Chapter 13 - A Midnight Visitor
Night fell over the ridge with suffocating weight. I kept the perimeter floodlights blazing, illuminating the clearing in harsh white glare. Inside, David had set up a makeshift tactical station on the kitchen table, running background checks and cross-referencing corporate filings on his laptop.
At 11:42 PM, the landline on the kitchen wall shrieked.
I picked it up, pressing the receiver to my ear without saying a word.
"Linda?"
The voice was breathless, panicked, and punctuated by the sharp metallic echo of cell doors clanging in the background. It was Damian.
"What do you want, Damian?" I said coldly.
"Linda, listen to me, you have to listen!" Damian’s voice cracked into a desperate sob. "They’re in here. They’re inside the jail! One of the guards... God, Linda, they broke two of my fingers while the cameras were turned off!"
"Who broke your fingers, Damian?"
"Vance’s people!" he wailed. "Saraphina didn't set this up. She was sleeping with Vance’s associate months before Dad even got sick! They used me! They promised me five hundred thousand dollars if I got you off the deed, but they were never gonna give me that money. They were going to kill me the second the ink was dry!"
David looked up from his screen, gesturing for me to put it on speaker. I hit the button.
"Damian," I said evenly. "Why does Vance want this land? It’s two hundred acres of scrub pine and rocky soil. It’s not worth millions."
"It’s not the timber, Linda!" Damian gasped, crying openly now. "Dad knew. Dad found something on the north ridge twenty years ago when he was building the firebreaks! Vance’s geologists did aerial scans last month—there’s a massive deposit of rare earth lithium running straight through our ridge! Millions of tons! That’s why Vance bought the debt! That’s why—"
Suddenly, the line went dead with a loud, mechanical click.
A split second later, the kitchen floodlights died.
The hum of the refrigerator ceased. Total darkness engulfed the farmhouse.
"Power's cut at the main transformer," David whispered, his hand instantly dropping to his holster. He pulled night-vision optics from his gear bag and slipped them over his eyes. "Linda. We've got movement outside."
May you like
I slipped Dad’s pump-action twelve-gauge from the rack, chambered a shell with a definitive *clack-clack*, and felt the familiar adrenaline wash over my veins.
"They picked the wrong house to rob," I said. "And the wrong soldier to fight."
