Chapter 8 - The Desperate Strike
The jailhouse phone calls began at midnight.
I had the master bedroom windows cracked open, letting the cold scent of the lake drift over the bed. The water was restless tonight, dark waves lapping against the stone bulkhead at the base of my property. The rhythmic sound should have been soothing, but my military training kept me in a state of light, vigilant rest.
*Buzz. Buzz. Buzz.*
The phone on my nightstand lit up the dark room.
The screen read: *Inmate Collect Call – Kootenai County Adult Detention Center.*
I picked up the phone, swiped ignore, and blocked the detention center's primary switchboard.
Thirty seconds later, another call arrived from an unlisted mobile number.
I sat up, swung my legs out of bed, and pressed the phone to my ear. “Speak.”
“Riley? Riley, please don't hang up!”
It was Greg, Chelsea’s husband.
His voice was frantic, sounding thin and breathless, like a man drowning in a storm he didn't understand. In the background, I could hear the faint, high-pitched crying of their six-year-old daughter.
“Greg,” I said, my voice cold and flat. “It is twelve-thirty in the morning.”
“Riley, they set Chelsea’s bail at fifty thousand dollars!” Greg choked out, his voice cracking into a ragged sob. “And Mom’s is seventy-five thousand because of the felony fraud enhancement! The magistrate said they’re flight risks because of the cash from Mom's house! The bail bondsman wants ten percent liquid cash, and our personal accounts are completely frozen by the district attorney! I don't have five thousand dollars, Riley, let alone twelve thousand!”
“Then they will stay in county jail until their preliminary hearing on Tuesday,” I answered.
“You don't understand!” Greg’s voice spiked with desperation. “The regional planning commission called an emergency meeting for tomorrow morning! They’re going to force me to resign! If Chelsea is indicted, our mortgage will default! The kids, Riley… think about the kids!”
“I am thinking about them, Greg,” I said softly. “You should have thought about them when your wife was using your home Wi-Fi to commit bank fraud on my name. You should have thought about them when you let Valerie sell her home to prop up your lifestyle.”
“I didn't know about the loan!” Greg shouted, defensive fury bleeding into his panic. “Chelsea told me you had agreed to co-sign! She swore you were helping us!”
“And you didn't think to call me? Not once in six years did you pick up the phone to ask if I had actually authorized eighty thousand dollars in handouts, Greg. You enjoyed the benefits of the theft, and now you’re angry that the bill has come due.”
“You’re an evil, cold-hearted b—”
I tapped the red button, cutting him off mid-syllable.
I blocked his number, set the phone on the nightstand, and stood up. I didn't go back to sleep. My gut—that primal, intuitive radar that had kept me alive through two deployments—was screaming that the perimeter was compromised.
When people like Valerie and Chelsea are cornered, when their social standing, their money, and their freedom are stripped away in a single afternoon, they don't surrender. They thrash. They look for anything they can burn down on their way into the dark.
I walked through the dark hallway into the living room.
I didn't turn on any lights. I stood in the shadows of the floor-to-ceiling windows, looking out across the front lawn.
The driveway was empty. The gravel gleamed faintly under the moonlight. The tall cedar trees stood like sentinels against the night sky. Everything appeared serene, peaceful, and still.
Then, down at the end of the long private lane near the road, two faint lights flickered.
A vehicle had turned off its headlights, creeping forward on parking lights alone.
It was a dark, low-riding sedan. It moved slowly, navigating the winding gravel driveway with deliberate stealth, engine idling so low it was almost swallowed by the sound of the wind through the trees. It didn't stop in the circular drive. It pulled off into the shadow of the detached three-car garage, tucking itself out of line of sight from the front porch.
I didn't panic. My heart rate actually slowed, settling into that cold, surgical rhythm that takes over when a theoretical threat becomes a tactical reality.
I stepped back into the shadows of the kitchen.
From beneath the counter, I retrieved my Glock 19, checked the magazine, chambered a round with a quiet, smooth pull of the slide, and thumbed the weapon light. Then I set the pistol on the marble island, keeping my hand resting lightly over the grip.
On the security monitor mounted on the pantry wall, the feed from Camera 3 flickered.
A figure emerged from the driver's side of the car.
It wasn't Greg. Greg was a coward who hid behind phone calls and public committees.
It was a young man wearing a dark hoodie, a baseball cap pulled low, carrying a heavy steel crowbar and a red plastic five-gallon fuel canister.
I recognized the jacket immediately. It had the logo of an auto-body shop in Spokane where Chelsea’s oldest son, my nineteen-year-old nephew Tyler, worked as an apprentice mechanic.
Tyler.
Chelsea hadn't called Greg to get bail money. Chelsea had called her son from the holding cell. She had filled his head with the same toxic poison she had spewed for a decade: that Aunt Riley was a monster who was sending his mother to prison, that Aunt Riley had stolen their future, that Aunt Riley had to be punished.
The boy was walking toward the rear deck of my house, the crowbar swinging loosely in his right hand, the gasoline sloshing inside the red container.
They weren't coming to steal anything.
May you like
They were coming to burn my sanctuary to the ground.
***
