Chapter 12 - The Town Stands Guard
By dawn, the lodge was an icebox, but the spirit inside it was boiling.
The soapstone fireplace had kept the main living area survivable, though frost was creeping up the interior corners of the double-pane glass. At first light, a convoy of four four-wheel-drive trucks rumbled up the winding driveway.
Mr. Vance climbed out of the lead truck, followed by three burly men from the local hardware cooperative in town, their truck beds loaded with commercial space heaters, a heavy-duty portable generator, and thick rolls of insulated industrial wiring.
"Cole called me at five," Mr. Vance said without ceremony, stomping his boots and hauling a seventy-pound generator onto the front porch. "Nobody freezes a Hart out of this valley. Not on our watch."
Within two hours, the local men had rigged a temporary bypass around the sabotaged conduit. Warm air began to hum through the floor vents once more. The pipes, insulated by my father’s original double-wrapped design, had held. The radiant heating system was saved.
While the men worked, my phone rang. It wasn't Evelyn. It was an unrecognized number with a local area code.
I answered warily. "Yes?"
"Becca... don't hang up. Please."
It was Jason.
His voice sounded broken, stripped of the smug arrogance he had carried when he stood beside Olivia on Christmas Eve.
"How did you get this number, Jason?" I said coldly, walking away from the noise of the generator toward the quiet corner of the master loft. "If you’re calling to back up Olivia’s viral sob story, save your breath. I have the security footage, and now I have evidence of Evelyn hiring saboteurs."
"I’m not calling to defend her," Jason said, his breath hitching. "Becca... I left Olivia. I packed my things and moved into a motel in Grand Junction yesterday."
I scoffed. "Am I supposed to applaud you for finally growing a conscience?"
"Listen to me!" Jason urged, his voice frantic. "You don't understand what Evelyn is actually doing. The lodge... it isn't about Olivia’s hurt pride. Olivia is just a spoiled idiot being used as a pawn. Evelyn doesn't want the house to live in. She wants the land under it."
I frowned, glancing down through the loft railing at Cole and his father reviewing electrical schematics. "What are you talking about? Whispering Ridge is twenty acres of granite and spruce."
"It’s not just granite," Jason whispered. "Evelyn found Dad’s private surveys from the early nineties. There’s a dormant lithium and rare-earth deposit running right under the northern ridge of your parcel. A Canadian mining syndicate offered her seven million dollars for the extraction rights—*if* she can deliver clear title to the entire parcel. But Dad deeded the ridge exclusively to you before he died. The only way she can invalidate that deed is to prove you abandoned the property, defaulted on the tax liens, or bought it with stolen trust funds."
The puzzle pieces snapped together with horrifying clarity.
Olivia’s party wasn't just a petty vacation; it had been an attempt to establish legal occupancy. The smear campaign was designed to bankrupt me. The saboteur with the crowbar was sent to destroy the structural value so the county would condemn it, forcing a distress sale.
"Where are those surveys, Jason?" I asked, my heart hammering.
"Evelyn has one copy in her safe in Denver," Jason replied. "But she said Dad kept the original signed deed covenants—the ones that permanently bar commercial mining on Whispering Ridge—hidden in the house itself. She couldn't find them when she sent Olivia. That’s why she’s desperate to get inside before you find them."
"Why are you telling me this?" I asked quietly.
May you like
There was a long pause on the other end. "Because your dad was the only person in that family who ever treated me like a human being instead of an accessory. And because... I'm terrified of what Evelyn will do if she loses."
***
