Chapter 6 - The Hunting Cabin
The drive upstate was treacherous. The snowstorm had resumed, blanketing the winding mountain roads in thick, blinding white. But I couldn't wait for morning. If Beckett got to the cabin first, the server would be destroyed, and Clara would take the fall for his crimes. I called Detective Vance—the honest cop who had visited my house—and filled him in on the Russian mob connection and the hidden server. I didn't tell him I was driving there myself.
I arrived at the cabin just before dawn. It was a massive, modern structure made of dark wood and glass, isolated in the middle of a frozen forest. There were no cars in the driveway, meaning I had beaten Beckett's cleanup crew.
I broke the back window, disabled the alarm system—a vintage setup I recognized from my old cases—and slipped inside. The cabin was freezing, the air stale. I bypassed the luxurious living room and headed straight for the basement.
Behind a false wall in the wine cellar, I found it: a climate-controlled server room humming quietly in the dark. This was the beating heart of Beckett Hale’s criminal empire. I plugged my encrypted hard drive into the main console and began mirroring the data.
As the progress bar slowly ticked across the screen, I watched the files populate. It was a goldmine. Unedited audio recordings of Beckett threatening David. Original wire transfer documents bearing Beckett's digital signature, not Clara's. Emails negotiating money laundering rates with known Bratva associates. And then, I found a folder named "C."
My hand trembled as I clicked on it. Inside were hundreds of videos and audio clips. It was a meticulously cataloged record of his abuse. Videos of him locking her in the basement. Audio of him gaslighting her, telling her she was crazy, threatening to kill her if she ever left him. He kept these not just for blackmail, but for his own sick entertainment. He enjoyed re-living her torment.
Tears streamed down my face as I listened to my daughter pleading for her life on the screen. The guilt I felt for missing the signs threatened to crush me. But I swallowed it down, transforming the sorrow into pure, unadulterated rage.
The download reached 99%.
Suddenly, the floorboards above me creaked.
I froze. Someone was in the cabin. I unholstered my revolver, stepping back into the shadows of the wine cellar.
Footsteps descended the wooden stairs. Slow. Deliberate.
"Evelyn," a voice echoed through the basement. It wasn't Beckett. It was a heavy, thick Eastern European accent. A cleaner. Beckett hadn't come himself; he had sent his Russian associates to burn the place down and anyone inside it.
The computer beeped softly. 100%. Transfer complete.
I yanked the hard drive out, stuffed it into my bra, and moved silently toward the secondary exit—a storm cellar door I had spotted earlier. The hitman stepped into the server room, an assault rifle raised. I didn't wait for him to spot me. I fired two shots into the server stack itself. Sparks flew, smoke erupted, and the hitman flinched, firing blindly into the dark.
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I kicked the storm doors open, scrambled into the freezing snow, and ran toward the woods as bullets chewed up the snow around me. I knew these woods. My late husband and I used to camp here when Clara was a little girl. The hitman was a city rat, unaccustomed to the treacherous, icy terrain. I led him into a thicket of brambles, doubled back, and made it to my car parked a mile down the road.
As I drove away, I saw flames rising from the cabin in my rearview mirror. They had destroyed the original servers, just as I expected. But they were too late. I had the ghost. I had his soul on a hard drive.
