Chapter 2 - The Ghost's Burden
I couldn't tear my eyes away from the silver teardrop. I knelt beside the sofa, my hands trembling violently as I reached out. The metal was warm against the woman's skin. I pressed the tiny clasp on the side of the locket. It popped open.
Inside, the picture of Sarah and me on our wedding day was gone. In its place was a microscopic, black micro-SD card, meticulously folded into a piece of waterproof wax paper.
"Mommy's waking up," Lucy whispered, her tiny hand gripping my shirtsleeve.
The woman groaned, her eyelids fluttering open. She flinched violently when she saw me, scrambling backward on the leather cushions, her hand instinctively flying to her bleeding shoulder.
"It's okay," I said quickly, holding my hands up, ensuring the shotgun was pointed safely at the floorboards. "I'm David. You're in my cabin. You're safe."
She stared at me, her chest heaving. "David?" she whispered. "Sarah's David?"
"How do you know my wife?" I asked, the desperation bleeding into my voice. "How do you have her necklace? The police said it was gone. She died four years ago."
The woman let out a broken, tragic laugh that morphed into a sob. "Sarah didn't die in an accident, David. She was murdered. And she was murdered because of me."
The room started to spin. I sat down heavily on the edge of the coffee table, the shotgun resting across my knees. "Explain. Now."
"My name is Elena," she breathed, pulling the twins close to her chest. "Four years ago, I was pregnant with them. I was nineteen. I got mixed up with a local church group down in the valley... except it wasn't a church. It was a trafficking ring, run by some of the most powerful men in this county. When I found out what they were doing with the young girls, I tried to run. They caught me. They were going to kill me."
Elena swallowed hard, her eyes brimming with tears. "I escaped into the woods. I ran for two days until I collapsed on that trail behind this cabin. Your wife found me. She brought me in. She hid me here for three days while you were in New York on business."
"Sarah never told me," I whispered, my mind reeling.
"She was protecting you," Elena cried. "She knew who was running the ring. Sheriff Miller. He controls the entire mountain. Sarah found evidence. She put it on that SD card. She told me she was going to drive to the FBI field office in Knoxville to hand it over. She gave me her locket with the card inside, just in case something happened to her."
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My blood ran completely cold. Sheriff Miller was the man who had stood on my porch four years ago, holding his hat over his heart, telling me Sarah had lost control on the icy roads. He was the one who handed me her wedding ring in a plastic evidence bag.
"They ran her off the road," Elena whispered. "They killed her, David. And when she didn't have the card on her, they spent the last four years hunting me down to get it back. They finally found our camp tonight. I told the girls to run here. I knew... I knew if Sarah's husband was anything like her, he would protect us."
