Chapter 6 - The Sanctuary
Deep in the thick forest of Blackwood Ridge, hidden beneath a canopy of towering hemlocks and pine trees, stood the cabin. Built from hand-hewn logs with a heavy stone chimney, it looked like a natural extension of the rugged mountain landscape.
Elena helped her exhausted mother up the wooden porch steps. Her own body was screaming in pain; every breath burned in her bruised chest, and her hands were raw from clawing through the mud and brambles. She knocked on the heavy oak door, but finding it unlocked, pushed it open and pulled her mother inside into the dark, quiet interior.
The cabin smelled of dried cedar, woodsmoke, and age. Elena quickly locked the door behind them and guided her mother to an old leather sofa in the center of the living room.
"Stay here, Mom. I'm going to check the back," Elena whispered, picking up a heavy iron poker from the fireplace hearth.
She crept through the dark hallway, her ears strained for any sound. Finding the back door securely bolted from the inside and the windows shuttered with thick timber, she let out a long breath of relief.
A few minutes later, three soft knocks sounded at the front door—two short, one long. It was the signal Vance had given them before they parted ways in the woods.
Elena unbolted the door and pulled it open. Vance stepped inside, dripping wet, his rain jacket caked with mud and blood. He carried his shotgun in one hand and a black tactical duffel bag taken from the mercenaries in the other. He closed the door behind him and slid a heavy wooden crossbar into place across the frame.
"Are you two alright?" Vance asked, his voice low and gravelly.
"We made it," Elena said softly. She looked at the fresh blood on his shoulder. "You're hit."
"Just a graze," Vance replied dismissively, tossing the tactical bag onto the wooden table. "Collins withdrew. He knows he can't fight in these woods at night. But as soon as the sun comes up, Thorne will have state police helicopters and search teams combing these ridges under the pretense of an 'escaped convict search.'"
He walked over to an old iron stove in the corner, struck a match, and lit the kindling inside. Warm, orange light quickly filled the room, casting long shadows across the cabin walls.
"We have a few hours before daylight," Vance said, sitting down at the heavy oak table and unzipping the captured tactical bag. Inside were three encrypted tactical radios, several high-capacity magazines, and a satellite field tablet. "We need to plan our next move."
Elena sat down across from him, placing her phone on the table. The screen flickered, displaying the raw video file that had started this war. "Where do we go? If Thorne controls the county and the state police are listening to him, who can we trust?"
Vance reached into his pocket and pulled out a small, worn leather notebook. He flipped through the yellowed pages until he found a hand-written telephone number.
"There’s one person," Vance said, staring at the number. "Federal Prosecutor Sarah Chen. She's with the Department of Justice's Public Integrity Section in Chicago. Three years ago, she tried to build a federal corruption case against Thorne, but she couldn't get a witness to stand up because everyone was too terrified of Collins and his enforcement ring."
He looked up at Elena, his expression serious. "If we can get this video file and your testimony directly to Chen, she can issue federal arrest warrants that bypass local law enforcement entirely. Thorne and Collins won't be able to hide behind their local badges."
"How do we contact her without them tracing the signal?" Elena asked.
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Vance tapped the satellite tablet on the table. "This tablet uses a military-grade satellite link. It doesn't ping off local cell towers. But to send a file this large, we need to get to the high-frequency transmitter at the abandoned ranger station on the summit of Bald Mountain."
Elena looked out the rain-streaked window toward the towering, dark silhouette of Bald Mountain rising into the stormy night sky. "Then that’s where we go."
