Chapter 6
Determined not to cower in her own home, Maya spent the morning conducting her own quiet investigation. While Leo was busy completing his online school modules at the kitchen table, she sat at her laptop, diving deep into public records, local digital archives, and archived police blotters for the county. The neighborhood association of Maple Crest Lane was notoriously quiet, but property deeds and tax assessments were a matter of public record, often revealing far more than the polite residents ever cared to admit.
It took nearly three hours of cross-referencing names, parcel numbers, and zoning disputes before Maya stumbled upon a strange anomaly regarding Jax’s property. His real name wasn't Jax; it was Jackson Miller, a former federal logistics coordinator who had taken an early, unceremonious retirement five years prior. More alarmingly, the property records showed that the house had never actually belonged to him. It was owned by a shell corporation registered out of the Cayman Islands—a classic financial vehicle used to obscure heavy assets and launder unaccounted funds.
Maya scrolled further, her eyes scanning old local newspaper clippings from a neighboring county. A small article from four years ago caught her attention. It detailed a massive federal sting operation targeting an illegal underground smuggling ring operating out of rural freight depots. The primary suspect had mysteriously vanished just days before the indictments were handed down by a grand jury. The suspect’s physical description matched Jax down to the heavy beard and height, though the photo accompanying the article was grainy and indistinct.
A sudden, sharp knock at her front door made Maya jump, nearly spilling her coffee across the keyboard. She closed the laptop lid with a swift snap, her heart thudding against her ribs. She walked cautiously down the hallway, peering through the small peephole in the front door. Standing on her porch was not Jax or his suited associates, but an older woman with silver-streaked hair and kind, weary eyes, wearing a faded floral apron over a knitted sweater.
Maya unlocked the door and pulled it open a few inches, keeping the security chain latched. The woman offered a gentle, apologetic smile, her hands clasped nervously in front of her waist. “Hello, dear,” the woman said softly, her voice carrying a distinct tremor. “My name is Evelyn. I live two blocks down. I saw what happened yesterday on the sidewalk. I just wanted to come by and tell you... well, I wanted to tell you to be very careful.”
May you like
Maya unlatched the chain immediately and pushed the door wide open. “Come inside, Evelyn. Please.”
Once seated at the kitchen table with a fresh cup of tea, Evelyn glanced nervously toward the windows before speaking in a hushed whisper. “Jackson isn’t who you think he is, honey. Nobody on this street really knows him, but some of us remember before he built that tall fence and cut off all communication. He’s hiding something big in that house. People who go asking questions around him tend to disappear, or their lives just fall apart overnight. You standing up to him yesterday... it was brave, but it painted a massive target on your back.”
