Sarah’s heart stopped dead in her chest. Don’t call anyone until you understand. Whoever was in that imposing car likely didn’t know Margaret was dead yet. Or worse, maybe they did, and that was exactly why they were here.
Sarah frantically scanned the open property. If she ran toward the house, they would easily spot her. There was absolutely no cover between the old barn and the front porch.
If she stayed hidden in the barn, she was effectively trapped. She looked desperately towards the deep woods that bordered the east side of the property. It was a dense, tangled thicket of pine and scrub oak.
If she could make it into those trees, she could circle around back to the main road and flag down a passing truck. The black SUV finally rolled to a stop directly in front of the farmhouse. Two intimidating men stepped out into the rain.
They wore dark, tactical raincoats and pulled-down baseball caps. One of them carried a heavy steel breaching tool. The other held a small tracking device, his eyes glued to the blinking screen.
They didn’t bother knocking. The man with the heavy tool stepped forward and brutally forced the front door of the house. It flew open with a sickening crack of splintering wood.
These men weren’t police officers. Police always knocked and loudly announced themselves. These men were dangerous professionals, fixers sent to quietly erase any remaining evidence of the past.
Sarah realized with a paralyzing jolt of terror that the annual Arrival Day hadn’t just been a twisted celebration of her new life. It was the grim anniversary of a major incident that powerful people were still desperately trying to solve. Or perhaps, desperately trying to bury.
She gripped the heavy baton and the leather binder tightly to her chest and sprinted. She didn’t head towards the compromised house, but directly towards the dark tree line. She kept the bulky silhouette of the barn between her and the intruders, moving as low and fast as she possibly could through the thick mud.
She hit the edge of the tree line just as she heard a sharp shout echoing from the house. “Clear! She’s not inside. Check the outbuilding.”
Sarah dove headfirst into the dense underbrush, the wet pine needles painfully scraping her cold face. She crawled on her hands and knees until she was safely behind a massive fallen log, peering cautiously through the gloom. The two men were now walking purposefully towards the barn.
“You think the stash is actually still here?” one asked, his voice gravelly and flat.
“The Vogel woman never spent a dime of it,” the second man replied coldly. “Intel says she was sitting on the diamonds and the kid for pure leverage. The boss wants both.”
“If the girl is here, we secure her. If not, we tear this place apart until we find the stones.”
Diamonds? Sarah looked down at the soaked binder. She hadn’t looked past the very first newspaper clipping. Was there more hidden in those pages?
She watched in horror as the men entered the barn. She had left the concealed trap door wide open. She had left the digital safe completely unlocked.
“Stupid, stupid, stupid,” she cursed herself silently. She had only minutes. Once they saw the open safe, they would instantly know someone had been there recently, and the aggressive hunt would begin.
Sarah scrambled quietly to her feet, keeping her profile incredibly low. She had to get to the nearest neighbor’s house immediately. Caleb Danvers lived roughly three miles away, straight through the dense woods.
Caleb was a tough, quiet mechanic and a former military man who mostly kept to himself, spending his days fixing up old motorcycles. He was the absolute only person living within a five-mile radius. She began to run, the binder slapping rhythmically against her side, the heavy tool weighing down her coat pocket.
The deep woods were darkening rapidly as evening aggressively approached, the shadows stretching out like grasping claws. She had run these specific woods countless times as a child. She knew the hidden deer trails by heart.
But she had never run them with the terrifying knowledge that her entire existence was a carefully constructed lie, and that dangerous men were actively tracking her. A loud crack of thunder masked the frantic sound of her footsteps, but it also terrifyingly masked the sound of any potential pursuit. She didn’t dare look back.
She just kept running. Three miles through dense, rain-soaked Wyoming woods felt like an eternity. By the time Sarah finally stumbled into the wide clearing surrounding Caleb Danvers’ property, her lungs burned like they were filled with crushed glass.
The thick mud had sucked one of her shoes off over a mile back. Her stockinged foot was completely numb and bleeding from sharp rocks. Caleb’s place was less of a traditional home and more of a fortified compound, built securely around a massive, corrugated metal workshop.
Bright arc-welding flashes strobed blue and white against the rain-streaked windows, and the heavy, rhythmic thrum of rock music vibrated the damp air. Sarah hammered desperately on the metal roll-up door with the heavy handle of the security baton. “Caleb! Caleb! Please open up!”
The loud music cut out instantly. A tense moment later, a smaller side door swung open. Caleb stood there, calmly wiping dark grease from his massive hands with a red rag.
He was a mountain of a man in his mid-forties, with a thick beard that hid half his face and sharp eyes that always seemed to be constantly assessing threats. He wore heavy overalls covered in old oil stains and a faded military T-shirt. He looked at Sarah—soaking wet, completely mud-caked, missing a shoe, and wild-eyed.
Then, his sharp eyes dropped immediately to the heavy tool trembling in her hand. His relaxed expression instantly shifted from mild annoyance to razor-sharp, tactical alertness. In a fluid movement almost too fast to track, he reached behind the doorframe and produced a heavy, industrial-grade deterrent device of his own.