Chapter 18 - The Shadow in the YardWe didn’t go to the police immediately. In our family, involving the authorities before you understood the board meant walking blindly into a trap someone else had set.
Instead, Sienna and I drove out to the old family estate upstate—the very place where Grandma had spent her final years. It was empty now, echoing with ghosts and floorboards that groaned under every step.
“Why are we here?” Sienna asked, shivering in the cool autumn air as we walked up the front steps.
“Because Arthur Vance spent thirty years working out of the study in this house,” I replied, unlocking the heavy oak door. “If he left a physical backup of whatever is on that flash drive, it’s hidden where Dad couldn’t reach it.”
The house smelled of dust, old paper, and beeswax. We moved through the dim corridors, flashlights cutting through the gloom.
When we reached the study, I went straight to the heavy mahogany bookcase behind the desk.
“Help me push this,” I instructed Sienna.
With a grinding groan of sliding wood, the bookcase shifted to reveal a small, forgotten wall safe that wasn't on any architectural blueprints.
“Dad didn’t know about this?” Sienna whispered, watching in amazement.
“Dad thought he owned every inch of this property,” I said, pulling a folded piece of paper out of my pocket—a sequence of numbers Arthur had scrawled on the back of his letter.
I spun the dial. Left, forty-five. Right, twelve. Left, eighty-two.
The heavy steel door popped open with a satisfying hiss of depressurization.
Inside wasn't money or gold. It was a single, leather-bound ledger labeled VANCE: PRIVATE CONTINGENCY.
I opened it to the first page. The handwriting was crisp and neat.
“If you are reading this, Clara, it means someone has tried to weaponize the past. The digital files online are only half-truths. The real documents—the ones that prove your father was being blacklisted, not protected—are right here.”
Before I could turn the page, a loud crash echoed from the front hallway downstairs.
Sienna froze, grabbing my arm. “Did you hear that?”
“Stay behind me,” I whispered, pocketing the ledger and pulling a heavy brass paperweight off the desk.
May you like
Footsteps crunched heavily on the antique hardwood floors downstairs. Someone was in the house with us.
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