Chapter 9 - The Wolf's Ledger
The drive north on Interstate 43 was shrouded in a relentless, gray October drizzle that smeared across Morgan’s windshield.
Beside her in the passenger seat of her modest sedan sat Evelyn Vance, who had refused to remain behind in Chicago.
“I watched him destroy my family from the shadows for five years, Morgan,” Evelyn had said outside the precinct.
“I am not going to sit in a diner waiting for a phone call while you face whatever he left behind on your land.”
On the backseat lay a certified police file provided by Detective Miller, stamped with an urgent red priority advisory.
The Green Bay LLC was named *Peninsula Holdings Group*, a predatory real estate syndicate operated by a man named Victor Vance—no relation to Evelyn, but a known loan shark in northeastern Wisconsin.
Julian had accumulated over two hundred thousand dollars in illicit gambling and bad trading debts with Victor’s outfit over the last fourteen months.
To keep his kneecaps intact, Julian had promised Victor the Door County cottage, claiming the deed was already cleared and simply awaiting Morgan’s inheritance transfer.
Victor Vance had not merely waited; he had already placed a private lien against the property using forged documents Julian had supplied three weeks earlier.
“He sold my childhood home before he even handed me the velvet box,” Morgan muttered through clenched teeth, her grip tightening on the steering wheel.
“Men like Julian sell whatever they can see, because nothing inside them holds any real value,” Evelyn responded, staring through the rain-streaked window.
The flat farmland of eastern Wisconsin gave way to the rolling hills and thick, vibrant birch forests of the Door Peninsula.
The autumn leaves, blazing in fierce oranges and deep reds, looked almost ominous against the slate-gray afternoon sky.
Morgan took the exit toward Sister Bay, following the winding two-lane blacktop that hugged the shoreline of Lake Michigan.
The smell of damp cedar, pine needles, and cold lake water filtered through the car vents, instantly pulling Morgan back to her childhood.
She remembered sitting on the screened porch with her grandmother Clara, shelling peas while the summer sun dipped beneath the water line.
Clara had built that house with her own hands after Morgan’s grandfather died in the shipyards, refusing to surrender an inch of soil to developers.
Now, an illegal syndicate of predatory wolves was circling the orchard, thinking a murdered granddaughter would deliver the keys to their ledger.
As Morgan turned down the long, unpaved gravel driveway leading through the apple trees, she noticed fresh tire tracks grooved deeply into the wet mud.
Her foot eased off the accelerator, the tires crunching softly against wet gravel as she approached the clearing.
The cottage came into view, its familiar dark timber siding and white-trimmed windows standing defiant against the cold mist.
But the scene was not peaceful.
Parked directly in front of the screened porch was a black, heavy-duty pickup truck with tinted windows and Wisconsin commercial plates.
The front screen door of the cottage hung slightly ajar, its aluminum frame bent as if it had been forced open with a pry bar.
Morgan brought the car to a halt beneath the canopy of an overgrown oak tree, fifty yards away from the truck.
“Stay in the car, Evelyn,” Morgan whispered, reaching into her handbag and retrieving the heavy steel flashlight Miller had loaned her.
“You don't need to be a hero, Morgan; call the county sheriff,” Evelyn urged, placing a weathered hand over Morgan’s arm.
Morgan looked at her phone on the dashboard; the signal icon displayed a hollow circle with zero bars of cellular service.
The thick woods and coastal limestone bluffs of the peninsula were notorious for dead zones during autumn storms.
May you like
“There’s no signal out here,” Morgan said, her voice dropping into the same lethal calm she had summoned in her Chicago apartment.
“And whoever is inside my grandmother’s house is going to leave right now.”
