Chapter 6 - The Safehouse in the Hills
The wiper blades slapped rhythmically against the windshield as Patricia drove forty miles per hour down the dark, winding state highway leading out of the city.
Beside her in the passenger seat, Melissa was wrapped in a dry yellow raincoat Patricia had kept in her trunk, clutching the blue ledger tightly against her chest like a newborn child.
"Where are we going?" Melissa asked, her voice crackling with exhaustion. "They know who you are, Patricia. They know your name, your address... they'll go to your house!"
"I called my sister twenty minutes ago from a payphone at the gas station," Patricia said, keeping her hands firm on the steering wheel. "Chloe is already with her, on a bus heading to my brother’s farm in Ohio. They don't know about that farm."
"Thank God," Melissa breathed, closing her eyes. "I'm so sorry, Patricia. I brought this nightmare onto you and your family."
"You didn't bring anything onto me, ma'am," Patricia said softly, glancing at the younger woman. "Bad men did this. Men who think money makes them gods. My mother always told me that a broom isn't just for cleaning dirt; sometimes it’s for driving out rats."
A small, genuine laugh escaped Melissa’s lips—the first sound of joy she had made in days. "Your mother sounds like a wise woman."
Forty minutes later, the Camry pulled off the paved highway onto a hidden dirt road winding through a thick forest of pine trees. At the end of the track stood a small, rustic log cabin—a fishing cabin owned by Patricia’s late husband that had been left off all public tax registries for a decade.
Patricia pulled the car behind a thick row of pine trees, turned off the headlights, and killed the engine.
Inside the cabin, the air was cold and smelled of dry cedar. Patricia lit a kerosene lamp, setting it on a wooden dining table while Melissa sank into an old rocking chair, exhausted to her very bones.
Patricia brought out a blanket, a bottle of fresh water, and a small first-aid kit from the pantry, kneeling beside Melissa to clean the scrapes on her hands and wrists.
"We can't just stay hidden here forever," Melissa said, staring into the flickering yellow flame of the lamp. "Julian Sterling controls the city's district attorney. If we just hand this ledger to the local police, it will disappear into an evidence locker before sunrise."
"Then we don't go to the local police," Patricia said, dabbing antiseptic onto Melissa’s scraped knuckles. "We go higher."
"Who?"
May you like
Patricia pulled a worn business card from her wallet—a card given to her three years ago by a quiet, polite guest who had left his briefcase in a hotel lobby armchair.
"Assistant United States Attorney Marcus Vance," Patricia read the embossed gold letters on the card. "He told me if I ever saw anything suspicious involving international transactions at the Grand Horizon, to call his private line."
