Chapter 3 - The Race Against Time
"We have to go," I told my father and brother, my voice shaking as I recounted the phone call.
"Absolutely not," my father said firmly. "You are seven and a half months pregnant, Emily. You are not leaving this hospital."
"Dad, if they burn that cabin, the evidence of what Ryan did to Sarah—and what he did to me—goes up in flames. They will win the public relations war, and they might actually convince a judge to give them custody!" Tears spilled over my eyelashes. "Please. I have to fight for my daughter."
James Bennett looked at his daughter, seeing the steel of a soldier finally returning to my eyes. He nodded slowly. "Leo, get a warrant for that cabin. If local PD won't grant it fast enough, I'll pull some strings with federal jurisdiction. We move now."
Four hours later, under the cover of a torrential downpour, our SUV pulled up to a secluded cabin deep in the woods of Wisconsin. I insisted on sitting in the car with two guards, while Dad, Leo, and a team of state troopers breached the house.
From the window of the SUV, I watched the flashlights dance through the dark windows of the cabin. The tension was suffocating. Ten minutes passed. Then twenty.
Suddenly, a loud explosion rocked the night.
Flames burst from the back of the cabin. "Dad! Leo!" I screamed, pushing the car door open despite the guards trying to hold me back.
Through the thick smoke, I saw two figures running out of the house. Leo was carrying a heavy, fireproof lockbox, his jacket smoking. Behind him, my father was dragging a man by his collar—it was Ryan's cousin, Marcus, caught red-handed with a gas can in his hand.
"We got it," Leo coughed, slamming the lockbox onto the hood of the car. He smashed the lock with a crowbar. Inside were journals, video tapes, and financial ledgers going back five years.
Ryan hadn't just abused me and Sarah. He and Linda were running a massive, fraudulent charity scheme, using vulnerable women to launder money. The pregnancy was supposed to be their biggest payday yet, planning to use my baby to claim a multimillion-dollar military inheritance from my late mother’s estate.
"It's over for them," Leo gasps, holding up a tape labeled Sarah - 2021. "This is premeditated, systemic torture and fraud."
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But as I looked at the burning cabin, a sharp, agonizing pain shot through my abdomen. I gasped, clutching my stomach as a warm fluid soaked through my clothes.
"Dad..." I choked out. "The baby... she's coming."
