Chapter 16 - The Dirty Badge
The realization hit like a gut punch: Grady Finch had not come to Blackwood on a rogue hunt for hidden cash. He had been the vanguard.
Savannah was still manipulating the chessboard from behind bars. Even stripped of her money, her loans, and her corrupt foundation, my sister had one final card to play. She had offered up my whereabouts—and whatever fabricated "evidence" she had invented to tie me to her crimes—to corrupt insiders within the county jurisdiction looking to tie up loose ends before the federal investigation went public.
The blizzard wasn't our only enemy. A convoy was coming.
I walked back into the living room, keeping my stride measured, refusing to let panic show on my face. Eliza was nursing Samuel, her eyes half-closed, basking in a fleeting moment of peace she had been denied for months.
"Nolan?" she asked softly, sensing the shift in my posture. "What is it?"
"The storm is breaking slightly to the south," I lied gently, kneeling beside the couch. "We have to move."
"Move? Nolan, I can barely stand. Samuel was born less than an hour ago."
"I know, my love. I know what I'm asking," I said, placing my hand over hers and feeling the tiny, rhythmic pulse of our son beneath the blanket. "Finch wasn't alone. Savannah sold our cabin's coordinates to the people who financed her original syndicate. They aren't coming to arrest anyone. They’re coming to erase the witnesses before the feds seize the county records."
Eliza looked at Samuel, then up at me. The vulnerability that had dominated her expression vanished, replaced by the fierce, terrifying resolve of a mother who had already looked death in the face and walked away.
"Get the truck ready," she said.
"The main switchback is snowed under. The Ford won't make the ridge," I answered grimly. "We take the tracked snowcat in the timber shed. It has an enclosed cab and an auxiliary heater. We cut straight across the logging pass toward the reservation border. Chief Two-Rivers will give us sanctuary on sovereign land until Ramos can get the federal marshals into the county."
"Do it," she whispered, pulling Samuel tighter. "We don't leave anything for them to burn."
I worked with ruthless efficiency. I packed three waterproof duffels with ammunition, the remaining cash from my legal savings, the birth supplies, baby formula, and the certified true copies of the original loan documents proving Savannah had forged Eliza’s signature to embezzle the seventy grand. Those papers were the stake through my family's heart, and I wasn't leaving them behind.
May you like
As I opened the back door leading to the covered breezeway of the tool shed, headlights flickered through the heavy spruce trees at the base of the private drive.
Two black Suburbans, equipped with heavy snow chains, were grinding their way up the mountain.
