Chapter 7 - The Road North
Reagan’s final words sent investigators racing back through every financial record connected to Bellweather Holdings.
Carter refused to cooperate.
Reagan demanded immunity.
Neither received what they wanted.
The breakthrough came from a fuel receipt recovered from Carter’s office trash. It showed a purchase made two days earlier in the town of Coldwater, nearly three hundred miles north.
Coldwater was surrounded by forests, abandoned mining roads, and isolated rental cabins.
Bellweather Holdings had recently paid property taxes on one of those cabins through a second shell company.
Finnley wanted to join the search.
Maya advised against it.
“You were released less than twelve hours ago.”
“He is my father.”
“You don’t know what condition he is in.”
“That is exactly why I’m going.”
The police refused to let him ride with the tactical team, but Maya drove him north behind the convoy.
Rain struck the windshield throughout the journey.
Finnley wore borrowed clothes because everything he owned before prison had been taken, sold, or stored. Maya had found him a dark jacket and jeans.
He kept touching his wrists, expecting to feel chains.
Near midnight, the convoy turned onto an unmarked dirt road.
The cabin appeared beyond a line of pine trees.
No lights were visible.
Officers surrounded the building.
They found the front door unlocked.
Inside, food remained warm on the stove.
Someone had left recently.
A search of the bedrooms revealed medical supplies, adult diapers, intravenous tubing, and a portable oxygen machine.
The bed in the back room was empty.
Finnley stood in the doorway.
On the bedside table was his high school graduation photograph.
His father had kept it beside him.
Daniel found tire tracks behind the cabin. They led toward an old logging road too narrow for police vehicles.
The search continued on foot.
After half a mile, officers found an abandoned van. Its rear doors stood open. A wheelchair lay on its side in the mud.
Finnley’s stomach turned.
Then someone shouted from farther down the slope.
A man was lying beneath a canvas cover near the trees.
Finnley ran before anyone could stop him.
The man’s hair was long and silver. His face was thinner than Finnley remembered, his cheeks hollow and his skin pale.
But it was Theodore.
He was breathing.
Finnley dropped to his knees.
“Dad?”
Theodore’s eyelids moved.
“Dad, it’s me.”
His father opened his eyes slowly.
For several seconds, he seemed unable to focus.
Then he lifted one trembling hand and touched Finnley’s face.
“Finn?”
Finnley caught his hand.
“I’m here.”
“They said you were in prison.”
“I was.”
Theodore’s eyes filled with tears.
“I tried to stop them.”
“You did stop them.”
Sirens approached through the forest as paramedics carried equipment down the logging road.
Theodore gripped Finnley’s sleeve.
“The house…”
“It’s safe.”
“Reagan…”
“She can’t hurt you anymore.”
Theodore closed his eyes, exhausted.
Finnley leaned close enough to hear his next words.
May you like
“I knew you would trust the key.”
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