Chapter 4 - THE RED LEDGER
The rough canvas of the sack scratched violently against my skin as I struggled against the grip pinning me against the oak beam. Panic screamed in my head, but Grandpa’s training kicked in like a cold shock to my system.
“When panic takes over, you lose,” his voice echoed in my memory. “Focus on what you can control. Find the weak point.”
I stopped thrashing. I let my body go slightly limp, feigning surrender. The man holding me grunted, his grip loosening just a fraction as he thought I was passing out from terror.
The second his grip softened, I drove the heavy heel of my work boot directly down onto his instep with all the force in my body.
A sharp, wet crack echoed through the barn, followed by a howl of rage. The man released my arms to grab his crushed foot. I whipped my head back hard, cracking the back of my skull straight into his nose. He staggered backward, cursing violently.
I ripped the canvas sack off my head, gasping for air.
In the dim blue light of the radar scanner, I saw my attacker—a tall, muscular man wearing a dark tactical jacket and a ski mask. He was clutching his bleeding face with one gloved hand. But he wasn't alone.
Standing near the back wall, holding a heavy iron crowbar, was a second man. He threw back his hood, revealing a slicked-back haircut and a manic, desperate expression in his eyes.
It was my father’s business partner, Marcus Vance—my cousin.
"Clara, don't make this harder than it has to be," Marcus sneered, stepping over the pried-up floorboards. His voice was laced with an edgy, erratic energy. "Just give us the red ledger and we’ll leave. You can keep your precious little farmhouse."
I backed up toward the open barn door, keeping my eyes fixed on both of them. "What ledger, Marcus? What are you talking about? You’re breaking the law! The deputies are at the end of the road!"
"The deputies are sitting in their cruiser drinking coffee a mile away," Marcus laughed coldly. "Your useless father thought he could just walk in here today and take the house through legal paper. He didn't tell you the truth, did he? He didn't tell you that his entire investment firm is six million dollars in the hole to some very dangerous people!"
My breath caught in my throat. Six million dollars.
"Richard lied to everybody," Marcus continued, pacing slowly like a caged animal. "He told our investors that Arthur had signed over the deed to the old copper vein under this property thirty years ago. He took loans against land he didn't own! If we don't present the original 1954 mineral rights ledger to the bank by Friday, Richard goes to federal prison for grand fraud. And I go down with him."
"There is no copper vein here," I said, my voice steady despite my heart hammering against my chest. "This is just farmland. Grandpa lived on a pension!"
"Your grandfather was a brilliant, lying old bastard!" Marcus snarled, his eyes widening. "He bought this land from the county in 1952 for pennies because he knew the survey reports showed a high-density copper deposit seventy feet down! He capped the old mine shafts, buried the records, and pretended to be a poor old farmer for fifty years just to keep big mining corporations—and his own family—from tearing this valley apart!"
I stood stock-still. Everything suddenly clicked into place.
The strange, heavy steel hatches locked with padlocks in the deep woods behind the pasture. The way Grandpa always refused to sell even a single acre to the housing developers who knocked on our door every spring. The secret journal entry I had just read in his study.
He wasn't just protecting his peace. He was holding the key to a fortune—a fortune that my father had already illegally promised to high-stakes investors.
"Where is it, Clara?" Marcus stepped closer, lifting the iron crowbar. "Arthur hid the original 1954 register. The one with the state land seals. It's the only document that proves who controls the mineral rights. Give it to us."
"I don't have it," I said, backing up another step into the autumn breeze blowing through the door.
"Lie!" the first man barked, stepping up beside Marcus, wiping blood from his nose under his mask. "She’s the one who lived with him! She knows every inch of this dump!"
"Check the study!" Marcus ordered the masked man. "She said earlier the deeds were in the study! Go tear that desk apart!"
"No!" I yelled, dropping all pretense and lunging toward the door to block him.
Marcus lunged forward, grabbing my arm and shoving me violently backwards. I hit the dirt floor hard, the air knocked out of my lungs in a painful gasp. The flashlight tumbled from my grip, its beam spinning across the dark ceiling beams before coming to rest on the loft above.
The masked man sprinted out of the barn, his heavy boots pounding across the gravel toward the main house.
"Marcus, stop!" I gasped, pushing myself up onto my knees, my chest burning. "You don't know what you're doing! Grandpa set traps for people like you!"
"The only trap here is the one you’re in, cousin," Marcus spit, standing over me with the crowbar raised. "Stay right there. If you move, I won't just break your foot—I'll make sure you end up right next to Arthur in the cemetery."
He turned and hurried out of the barn, running after his partner toward the light of the main house.
I gasped for air, pushing myself up off the dirt floor. My knees were bruised, my palms scraped raw, but the sheer rush of adrenaline wiped away the pain.
They were going into Grandpa's study. The study where the real secrets lay.
I grabbed the heavy iron flashlight from the floor, turned it around in my hand so I was holding it like a club, and sprinted out of the barn into the dark, foggy night.
The back door of the main house was hanging wide open, swinging gently on its hinges in the wind. Inside, the sound of breaking wood and shattering glass echoed down the long hallway.
They were tearing Grandpa’s room apart.
I crept up the back porch steps, keeping my boots silent against the wood. I slipped into the kitchen, moving past the counters until I reached the dark corridor leading to the study.
The door to the study was smashed at the lock. Inside, drawers were being ripped from the mahogany desk and dumped onto the floor. Books were being ripped off the shelves, their pages fluttered wildly across the rug.
"It's not in the desk!" the masked man yelled, tossing an antique brass clock against the wall, shattering its glass face. "There’s nothing here but old bills and maps!"
"Search behind the paintings!" Marcus shouted, his voice shrill with panic. "Search the floorboards!"
I stood in the doorway shadows, my hand clutching the flashlight. I looked across the destroyed room, past the wrecked desk and the scattered papers, to the back wall.
Hanging on that wall was a large, dark oil painting of Saint Jude—the same painting Grandpa had mentioned in his secret journal entry.
Marcus was walking right toward it.
He reached out his hand, his gloved fingers grasping the bottom edge of the heavy wooden frame, preparing to rip it off the wall.
"Looking for this?" I called out from the darkness of the hallway.
Marcus spun around, the crowbar raised.
I wasn't holding a weapon. I was holding a small, weathered red leather book with silver clasps, raised high in my left hand. I had pulled it from the hidden compartment inside the grandfather clock in the hall—the place where Grandpa had kept his most important possessions since I was a little girl.
Marcus’s eyes widened with pure, ravenous greed. "The 1954 ledger..."
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"Come and get it," I whispered.
And then I turned and sprinted straight down the dark basement stairs.
