3. The War Chest
Chapter three
The War Chest
It took three tries to connect the satellite phone. The display flashed Searching against the dark plastic, and then the signal stabilized, showing a solid green bar. I punched in the New York number from memory.
I stood near the kitchen window, leaning my weight against the edge of the counter.
A steady chill seeped up from the slate floor through the soles of my socks.
Across the room, Holt sat on a wooden crate, methodically cleaning his soot-stained boots with a stiff-bristled brush.
The rhythmic scraping echoed through the quiet space.
A pot of coffee simmered on the cast-iron stove, filling the air with a rich, bitter scent that barely masked the lingering smell of woodsmoke trapped in my hair.
I held the heavy black handset to my ear, the satellite line ringing with a hollow, metallic echo.
“Renata Vance.”
Her voice was brisk, stripped of any warmth, carrying the exact corporate impatience I expected.
She assumed it was a cold call or an associate interrupting her morning.
I closed my eyes. Hearing her was a sudden, disorienting whiplash.
She was sitting in her polished glass office thousands of miles away, entirely unaware of what had happened yesterday afternoon.
I took a slow breath, trying to calm the frantic beating in my chest. “Renata, it’s Wren. Don’t hang up.”
The line went dead quiet. Not a breath, not a rustle of papers. The silence stretched for four long seconds. I could almost feel the exact moment her mind shifted, trying to reconcile my voice with the morning news reports that said I was dead.
Her tone dropped an octave, tight and guarded. “Who is this?”
“It’s Wren,” I said, keeping my voice perfectly level. “I’m alive. Do not call the authorities.”
Another beat of silence. “If this is Wren, tell me the name of the paralegal who spilled coffee on your grandmother’s trust document three years ago.”
“David,” I answered immediately. “He stained page four.”
A sharp intake of breath cut through the static on the receiver. It was a rare, unguarded moment of shock. “Jesus.” The word came out like a forced exhale. Then, just as quickly, the hesitation vanished. The ruthless pragmatism returned. “Where are you?”
“I’m safe,” I said. “I’m off the grid, up in the mountains. I have a secure line, and I have medical help.”
“I am calling the district attorney right now,” Renata said. The metallic lag of the satellite connection made her voice sound clipped, but the authority was absolute. “I can have state police at your location in two hours. Send me the coordinates.”
“No. Stop and listen to me,” I said. I traced the grain of the wooden counter with my free hand. “Before you call anyone, you need to know exactly what happened yesterday. The fire didn’t just reach the house. Chase left me in there.”
The line went still again. “Explain that.”
“I walked in on him and my sister,” I said, the words heavy and difficult to pry loose.
“He was telling her that he was waiting for the baby to be born so my inheritance would convert to marital property. When the fire hit the ridge, I couldn’t keep up with them.
He made it to the porch first. Instead of helping me, he dragged my grandmother’s heavy cedar bench across the door, wedged it under the iron handle to trap me inside, and drove off with my sister. ”
“Wren,” Renata said, her voice entirely flat. “He tried to kill you.”
“He succeeded, as far as he knows. A neighbor pulled me out right before the roof collapsed.”
Holt paused his brushing, his gray eyes lifting to meet mine across the room.
“The neighbor used to work fire lines. He was wearing a chest-mounted body camera. I have digital footage of my husband sealing me in a burning building.”
“That is physical evidence of felony attempted murder,” Renata said, her words speeding up as the tactical reality hit her. “I will have a protective detail on you by noon. We hand the footage to the prosecutor—”
“No,” I interrupted, my voice hardening. “If we go to the police right now, he gets arrested, but he still has access to our joint accounts. He uses my money to hire a defense team. He claims he panicked in the smoke and grabbed the bench by mistake. He’ll make bail, Renata.”
“I can argue he’s a flight risk. I can tie his assets up,” Renata countered.
“Not fast enough. And if he’s out on bail, he knows I’m alive and holding the evidence that will put him in prison.
” I looked out the window at the dense line of pine trees bordering the property.
Yesterday’s paralyzing fear had burned off, leaving me entirely focused on what had to be done next.
“He already tried to kill me and my baby once. If he’s desperate and out on the street, he will come finish the job.
A restraining order won’t stop him. The only way we are safe is if he stops hunting. ”
The static hissed softly over the line. “You want to stay dead.”
“He told me it was ‘cleaner’ this way,” I said, repeating the exact words Chase had spoken through the door planks.
“He meant the money. If I burn, there is no divorce settlement. He wants the inheritance. So we give him what he wants. We let him file the fraudulent insurance claims. We let him sign the affidavits in probate court.”
“You want him to walk into a federal trap,” Renata said, her tone shifting as she caught up to my logic.
“I want him to perjure himself on the record to steal my money. Because when we finally hand that footage and his fraudulent filings to a judge, no court in the country will grant him bail. I want him locked up before he even knows I’m breathing.”
There was a long pause. I knew Renata well. She was not a woman governed by empathy. She liked clean wins and devastating counters. I listened as the brief shock faded from her voice, her pragmatism quickly overriding the horror of what Chase had done.
“If we let him petition the probate court to unseal your estate,” Renata said slowly, “he gains access to the primary accounts. He will start liquidating assets immediately. We need a war chest to fight this from the shadows, and we can’t touch anything in your primary name without tipping him off. ”
“He knows about the main account,” I said. “He doesn’t know about Esther’s contingency trust.”
My grandmother had been a paranoid, brilliant woman. Before she died, she had set up a secondary, smaller trust fund specifically designated for my future child. Chase had never seen the paperwork for it. He only cared about the liquid cash.
“The secondary blind trust,” Renata confirmed. “I have the routing numbers in my vault.”
“Lock it down,” I instructed. “Use the beneficiary clause loophole to freeze it quietly. Move it to escrow. That’s our retainer.”
“Consider it done. I will initiate the transfer this morning.” The faint clack of a keyboard filtered through the line.
“I’ll need a signed proxy form to represent a client who is legally presumed missing.
I can’t file motions on your behalf without a paper trail authorizing me as your representative. ”
“I’ll type it up today.”
“I’ll send a secure digital drop link to this connection,” Renata said. “Stay off the grid, Wren. No personal emails, no patient portals, no credit cards. The moment you ping a server with your IP address, the ‘ghost act’ is over.”
“I know.”
“I’ll be in touch.”
The mechanical click of the disconnect echoed in my ear. I lowered the handset and placed it gently on the base station. I stood there for a moment, listening to the hum of the solar inverter on the wall, feeling the quiet weight of having set the trap.
Two hours later, the heavy wooden door of the cabin swung open.
Della stepped inside, wearing a canvas work shirt and carrying her scuffed medical bag. She kicked the dust off her hiking boots and immediately spotted me wiping down the kitchen counters.
“Back to the couch,” she ordered, dropping her bag on the floorboards. “You’ve been on your feet too long.”
I set the rag down and walked over to the worn leather sofa, sinking into the cushions with a quiet sigh.
My lower back ached with a persistent, dull throb that hadn’t faded since the truck ride yesterday.
Della did not have a gentle bedside manner.
She moved with a blunt, no-nonsense efficiency forged from decades of treating logging injuries on the mountain.
She was warm, but she refused to entertain stubbornness.
She opened her bag, pulled out a blood pressure cuff, and sat in front of me on the edge of the coffee table.
“Sleeve up,” she said.
I pushed the soft flannel sleeve of my borrowed shirt past my elbow.
Della wrapped the cuff around my biceps, the Velcro tearing the quiet of the room.
She pumped the rubber bulb, her eyes fixed on the small dial gauge.
The tight squeeze of the cuff sent a pulse throbbing down my arm.
Her expression tightened as she read the dial, the weathered lines around her mouth deepening.
She released the valve. The hiss of escaping air was loud in the confined space.
“One-fifty over ninety-five,” Della announced, unfastening the cuff. “That’s too high, Wren. You are pushing your luck.”
“I feel fine,” I argued, pulling my sleeve down. “I just need to finish a few things.”
“I don’t care how you feel,” Della said, tossing the cuff back into her bag.
She reached out and gently rested her blunt hand on my knee, the gesture entirely maternal despite her sharp tone.
“I care about the numbers. Your body is fighting the stress, the smoke inhalation, and the adrenaline of surviving yesterday’s ordeal.
If your blood pressure keeps climbing, you risk preeclampsia.
Neither of us wants to deal with that on a mountain. ”
“I just need to use the laptop,” I protested. “I have to draft a legal proxy letter for my lawyer. I need to type it out and sign it so we can trigger the freeze on my trust.”
“You can type lying down.” Della stood up, crossing her arms. “But your feet stay elevated. You don’t chop wood. You don’t carry water. You do not stress yourself out. Strict bed rest, starting right now.”
I looked down at my hands. Frustration gnawed at my stomach. I wanted to be moving. I wanted to be executing the plan, finalizing the documents, actively dismantling Chase’s life. Being confined to a couch just made me feel exposed, forced to rely on others to keep me safe.
Holt stood up from the corner of the room. He tossed a rag onto the table and walked over.
“I’ll handle the generator and the supplies,” he said, his voice a low, steady rumble. “I need to clear the access road anyway. You stay on the couch.”
I looked up at him. He stood tall in the dim light, a solid, unbothered presence in the cramped space.
I was relying on him entirely for my physical survival and relying on Della for the medical safety of my child.
I hated it. I was used to being the one managing crises, never the one stuck on the sidelines.
“I hate being useless,” I muttered, leaning back against the cushions.
Holt picked up his canvas work jacket from the back of a chair. He slid his arms into the sleeves and looked at me.
“You’re keeping the kid alive,” he said simply. “That’s the job.”
It was a harsh, unsentimental assessment and exactly what I needed to hear. It cut through my lingering frustration, reminding me of the actual stakes.
Della zipped her canvas bag shut. “I will be back tomorrow morning to check those numbers again. Drink water. Rest.”
She walked out the front door. A minute later, the sputtering engine of her ATV started up and then slowly faded as she navigated down the steep, rutted mountain road.
Holt walked over to the table and filled a glass with water from a pitcher. He set it down on the wooden crate next to the sofa.
“Firewood,” he said. He didn’t wait for a response. He walked out the door, pulling it shut behind him. The heavy thud of the latch dropping into place sealed the cabin in silence once more.
I shifted on the sofa, pulling my legs up and resting my swollen feet on the armrest. Reaching down, I picked up the rugged laptop Holt had left on the floor. I settled it onto my lap, flipped the screen open, and waited for the operating system to load.
Outside, the sharp, rhythmic crack of an axe biting into pine echoed across the yard.
I opened a blank document. I stared at the flashing cursor for a long moment, listening to the wood splitting outside, feeling the steady rhythm of my daughter’s movements inside me.
I placed my fingers on the keys and began typing out the document granting the legal authority to manage my estate as a ‘ghost’.