Chapter 11 - THE CABIN

For forty minutes, nothing happened.

Then a gunshot cracked in the distance.

Shawn’s body went cold.

Ortiz’s radio exploded with voices.

“Suspect moving east!”

“Officer down?”

“Negative. Shot into air. Suspect running.”

Don closed his eyes.

Five minutes later, deputies dragged Mark through the snow.

He had a backpack, two passports, $31,000 in cash, and the original property deeds.

He also had Peter Vale’s blood on his coat.

Ortiz confronted him at the station.

“Where is Vale?”

Mark said nothing.

“Is he alive?”

Nothing.

The blood in Vale’s car created a new problem.

If Mark had attacked him, the conspiracy might turn into something worse.

By evening, a search team found Vale alive in an empty equipment shed two miles from Hawthorne Care.

He had a head injury and a broken wrist.

His first words were not about Mark.

They were about Brenda.

“She knows where the backup documents are.”

Ortiz leaned closer. “What backup documents?”

Vale shut his eyes.

“The signatures.”

“What signatures?”

“The real ones.”

Shawn felt a chill.

The forged power of attorney was only one layer.

Vale explained that months earlier, Brenda had persuaded Don and Maria to sign several blank forms, claiming they were insurance renewals.

The signatures were genuine.

The pages above them had later been replaced.

Some of the property transfers might survive a forgery challenge because the signature pages were real.

Ortiz asked where the originals were.

Vale laughed weakly.

“Brenda hid them where no one would search.”

“Where?”

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He looked at Shawn.

“Inside her mother’s Christmas decorations.”