Chapter 6 - Parcel Seven
Skylar’s blood type was on file from a surgery two years earlier.
The sample in her car matched.
That did not prove she was badly hurt.
It proved someone wanted me frightened.
It worked.
But fear and obedience were different things.
Grant issued alerts for Skylar and Vance.
Hale and I returned to the apartment.
I spread Dad’s lake maps across the dining table.
Parcel Seven.
I found it after twenty minutes.
The cabin.
Not the building itself.
The land beneath it.
My inheritance.
Cumberland Renewal owned nearly every surrounding parcel.
Dad owned the only property covering the south ridge.
Parcel Seven extended farther underground than its visible boundaries because of old mineral rights attached to the deed.
“What did they find beneath it?” Hale asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Oil?”
“Wrong geology.”
“Minerals?”
“Maybe.”
I studied Dad’s documents.
One report was from an environmental company.
Groundwater contamination.
High concentrations of industrial solvents.
Buried drums.
Illegal dumping.
That was it.
Cumberland did not want the land because something valuable was beneath it.
They wanted control because something damaging was beneath it.
Evidence.
Decades of toxic dumping that could trigger lawsuits, criminal charges, and redevelopment losses.
Mom discovered it.
She had been helping landowners fight fraudulent liens and forced sales.
Then she found the contamination.
Vance had protected whoever caused it.
I traced corporate ownership.
Cumberland Renewal linked to another company.
Briar Industrial Holdings.
Another.
Vance Development Partners.
There.
Robert Vance had a financial interest.
Not direct.
Hidden through relatives and shell companies.
But present.
Hale sat back.
“Your father must have found this.”
“Then why keep the cabin instead of reporting everything?”
“Maybe he needed physical evidence.”
I thought of his video.
There is one person who knows where the original evidence is.
Lena Ward.
We needed her.
Grant found an old address.
Lena had moved repeatedly.
No recent utilities.
No current driver’s license.
Almost like she did not want to be found.
Then Hale remembered something.
“The woman in the photograph.”
“Yes.”
“Your father called her Lee once.”
“When?”
“Years ago. He said he was meeting Lee at St. Matthew’s.”
“Church?”
“Old mission outside Ashland.”
I searched the name.
St. Matthew’s Mission had closed eight years earlier.
The property had been converted into a women’s shelter operated by a nonprofit.
Director:
Helena Ward.
Lena.
We drove there.
The shelter was two hours away.
Grant insisted on sending a plainclothes officer, but I knew arriving with police might scare Lena off.
So the officer waited outside.
A woman at reception looked at me strangely when I asked for Helena.
“Who are you?”
“Mara Collins.”
She froze.
That was answer enough.
“She knows my name.”
The receptionist disappeared through a back door.
Five minutes passed.
Then ten.
Finally a woman entered.
Sixty.
Gray-streaked dark hair.
Thin.
Sharp eyes.
The same posture as the scratched-out photograph.
She stopped when she saw me.
“Oh, Thomas.”
My throat tightened.
“You knew my father.”
She ignored the question.
“You look like Evelyn.”
For the first time in seventeen years, someone said my mother’s name without pity.
“You knew her.”
Lena closed her eyes.
“Yes.”
“Why was your face scratched out of Dad’s photograph?”
Her expression changed.
“He thought destroying my identity might keep someone from connecting us.”
“Vance?”
“Yes.”
“Did he kill my mother?”
“I can’t prove he personally cut the brake line.”
“Did he order it?”
“I believe so.”
I took a step closer.
“My sister is missing.”
Lena’s face drained of color.
“Skylar?”
“You met her.”
“Yes.”
“She knew about you.”
“She knew enough to be frightened.”
“Why?”
“Because Skylar made a mistake.”
“What mistake?”
“She trusted Robert Vance.”
I stared at her.
Lena led us into a private office.
She locked the door.
“Two years ago,” she said, “Skylar contacted me because she found your father searching her apartment.”
“Why contact you?”
“She found an old letter with my name.”
“What did she want?”
“At first? Money.”
That sounded like Skylar.
“She believed there was something valuable hidden in the apartment.”
“There was evidence.”
“Yes. But she thought it was financial records proving your father had hidden assets.”
I rubbed my forehead.
“She told Vance.”
Lena nodded.
“She thought he could help her.”
Of course.
Vance had played family friend for years.
“When did she learn the truth?”
“Six months ago.”
“What changed?”
“She saw photographs from your mother’s accident.”
My anger cooled.
That explained her secrecy.
Her cruelty?
Maybe not.
“Did Dad know she told Vance?”
“Yes.”
“Was he angry?”
“Terrified.”
“Why?”
“Because once Vance knew Thomas was searching again, your father became a problem.”
Hale’s face hardened.
“You think Thomas was murdered.”
Lena looked at him.
“I know he was.”
My chest tightened.
“Proof?”
She opened a locked cabinet.
Removed an envelope.
Inside was a toxicology report.
Thomas Collins.
Cardiac glycoside detected.
A drug capable of triggering fatal arrhythmia.
The official autopsy had never mentioned it.
“Where did you get this?”
“Your father suspected he was being poisoned.”
I felt cold.
“He sent me a hair sample two weeks before he died.”
“Why not police?”
Lena almost laughed.
“Which police?”
Same answer as before.
“Who had access to him?”
“Several people.”
“Vance?”
“Yes.”
“Skylar?”
“Yes.”
That hurt differently.
Lena saw my face.
“I don’t believe Skylar harmed him.”
“But?”
“She gave Vance access to Thomas’s house.”
I sat down.
“She did what?”
“She thought Vance was helping investigate.”
Every path returned to Skylar’s trust.
Or manipulation.
“What is beneath the cabin?” I asked.
Lena looked toward Hale.
Then back at me.
“A buried waste pit.”
“We know.”
“No.”
She shook her head.
“That’s what your mother thought at first.”
“What else?”
“Records.”
“What records?”
“Original ledgers from Briar Chemical.”
“Why bury ledgers?”
“They weren’t buried intentionally.”
She leaned forward.
“In 1998, a storage building collapsed into an abandoned mine entrance after flooding. Vance’s father ordered the area covered instead of excavated. The building contained disposal logs, payment records, and correspondence proving officials knew toxic material was being dumped.”
“And Parcel Seven sits over it.”
“Yes.”
“Then why not excavate?”
“Because Cumberland has spent twenty years trying to buy enough surrounding land to control access.”
“And Dad refused.”
“Your father bought the cabin after Evelyn discovered the fraud.”
That explained the timing.
“He was protecting the site.”
“Yes.”
“Then the inheritance was never about a vacation property.”
“No.”
Lena looked at me sadly.
“It was a shield.”
I thought of Skylar’s insult.
A cabin suits you perfectly.
Maybe Dad had known exactly who could hold the line.
“Where are the original documents now?”
“Still underground.”
“How do we reach them?”
“There’s an entrance.”
“Where?”
“Under the cabin.”
I almost laughed from disbelief.
Lena continued.
“Thomas sealed it years ago.”
I remembered the locked dresser drawer.
The odd floor plan.
The crawlspace.
“Can Vance enter without me?”
“He needs the owner.”
“Why?”
“Because the mineral rights and subsurface access remain legally attached to Parcel Seven. If he trespasses and excavates, everything he finds becomes evidence of another crime.”
“Men like him don’t care.”
“He cares about legitimacy.”
“Not enough to avoid kidnapping.”
Lena looked away.
“Then things have changed.”
Her phone rang.
Unknown number.
She answered on speaker.
No one spoke.
Then we heard breathing.
“Hello?” Lena said.
A woman sobbed.
My entire body tightened.
“Skylar?”
“Mara?”
My sister.
Alive.
“Mara, don’t come back to the cabin.”
“Where are you?”
“I don’t know.”
A man took the phone.
Robert Vance.
Calm.
“Mara.”
“You hurt her.”
“She’s alive.”
“Let her go.”
“Bring me the deed to Parcel Seven.”
I looked at Hale.
Vance continued.
“And bring Lena Ward.”
Lena went still.
“Why?”
“Because she knows where the entrance is.”
I said nothing.
Vance chuckled.
“Come before midnight.”
Then his voice hardened.
“If you bring police, your sister will be buried where your mother should have stayed silent.”
The call ended.
Lena stared at me.
“He knows I’m here.”
My phone vibrated.
A photograph arrived.
Skylar sat tied to a chair.
Blood at her temple.
Behind her was a wall I recognized.
Blue wood paneling.
Lena whispered, “That’s impossible.”
I enlarged the image.
A brass lantern appeared over Skylar’s shoulder.
The same lantern outside my cabin.
But Skylar was not outside.
She was underground.
May you like
And behind her, painted on the concrete wall, were four words:
WELCOME TO PARCEL SEVEN.
