Chapter 11: The Pine Ridge Cabin
High in the misty mountains of Pine Ridge, Detective Ray Miller stepped out of his unmarked sedan, the crisp mountain air biting at his cheeks. Dense pine trees surrounded a small, weathered wooden cabin with a thin wisp of smoke curling lazily from its stone chimney. Ray adjusted his trench coat and walked up the gravel path, his boots crunching softly against the frozen ground.
Before he could knock on the heavy oak door, it creaked open. David Chen stood in the doorway, a middle-aged man with thinning gray hair, tired eyes, and a flannel shirt buttoned to the top. He held a mug of steaming black coffee in one hand, his posture defensive.
“You’re off your jurisdiction, Detective,” Chen said flatly, his voice dry and guarded. “And I’m retired from municipal IT work. Whatever you’re looking for, I don’t have it.”
“I’m not here in an official capacity, David,” Ray said calmly, holding up both hands to show he was unarmed. “I’m here about the Blackwood estate network and your frozen pension fund.”
Chen’s eyes narrowed instantly, the coffee mug trembling slightly in his grip. He stepped back, swinging the door wide open. “Step inside before the wind freezes your ears off.”
The interior of the cabin was warm, cluttered with old computer towers, soldering irons, and stacks of circuit boards. Ray walked in, shaking the chill from his shoulders as Chen closed and bolted the door behind them.
“The Blackwood legal team told me my pension was tied up in a routine structural audit,” Chen said, walking over to a wooden table cluttered with monitors. “They promised it would clear in six months. That was a year ago.”
“It’s never clearing, David,” Ray said, pulling out a printed copy of the offshore corporation filing he had retrieved from internal archives. “They flagged your account permanently the day after you refused to install a remote desktop backdoor on the estate's archive server.”
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Chen stared at the paper, his face draining of color. He set his coffee mug down on the table with a sharp clink. “I told them installing a remote backdoor on historical archives violated data integrity standards. They said it was just a precautionary measure for off-site backups.”
“It wasn't for backups,” Ray said grimly. “It was used last Tuesday to plant a fake access log and frame a young archivist named Clara Miller for grand larceny.”
