Chapter 4 - The Secret Ledger
Derek didn't open the door; instead, he paced in front of it.
"You really thought you could just cancel the credit cards?" he scoffed through the wood.
"I owe people, Chloe. Dangerous people. The kind who don't care about your little marketing career."
I gripped my phone tightly, making sure the recording app was still running.
This was the missing piece of the puzzle: he wasn't just greedy, he was in deep debt.
"The cabin is worth half a million," Derek continued, his voice trembling with a mix of fear and rage.
"It's the only asset we have that isn't already mortgaged to the hilt."
"It belongs to my mother!" Chloe screamed from inside, her voice muffled but fierce.
"Your mother has one foot in the grave anyway!" Derek snapped back.
The sheer callousness of his words didn't hurt me; it only fueled my adrenaline.
He stomped back down the stairs, muttering about printing the final documents.
I waited until I heard the heavy click of the study door closing downstairs.
I stepped out of the bathtub, my joints protesting the sudden movement.
I needed those keys, but I couldn't overpower him.
I had to outsmart him.
I crept into Chloe's home office, which was located right above the study.
The air vent in the floor was covered by an ornate iron grate.
I knelt down and peered through the slats, looking directly into the study below.
Derek was sitting at the mahogany desk, frantically shuffling through a stack of legal papers.
His heavy key ring, complete with the brass padlock key, was sitting right on the edge of the desk.
He hadn't clipped it back to his belt.
I looked around the office, my eyes landing on a spool of heavy-duty fishing line Chloe used for crafting.
A crazy, desperate idea formed in my head.
I had seen enough heist movies with my late husband to know the theory.
Could a sixty-six-year-old woman fish a set of keys through a ceiling vent?
I tied a heavy paperclip to the end of the transparent line, bending it into a sharp hook.
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I carefully removed the iron grate from the floor, praying it wouldn't squeak.
I lowered the line down through the hole in the ceiling, holding my breath as the tiny hook descended toward the desk.
