Chapter 8 - Into the Woods
The narrow dirt road leading into Blackwood Forest was completely unplowed, the deep snowdrifts threatening to high-center my sedan with every yard. I killed the headlights a quarter-mile away from the coordinates, letting the car roll silently into a dense thicket of pine trees until the tires crunched to a halt against a hidden snowbank.
I grabbed a heavy tire iron from the trunk—not much of a weapon against armed professionals, but it offered a cold, reassuring weight in my hand—and tucked the flash drive securely into the inner zippered pocket of my winter coat.
The forest was a cathedral of absolute silence, broken only by the crunch of my boots sinking deep into the powdery snow. The wind howled through the evergreen canopy above, dusting my shoulders with white powder. My breath plumed heavily in the freezing air as I navigated the winding foot trail toward the old logging cabin.
Through the dense cluster of birch trees, a dim yellow light flickered from the small, paned windows of a weathered timber structure.
I slowed my pace, keeping to the shadows of the tree line. The cabin was isolated, surrounded by dense forest on all sides. Parked near the rotting wooden porch was a sleek black SUV with tinted windows—the exact kind of vehicle driven by corporate fixers and high-priced legal muscle.
I crept closer, holding my breath as I reached the side of the cabin. A small, frosted window near the back was cracked open an inch to vent a wood-burning stove inside.
I pressed my ear against the glass.
"...the girl is running out of time," a gravelly voice muttered inside. "If she doesn't show up in ten minutes, we move the boy to the secondary site near the river. The federal audit is moving too fast; we need to scrub these servers before morning."
"Relax, Viktor," a second voice replied—smoother, the unmistakable voice of Marcus Sterling. "Clara Hayes is a mother protecting her cub. She’ll trade the digital files for the boy without a second thought. She doesn't realize those files are just a duplicate; our remote servers already archived the master directory an hour ago."
My stomach dropped. The flash drive I held in my pocket—the data I had risked my life to download from Arthur’s study—was a redundancy. They already had what they needed, and they were never planning on letting Leo go. Loose ends were simply eliminated in their world.
A fierce, burning rage unlike anything I had ever experienced flared in my chest. They weren't just criminals; they were predators playing with my family like sport.
May you like
I stepped away from the window, walked around to the front porch, and kicked the rotting wooden door open with a resounding crash that shook the entire cabin.
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