Chapter 6 - The White Mountain SafehouseThree days later, deep in the snow-choked pine forests of New Hampshire’s White Mountains, the world was silent, white, and suffocatingly cold.
The cabin was a rustic fortress of stacked timber, hidden at the end of an unplowed logging road that only a snowcat or a heavily modified four-by-four could navigate. Inside, a cast-iron wood stove roared, casting a warm, flickering orange glow over wooden walls lined with old fishing rods and hunting gear.
Titan lay on a thick wool blanket near the fire, his breathing deep and even, the wound on his shoulder finally beginning to knit together cleanly under Sarah’s strict post-op care.
Nico sat by the front window, peering through the binoculars at the snowy tree line, his fingers resting casually on the grip of a hunting rifle Sarah had kept in the gun cabinet.
Maya walked over, handing him a mug of steaming black coffee. Her hair was loose around her shoulders now, free of the clinical knot, and she looked younger, yet infinitely more dangerous than she had in Dorchester.
"Still nothing on the scanner?" she asked quietly, leaning against the timber frame.
"Static," Nico replied without lowering the binoculars. "Which means they aren't using local radios. They’re using satellite links. My father doesn't lose trails easily, Maya. He’s patient. He waited fourteen years to finish what he started with my mother. He’ll wait fourteen more for me."
"Your mother didn't die of natural causes, did she?" Maya asked, her voice dropping to a whisper that barely carried over the crackle of the wood stove.
Nico stiffened. The binoculars lowered slowly to his lap. He looked at Maya, seeing the sharp, intelligent inquiry in her gray-blue eyes—the exact same look his mother used to give the world when she was calculating her escape.
"The official autopsy said cardiac arrest due to prolonged illness," Nico said, his voice cold as the glass outside. "She wasted away to eighty pounds in six months. But on the night she died, she told me something while the nurses were out of the room."
He paused, remembering the freezing hospital ward, the smell of antiseptic, and his mother’s skeletal hand clutching his wrist with terrifying strength.
"He gave me the medicine, Nico," she had whispered, her lips cracked and bleeding. "The slow kind. The kind that makes the doctors think it's the cancer. Don't drink his wine, my sweet boy. Run before he turns you into stone."
Maya swallowed hard, her hand brushing against Nico’s arm. The contact sent a jolt through both of them—not of romance, but of an absolute, shared defiance.
"Then we don't hide here forever," Maya said fiercely. "If your father killed your mother, and he’s trying to frame you for embezzlement, we don't wait for him to find us. We take him down from the inside."
May you like
Before Nico could answer, a sharp, metallic sound echoed through the silent forest outside—the distinct crunch of snow under the heavy treads of an off-road vehicle.
Nico stood up instantly, cocking the rifle. "Get Sarah and Titan in the back root cellar. Now."
