Chapter 5: The Burner Phone
I didn't flinch. I kept my hand flat inside my pocket, fingers curled around the thick cream stationery Pendelton had left behind.
"Just a drainage form," I said, my voice steady, trained by years of small deceptions necessary for survival. "He wanted to know where the lower pasture flooded last spring."
Margaret stared at me, her head tilted slightly to the side like a hawk measuring a field mouse. For three agonizing seconds, I thought she would reach into her pocket, pull out the familiar hemp rope, and demand I empty my pockets right there in the dust. But the sound of Richard’s car door slamming shut in the gravel courtyard broke the tension.
"Dinner is in twenty minutes," Margaret said quietly, turning on her heel without another word. "Wash your hands. And Ethan? Don't make me regret letting you wander down here alone."
That night, while the house was dark and my father was asleep in the master suite upstairs, I sat on the edge of my narrow mattress with a flashlight and a cheap prepaid burner phone I had bought at the county gas station using saved allowance cash.
The screen glowed a harsh, blue white in the pitch-dark room. I punched in the sequence of numbers Pendelton had written margin-style on the back of his business card before handing it over—a direct line to his private office in the city, bypassing the county switchboard entirely.
The phone rang twice before a tired voice answered on the other end.
"Pendelton here."
"It's Ethan Vance," I whispered into the plastic receiver, keeping my voice low so it wouldn't carry through the thin bedroom wall. "You said there was a way to freeze the trust accounts before my birthday."
There was a brief pause on the line, the sound of paper shuffling, and then a heavy, deliberate sigh.
"There is," Pendelton said cautiously. "But it requires physical evidence signed by your father acknowledging the discrepancy, or a formal petition filed in the county court by a legal guardian. And from what I know of your household, neither of those things is going to be handed to you easily."
I looked across the dark room toward the heavy oak door that led out to the hallway, listening to the faint, rhythmic hum of the old refrigerator downstairs and the distant rumble of a late-night semi on the highway.
"He won't sign it if he doesn't look," I said softly. "So I have to show him myself."
"Be careful, boy," Pendelton warned before the line went dead. "People who protect large fortunes don't like children asking where the money went."
May you like
I clicked the burner phone off, slid it under the loose floorboard beneath my bed alongside the metal tin, and lay back against the pillow, staring up at the pale shadows cast by the moon through the window. The game had changed. For the first time, I wasn't just hiding from the storm—I was building one of my own.
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