Chapter 7 - The Ledger under the Floorboards
The interior of the cabin smelled of damp wood, cold coal ash, and the sharp, copper tang of dried blood.
Erin stood inside the doorway, holding a high-powered flashlight provided by the troopers, while Nicole remained secured inside the Navigator with Sterling’s driver.
The kitchen was small. An old iron woodstove sat in the corner, its door hanging open, filled with white ash and half-charred scraps of paper. On the pine floorboards near the sink sat three dark, circular stains that had dried into a thick, black varnish.
Sterling stood by the small wooden dining table, illuminated by a trooper’s lantern.
"It’s not fatal volume," a State Police investigator said, kneeling by the floor stains with a swab kit. "Looks like a laceration from broken glass. There are shattered mason jars in the sink."
Erin walked over to the corner of the room where a small bed sat covered in a navy wool blanket. Beside the bed sat a small wooden nightstand with a single kerosene lamp.
She noticed something strange about the floorboards beneath the bed frame.
The pine planks were clean—free of the dust and coal soot that covered the rest of the room. A single, fresh scratch mark ran across the grain, as though something heavy had been pulled across the floor recently.
"Mr. Sterling," Erin called out. "Look at this."
Sterling walked over, stepping around the blood samples on the floor. He knelt beside the bed, pulled the mattress back, and looked at the pine planks.
A four-foot section of the flooring had been cut cleanly across the joists.
Sterling inserted his silver pen into the seam, leveraging the board upward. It lifted with a soft creak of rusty nails.
Inside the dark floor joist cavity sat a heavy, fireproof steel cash box, eight inches wide and twelve inches long.
"Is that the trust money?" Erin asked.
"No," Sterling said, reaching down and pulling the heavy box out into the light. "Sarah didn't have access to trust cash. This is something else."
He pulled a small tension wrench and a pick from his leather pocket case—a skill he had acquired thirty years ago during his early career as a corporate investigator. Within fifteen seconds, the brass lock cylinder clicked open.
Sterling pulled back the heavy lid.
Inside lay three thick, black-bound ledgers, their pages filled with hand-written columns of numbers, offshore bank routing codes, and real estate shell company names dated from 2018 to 2026.
And resting on top of the ledgers was a modern, encrypted satellite tracking unit with a small red light blinking rhythmically in the dark: BEEP... BEEP... BEEP.
Sterling’s face went completely grey.
"Get out," Sterling said, his voice suddenly rising into a shout that startled the troopers in the doorway. "Get out of the cabin now!"
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"What is it, Sterling?" the State Police investigator asked, reaching for his sidearm.
"The satellite tracker is active!" Sterling yelled, grabbing the steel box and lunging toward the door. "He didn't leave her here! He used her as bait to drag my office out of Boston!"
