Chapter 7 - SHADOWS IN THE TIMBER
-7-
Two weeks after we settled into the coastal cabin, the illusion of absolute safety began to fray at the edges.
It started with a subtle shift in the forest surrounding our property. The coastal range north of Brookings was vast and sparsely populated, but the timber service roads that wound through the dense Douglas firs were normally quiet, save for the occasional logging truck or local fisherman heading down to the coves.
On a Tuesday morning while Eli was inside the living room sketching pictures of dinosaurs with the colored pencils Richard had bought him, I noticed a late-model dark SUV parked half-concealed behind a clump of overgrown ferns about three hundred yards up the ridge on the old logging spur.
It didn't have commercial plates, and it didn't belong to any of our neighbors—the closest of whom lived a mile down the coast and drove a battered red 1990 Ford pickup.
I stepped back inside the cabin, my heart skipping a beat as I closed the wooden blinds over the front window.
“Uncle Richard,” I said, keeping my voice low and steady so Eli wouldn't look up from his drawing pad. “We have company on the ridge.”
Richard, who was sitting at the oak kitchen table soldering a circuit board for his shortwave radio, looked up instantly. His eyes narrowed, and without a word, he stood up and walked over to the corner where a heavy steel lockbox sat beneath a stack of old National Geographics.
He popped the combination lock, lifted the lid, and pulled out a matte-black satellite-linked tactical radio and a heavy-duty pair of military-grade binoculars. Walking silently to the side window that looked up toward the logging spur, he adjusted the focus and stared through the glass for a long, agonizing minute.
“Well, damn,” Richard muttered under his breath, lowering the binoculars with a dark frown.
“Meridian Tactical?” I asked, stepping up beside him.
“Not quite,” Richard said, handing me the binoculars. “Take a look. Specifically at the front passenger door.”
I pressed the binoculars to my eyes and adjusted the central dial. The dark SUV came into sharp focus. The license plates had been covered with magnetic dummy tags bearing Oregon registration, but painted in faint, peeling white stencil across the lower rocker panel of the passenger door was a logo I recognized from my days reviewing my ex-husband’s old business contracts: a stylized falcon clutching a lightning bolt—the corporate insignia of Aegis Security Solutions, a private intelligence firm headquartered in Zurich that my father had retained as a fail-safe whenever his domestic shell companies needed offshore liquidation.
“They aren't local enforcers,” Richard said, his voice dropping to a gravelly whisper. “Those are corporate clean-up specialists. Arthur might be sitting in a county holding cell in Carson City, but he has millions hidden in Swiss bearer bonds that only his primary trustee can authorize. And right now, those guys up on the ridge aren't here to rescue him—they’re here to make sure the person who holds the new master cryptographic keys—which happens to be you—permanently stops breathing.”
I lowered the binoculars, my fingers tightening around the rubberized grip. The initial wave of fear that threatened to rise in my chest was instantly replaced by a cold, familiar anger.
“They think they can hunt us down in the woods like my parents hunted us on the highway,” I said, my voice as hard as the steel frame of the window.
“They do,” Richard agreed grimly. “Because they operate outside the jurisdiction of state troopers and federal marshals. If something happens to us out here in the coastal timber, the local sheriff will write it off as a tragic propane explosion or a hiking accident in the ravines.”
“Not this time,” I said, walking over to the oak table where Richard’s laptop was still connected to the local secure network node we had wired into the cabin’s subfloor. “They’re trying to play my father’s old game. But they forgot one thing.”
Richard raised an eyebrow. “What’s that?”
“Arthur built his entire empire on surveillance,” I said, tapping the enter key to bring up the local topographic telemetry map of the coastal ridge. “Which means every private security contractor he ever hired had to register their satellite comms frequencies with his master switchboard so they didn't trigger automated defense alarms around his properties.”
I pulled up the interface for Richard’s shortwave transmitter, my fingers flying across the mechanical keyboard with practiced precision.
“What are you doing?” Richard asked, leaning over my shoulder.
“I’m sending a ping on Arthur’s old command frequency,” I said with a thin, dark smile. “Letting Aegis Security know that the master cryptographic key they’re looking for isn't hidden in the cabin. It’s currently broadcasting its exact GPS coordinates straight to every federal law enforcement database between here and Washington, D.C.”
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On the screen, a status bar blinked green: TRANSMITTING DECOY BEACON TO DOD-INTERPOL SECURE RELAY.
Up on the ridge, three hundred yards away through the dense Douglas firs, the dark SUV suddenly flashed its high-beam headlights twice, its engine roaring to life as the driver slammed the vehicle into reverse, tires spinning wildly in the gravel as they realized their cover had just been blown by their own encrypted communication protocols.
