Chapter 5 - The Counter-Attack
By 6:00 a.m. the next morning, Ethan Caldwell had made his move.
Marcus turned on the small television in the corner of the cabin. Every local news channel was running the same breaking story. “Beloved Local Tech CEO Attacked; Wife Kidnapped by Estranged Father.”
The screen showed Ethan standing outside his mansion. He had a bandage on his neck where Richard had choked him, and his arm was in a sling—a theatrical touch, considering Richard hadn't broken any bones. Ethan looked into the camera, his eyes perfectly welling up with tears. "My father-in-law suffers from severe PTSD," Ethan lied flawlessly to the reporter. "He broke into our home, assaulted me, and dragged my terrified wife away. Emily, if you can hear this, please come back to me. We love you. We just want to get your father the psychiatric help he desperately needs."
Emily stared at the screen, her breathing growing rapid. Panic seized her chest. "He's spinning it," she whispered. "Everyone is going to believe him. They always believe him."
Richard muted the television with a sharp click of the remote. "Let him talk," Richard said calmly, handing Emily a cup of hot tea. "Pride comes before the fall, sweetheart. He's building a beautiful house of cards. We're just going to open the window."
At that moment, the cabin's secure satellite phone buzzed. Marcus picked it up, listened for a second, and handed it to Richard. "It's Sarah."
Sarah Jenkins had been the lead cyber-warfare specialist in Richard’s Special Forces unit. She was a ghost in the machine, a woman who could hack into a foreign government's grid before finishing her morning coffee. Now, she worked as an independent consultant in Chicago.
"Colonel," Sarah’s voice crackled through the speaker. "I saw the news. Ethan Caldwell is painting you as a lunatic. Tell me we are going hunting."
"We're going hunting, Sarah," Richard smiled grimly. "We need access to Caldwell Digital Solutions' mainframe. Specifically, a hidden partition called the Blue Folder."
There was the sound of rapid typing on the other end. "Caldwell Digital?" Sarah whistled. "That's high-end stuff, Boss. They use decentralized node encryption. Trying to hack in from the outside would take months, and it would trigger a hundred silent alarms. I need a backdoor. Did he leave any vulnerabilities?"
Richard looked at Emily. Emily took a deep breath. She closed her eyes, forcing her mind back to the nightmare of living with Ethan. She remembered the late nights, the arguments, the times he worked from home and forced her to sit in the corner of his office in silence just so he could keep an eye on her.
"The smart home system," Emily said suddenly.
"What about it?" Richard asked.
"Ethan is obsessed with control," Emily explained, looking at the phone. "He wired the entire mansion in Belle Meade to be controlled by his master server at the office. The cameras, the locks, the climate control. He did it so he could lock me in or out of rooms from his desk at work." Her voice trembled at the memory, but she pushed through. "If you can physically plug into the mansion's main router, you can ride the smart-home connection directly past his office firewalls."
Silence fell over the line. Then, Sarah laughed. "The idiot. He prioritized domestic abuse over digital security. He literally left a bridge open between his house and his vault."
"Can you extract the files if I get you connected?" Richard asked.
"If you plug a localized transmitter directly into his home router, I can hijack the feed," Sarah confirmed. "But it will take me exactly five minutes to bypass his secondary encryption and download the Blue Folder. During those five minutes, his security team will realize they are being breached. They will send the police or private muscle to the house immediately."
Richard looked out the cabin window. The sun was rising, casting long, sharp shadows across the forest. "I'm going back to Belle Meade," Richard said.
"Dad, no!" Emily grabbed his arm. "It's a trap. He has private security there now. You'll be arrested. Or killed."
"I won't be caught," Richard said softly, touching her hand. "But I have to do this, Emmy. It's the only way to give you your life back."
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Marcus walked over, racking the slide of a tactical shotgun. "You're not going alone, old man," Marcus grinned. "I haven't had a good workout in years."
Richard looked at his old friend, then at his daughter. "Sarah," Richard said into the phone. "Prep your software. We breach the mansion at midnight."
