Chapter 12: The Threshold of the Cabin
The rear mudroom door of the hunting lodge was old pine, warped by decades of winter damp, and it gave way with only a soft, muffled groan when I put my shoulder against the latch. Marcus slipped through the gap ahead of me, his service pistol raised and his eyes scanning the gloom of the narrow service hallway. The air inside smelled of stale woodsmoke, cheap whiskey, and kerosene—the unmistakable scent of men who had been camping out in isolation while waiting for orders from a corrupt courthouse thirty miles away.
We crept down the narrow corridor past rows of empty coat hooks and hunting boots caked with dried mud. From the front room came the low murmur of men talking in low, rumbling tones punctuated by the sharp scrape of a metal chair leg across bare floorboards. I kept my weight centered on the balls of my feet, my heart pounding a steady, rhythmic cadence against my ribs. Fourteen months of empty bedrooms, fourteen months of watching my four daughters struggle to find comfort in baking flour and nursery rhymes while men in clean suits lied to my face across mahogany desks—it all narrowed down to this exact hallway.
Suddenly, a door to our left swung open a few inches, spilling a pale wedge of yellow light across the floorboards. A man in a county maintenance jacket stepped out, holding a chipped ceramic coffee mug. He stopped dead in his tracks the instant he saw us, his eyes widening in sudden, blind panic as the mug slipped from his fingers and shattered against the floor with a sharp crash.
"Don't move," Marcus commanded, his voice dropping an octave into a low, absolute authority.
The maintenance man tried to dive back toward the room, his hand reaching under his heavy wool jacket for the grip of a holster, but I didn't hesitate. I crossed the narrow gap in two long strides, driving my shoulder hard into his chest and pinning him against the rough wood-paneled wall. The impact knocked the wind from his lungs in a sharp, ragged gasp.
"Where is she?" I demanded, my face inches from his, my hands gripping the thick lapels of his jacket so hard the fabric tore. "Where are they keeping her?"
May you like
The man wheezed, his face turning pale as he stared up into my eyes and recognized the look of a man who had nothing left to lose. He swallowed hard, his Adam's apple bobbing sharply. "Down... down in the root cellar," he choked out, his fingers trembling against the wood. "The trapdoor is behind the fieldstone hearth in the main room. They were going to move her when the truck came at dawn."
I let him go, shoving him hard back against the wall into Marcus's custody, and turned my face toward the arched doorway leading directly into the great room. The final piece of the puzzle was right through that timber frame.
