Chapter 3 - The Broken Line
"Go back inside, Abby," Nora commanded, her voice dropping into a razor-sharp tone that brooked zero defiance. "Lock the deadbolt and stay by the kitchen counter until I tell you to open it."
Abby blinked, the bowl trembling in her small hands. She recognized the cold urgency in her mother’s voice—the exact tone from the night on the frozen porch. Without asking a question, Abby turned around, stepped back through the doorway, and clicked the heavy brass deadbolt into place.
Nora turned her gaze back to the crimson car, stepping directly into the path of Claire's line of sight.
"Look at her," Claire sneered, her voice cracking with bitter resentment. "Safe, warm, completely oblivious. My twin boys are sleeping on a fold-out couch in an Ohio motel room, living on gas station sandwiches while their father sits in a federal detention center, and your bastard child gets a lakeside retreat paid for by Thomas's stolen money."
"Richard chose his crimes, Claire. So did you," Nora said, her voice dropping to a glacial register. "You tried to trade my seven-year-old child to a murderous sociopath to save your suburban mortgage. You don't get to preach about family."
"I did what I had to do to survive!" Claire screamed, banging her palm violently against the dashboard. The veneer of calm shattered, exposing the feral panic underneath. "You ruined us! You and your self-righteous, martyred attitude! You thought you could just burn the family to the ground, walk away with the loot, and hide in the woods?"
"I have eighty-four dollars in checking, Claire," Nora lied calmly. "The sale of the bungalow went into a court-ordered restricted trust for Abby. I can't touch three hundred thousand dollars even if I wanted to."
"Then you better start finding it," Claire hissed, pulling a heavy, tarnished silver key from her fatigue jacket pocket. "Because this key opens Box 402 at First National in Canton. The documents inside prove that Jax didn't just 'put Caleb down.' It proves Jax executed Caleb with the sheriff's blessing to silence him before the feds could flip him."
Nora’s breath caught. She remembered Jax’s flat, unyielding voice in the cabin: Caleb won't be calling your phone again. "You have twenty-four hours, Nora," Claire said, shifting the wagon into reverse. "Three hundred thousand in unmarked cashier's checks. Leave them in the storage locker in Canton, or I mail this entire packet to the regional FBI field office. Let's see how long your peaceful little mountain life lasts when Miller and Jax are arrested for capital murder and you're dragged in as an accessory."
The tires spat wet gravel as Claire reversed out of the lane, spinning the wheel and speeding down the logging road until the exhaust disappeared behind the trees.
Nora stood in the damp road, the cold mud soaking through her canvas sneakers, her heart pounding violently against her ribs.
She turned and sprinted to the cottage porch, unlocking the deadbolt with shaking fingers. She needed to reach Jax immediately.
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When she stepped into the hallway, the kitchen landline began to ring—a frantic, shrill chime that seemed to vibrate through the floorboards.
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