Chapter 5 - The Cabin by the Reservoir
"Caleb! CALEB!" I screamed into the phone, but only the flat, rhythmic tone of a dropped call answered me.
I sprinted out of the study, snatching my rain jacket and car keys from the hook near the front door.
"Eleanor? What's wrong?" Robert’s voice called out from the guest room. He appeared in the doorway, his arm strapped tightly in his sling, his eyes wide with concern. "Who was that on the phone?"
"It was Caleb," I said, my hands trembling violently as I zipped up my coat. "He's at the old abandoned lumber mill near the Mercer Reservoir. Robert, someone tricked him. The firm he hired forged all the evidence against Katherine to protect Beatrice's real killer! And Caleb says there's a silver sedan parked outside the mill right now!"
Robert’s face paled. "The silver sedan? From the original accident report?"
"Call Detective Vance immediately!" I yelled over my shoulder as I pushed through the front door into the pouring rain. "Tell him to send every unit he has to the reservoir mill! NOW!"
I threw myself into our estate wagon, slammed the door, hit the engine start button, and tore out of the driveway, spraying water and mud across the lawn.
The drive to the Mercer County Reservoir took fifteen minutes through winding, unlit mountain roads flanked by dense pine forests. The rain was blinding, falling in thick, white curtains that swept across the pavement like ghosts.
My mind raced back over the last three years.
Beatrice Miller had been an orphan, working two jobs while attending state college. She had no wealth, no influential family, no enemies. Why would someone go to such catastrophic lengths—spending years, forging government documents, and psychologically destroying my son—just to keep her hit-and-run death buried?
Unless Beatrice’s death wasn't an accident at all.
Unless Beatrice had seen something she wasn't supposed to see.
I rounded the final sharp hairpin curve near the summit of the ridge, the dark, murky waters of the reservoir gleam down in the valley below. Ahead, half-hidden behind overgrown white pines and rusted chain-link fencing, stood the collapsed wooden silhouette of the old Miller Sawmill.
Caleb’s black pickup truck was parked near the rusted iron gates, its driver-side door left wide open, its interior light glowing faintly in the gloom.
Parked twenty yards deeper into the overgrown clearing, shrouded beneath the low-hanging branches of a weeping willow tree, sat a sleek, late-model silver sedan with dark tinted windows and local municipal license plates.
My stomach dropped into a cold, endless pit.
Municipal plates.
I recognized those plates. They belonged to the County Board of Commissioners—the government agency that oversaw all civil engineering permits, bridge construction contracts, and zoning approvals for Mercer County.
The agency where my son worked as a junior civil engineer.
The agency managed by Frank’s older brother—my brother-in-law, Arthur Pendelton.
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I killed the wagon's headlights, coasted quietly to a stop behind a cluster of thick bushes, and pulled my heavy iron flashlight from the glove compartment.
I stepped out into the freezing rain, keeping low to the ground, my heart hammering against my ribs like a sledgehammer as I crept toward the dark, gaping entrance of the abandoned mill.
