next morning, federal prosecutors questioned me for three hours.
They believed the key might open a private storage box at Union Station.
The facility’s records confirmed that box 317 had been rented twenty years earlier by a company called Margaret Holdings.
Margaret was my grandmother’s name.
Only I could prove the connection necessary to access it.
The agents arranged a covert visit after closing time.
Lucas accompanied me, though he had been ordered to rest after suffering a bullet graze along his shoulder.
The storage facility occupied a quiet underground corridor beneath the station.
An elderly manager led us to a wall of brass doors.
Box 317 stood near the floor.
My hand trembled as I inserted the key.
Inside was a waterproof metal case.
It contained my father’s coded ledger, an audio recorder, corporate seals, and a letter addressed to me.
I opened the letter first.
My dearest Teresa,
If you are reading this, then I failed to protect you from a man I once believed worthy of your trust. Arthur has entered an arrangement with Harrison Drake. I fear he has become desperate enough to harm me, but I fear even more what he may do to you once I am gone.
The ledger contains proof of every payment I discovered. Yet the greatest danger is not Arthur. It is the person Drake placed closest to our family.
Beneath the paragraph, my father had written a name.
Not Genevieve.
Not Conrad.
Not Dr. Wren.
Victoria Sterling.
I read it twice.
Lucas took the letter from my hand.
“No,” he said.
Victoria had been my attorney for eleven years.
She arranged our safe houses.
She knew where Ethan slept.
And she had been the only person besides me who knew about the mountain cabin.
My phone vibrated.
A video call came from Victoria.
I answered.
Her face appeared on the screen.
Behind her, Ethan sat tied to a chair.
May you like
Victoria smiled.
“You finally found the right ledger,” she said. “Now bring it to me.”
