Chapter 8 - A Matter of Leverage
I scrambled up out of the cellar just as the beam of a high-intensity flashlight blinded me.
Dale Miller stood by the edge of the clearing, one massive arm wrapped tightly around Amos’s frail neck, dragging the old man backward toward the bed of his black truck. Amos’s cane clattered against the stones, rolling uselessly into the weeds. The old man’s eyes met mine, wide and wet, but he didn't make a sound, refusing to give them the satisfaction of a cry.
Sheriff Vance was standing a few feet away, rubbing his shoulder where Grady had moved him, his shotgun now leveled directly at my chest.
“Drop the book, big man,” Vance spat, his finger whitening on the trigger guard. “Drop it right now, or the old man catches the next breath in a pine box.”
Grady was pinned against the side of my support van by two of Vance’s deputies, their batons pressed hard against his windpipe, though our club president was still grinning through a split lip.
I held the leather-bound ledger up in my left hand, the beam of the flashlight reflecting off its damp cover.
“You don't want this book burned, Dale,” I said, my voice dropping into that steady, heavy register I used when things got quiet. “And you definitely don't want the state attorney general reading page forty-two—the page where your grandfather signed over the Mercer deeds using a dead man’s thumbprint.”
Dale’s arm tightened around Amos’s throat for a fraction of a second, and the old man let out a strangled gasp. Dale’s eyes darted from my face to the leather book in my hand, panic flickering behind his cold glare.
“There’s nothing in that trunk except trash,” Dale snapped, his voice pitching up an octave. “It’s water-damaged garbage from a fire forty years ago!”
“Then why are you sweating through your jacket?” I took a slow step forward, the ledger clutched firmly in my grip. “The 1978 courthouse fire wasn't an accident, Dale. Your family burned the records to cover up an execution. But Arthur Mercer kept a duplicate registry in a waterproof box, signed by three county commissioners who mysteriously vanished the same week.”
Vance’s face went completely blank. He looked at Dale, the unspoken communication between them hanging in the damp air like smoke.
“Dale...” Vance muttered, his shotgun wavering a fraction of an inch. “Is that true?”
“Shut your mouth, Marcus!” Dale roared, tightening his grip until Amos’s head slumped sideways. “Get the cuffs on the kid and take the book! If these bikers leave this county alive, we lose everything—the timber grants, the state contracts, all of it!”
The two deputies holding Grady shifted their weight, preparing to move.
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That was when the distant sound of dual exhaust pipes cut through the mountain air, echoing off the canyon walls in a deep, rhythmic thunder that made the ground beneath our boots vibrate.
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