Chapter 13 - Midnight at the Sawmill
The gallery cleared out within forty-five minutes.
Ella and I moved with mechanical speed, feigning sudden exhaustion to the remaining guests, dimming the track lights, and bolting the heavy reinforced deadbolts of the 4th Street building. My hands shook as I turned the master keys, but my mind had never been clearer.
"We can't go back to the house," Ella said from the shadows of the loading dock, her hood pulled low over her face. "If Marcus means what he says, he already has someone watching the driveway."
"We aren't going home," I said. "And we aren't calling the county sheriff."
I pulled out my phone and dialed a number I hadn't called in twelve years—a private line given to me by my late father before he died, belonging to a retired federal compliance officer named Hank Miller who had spent his career prosecuting interstate timber racketeering before retreating to a secluded homestead in the Blue Ridge foothills.
Three rings later, the gravelly voice answered. "Miller."
"Hank, it's Heather Loomis. Arthur's daughter."
A heavy silence hung on the line. "Heather. I heard about the restructuring. I heard Marcus Vance took the company off your hands."
"He didn't just take the company, Hank. Sarah left an encrypted Swiss mandate. I have the raw dashcam footage of Highway 81 from December 2004. Victor Vance was at the crash site."
Miller let out a long, ragged exhale. "Where are you right now?"
"Leaving 4th Street."
"Do you know the old abandoned water-powered mill off Old Mill Road? Five miles past the county quarry?"
"The old Loomis extraction plant," I answered. "It's been boarded up since the nineties."
"Meet me there in forty minutes. Do not use the highway. Take the unpaved logging roads through Blackwood Hollow. If you see headlights behind you, do not stop."
Twenty minutes later, my F-250 was bumping over the rutted, frozen mud of the logging trail, headlights switched off, running only on amber fog lamps beneath the thick canopy of pines. Ella sat with her laptop open on her knees, tethered to an encrypted satellite hotspot she had configured for our architectural rendering transfers.
"Mom," Ella said suddenly, her screen illuminating her sharp features. "I just checked the property deeds for the 4th Street warehouse."
"What about them?"
"The deed transfer Marcus's attorneys filed yesterday... they slipped in an ancillary zoning easement. They reclassified the warehouse district under the Vance Industrial Revitalization Corridor. Under county code 14-B, any property under structural code dispute within that corridor can be subject to emergency civil demolition."
My blood ran cold. "He didn't threaten to burn the gallery down. He’s going to use the county building inspector to condemn it."
"And look who signed the building inspection approval this morning," Ella said, turning the screen toward me.
May you like
On the county registrar's digital portal was an application for emergency structural condemnation filed at 4:30 PM. The petitioner was registered as *Blue Ridge Safety Associates*.
The registered agent was Ryan Keller.
