Chapter 2 - Shadows in the Rearview
"They tracked your phone," Evan hissed, dousing the lantern instantly.
The cabin plummeted into pitch darkness. The crunch of tires on wet gravel echoed through the floorboards. Two doors slammed in rapid succession.
"Stay down," I whispered, pulling Evan by his coat sleeve toward the back storage room. "We can get out through the old wood chute behind the kitchen."
"Liam, my leg is jammed," Evan gritted out through his teeth. "I can barely run."
"You don't have to run. Just crawl."
Outside, heavy footsteps climbed the creaking wooden steps of the front porch. A familiar, gravelly voice cut through the sound of the storm.
"Liam! I know you're in there, buddy," Travis called out. His tone was casual, almost friendly, but underneath it lay a violent edge. "Your mom is worried sick. You left the service so fast you forgot to sign the registry. Come on out. Let's talk about this like family."
I reached the narrow wooden hatch at the rear of the cabin. I forced the rusted iron latch open, revealing a steep, muddy chute that emptied out into the creek bed fifteen feet below.
"Go," I told Evan. "Slide down. Head east toward the old railway tracks. I'll buy you time."
"Liam, no—"
"Go!" I shoved him gently into the opening. He slid out of sight into the blackness, his muffled grunt drowned out by a heavy thud against the front door.
The front door splintered under a boot. Wood fragments flew into the living room.
I grabbed the lantern from the table and hurled it through the front window, smashing the glass with a loud crash.
"He's running out the side!" Travis yelled outside.
I sprinted toward the kitchen, purposefully making as much noise as possible, stomping my boots against the pine flooring. I grabbed an empty iron skillet from the stove and hurled it at the doorframe just as a tall figure stepped through the shattered front entrance.
It was one of Travis’s hired hands—a heavy-set man named Miller who used to work security at our family’s warehouse.
Miller raised a heavy flashlight, but I closed the distance before he could raise his arm. I drove my shoulder straight into his midsection. We both went crashing down into the doorway. The flashlight clattered across the floorboards.
I scrambled up, kicked Miller hard across the jaw to stun him, and leapt through the broken side window into the pouring rain.
Cold water hit my face like needles. I sprinted into the treeline, deliberately tearing through the thickest briars to leave a clear trail away from where Evan had slid down to the creek.
Behind me, flashlights crisscrossed the fog.
"Find him!" Travis roared from the porch. "Don't shoot him, you idiot! If Liam dies before he signs his portion of the estate trust, the whole offshore transfer gets frozen!"
That single line froze me in my tracks behind a massive cedar tree.
Estate trust.
When Dad died, he left our family property and company shares in a three-part trust divided between Mom, Evan, and me. For Mom to liquidate the entire family legacy, both twins had to be either dead or signatory to the release documents.
They didn't just want Evan dead. They needed me compliant—or quieted in a way that looked legal.
I didn't head for my car. Travis’s men would already be waiting there. Instead, I circled around through the freezing mud, following the roar of the swollen creek until I found Evan huddled under the concrete arch of an abandoned railroad bridge, drenched and shivering.
May you like
"They're not trying to hide it anymore," I told him, pulled him to his feet. "They need my signature to clear Dad's trust."
Evan looked up at me through the dim starlight, his teeth chattering. "Then we have to get to the safety deposit box in the city before morning. Dad left something else behind, Liam. Something Mom never found."
