Chapter 9: The County Road
The dirt trail through the Vance estate woods was pitch-black, illuminated only by the faint, silvery wash of moonlight filtering through the dense canopy of oak and pine branches. Every snap of a twig under my sneakers sounded like a gunshot in the stillness of the night. I kept my hood pulled low, my fingers wrapped tightly around the straps of my backpack, feeling the reassuring weight of Arthur's phone against my ribs.
For forty-five minutes, I pushed through the overgrown brush until the jagged iron spikes of the old carriage house gate loomed out of the darkness. It was rusted and half-hidden by wild blackberry vines, exactly as Elena had promised. I slid between the bars, scraping my shoulder against the cold metal, and stepped out onto the paved shoulder of County Road 4.
There were no streetlights here, just an endless ribbon of asphalt stretching between dark, sleeping fields. A cold autumn wind whipped across the open pasture, chilling me to the bone through my blue t-shirt and hoodie. I began walking briskly toward downtown, keeping my head down whenever a pair of headlights swept across the horizon.
After three miles of steady marching, the distant neon hum of a 24-hour diner cut through the rural silence. The sign flickered a tired, buzzing red: MAPLE LEAF CAFE.
I pushed open the glass door, the familiar chime of a brass bell welcoming me into a world of warmth, the heavy smell of fried bacon, and stale coffee. The diner was empty except for a truck driver asleep in a corner booth and a tired-looking waitress wiping down the laminate counter with a damp rag.
I slid onto a red vinyl stool near the pay phone by the restrooms. My fingers were stiff and numb from the cold. I pulled out Arthur's phone, tapped the screen, and opened the secure messaging app that had been sitting alongside the audit files. There was only one active chat thread, labeled with a single initial: K.
May you like
The last message, sent just four hours ago, read: Found the backup keys at the downtown branch. Meet me behind the old courthouse at dawn. Don't trust local PD.
My breath hitched. Who was K? Was it one of my grandfather's loyal attorneys, or another victim of Richard's corporate cleanup? I didn't have a choice. Dawn was less than two hours away, and the downtown bank vault holding the physical embezzlement ledger was my only weapon against my uncle.
