Chapter 4 - The Breach
Three days passed. The emergency restraining order was granted by a judge who took one look at the photos of my bruised shoulder and back. David was legally barred from coming within five hundred feet of me, my workplace, or my father’s properties.
But a piece of paper rarely stops a narcissist who feels his control slipping.
It was dusk on the fourth day. I was sitting on the cabin's wraparound porch, wrapped in a blanket, watching the sun dip behind the mountains. Dad was out back, chopping firewood.
Suddenly, the motion sensors at the bottom of the half-mile driveway tripped. The silent alarm buzzed on Dad’s tactical watch.
He appeared on the porch instantly, wiping his hands on a rag, his eyes scanning the tree line. “Get inside. Lock the deadbolt. Do not come out until I say so.”
I scrambled inside, my heart hammering against my ribs, and watched through the heavy curtains.
A sleek black SUV crunched its way up the dirt road, stopping at the locked iron gate Dad had installed across the driveway. Two men stepped out. Neither of them was David. One was a burly guy in a cheap suit, holding a camera with a telephoto lens. The other was a sleazy-looking man with a clipboard. Private investigators.
They began rattling the gate, trying to find a way over.
Dad walked out of the cabin, an old Remington shotgun resting casually over his shoulder. He didn't point it at them, but the implication was clear. He stopped twenty yards from the gate, his posture relaxed but coiled like a spring.
“You boys lost?” Dad called out, his voice echoing in the twilight.
“We’re looking for Sarah Vance,” the guy with the clipboard sneered. “We have legal documents to serve her. We know she’s in there. Open the gate, old man.”
“This is private property,” Dad replied evenly. “You have ten seconds to get back in that oversized golf cart and drive back to the city, or I’m going to assume you’re hostile trespassers and defend my perimeter.”
“You can’t threaten us!” the photographer yelled, lifting his camera to snap a picture.
Dad didn't raise his voice. He just racked the shotgun. The deafening clack-clack echoed through the silent forest like a thunderclap.
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The two investigators froze. They looked at Dad’s cold, unflinching eyes. They realized, in that split second, that they weren't dealing with an angry suburban dad. They were dealing with a trained soldier who had defended perimeters in actual warzones.
Without another word, they scrambled back into the SUV, threw it in reverse, and tore down the mountain, spitting gravel in their wake. Dad didn't move until their taillights disappeared.
