Chapter 3 - The Search PartyDawn broke over the Catskills, but the storm showed no mercy. The rain had turned into a relentless, freezing deluge, blanketing the mountains in a thick, choking fog that clung to the pine trees like a shroud.

Back at the Blackwood estate, the atmosphere inside the grand foyer was tense and calculated.

Samuel Reed stood near the shattered front doors, his tailored charcoal suit immaculate despite the early hour. He exhaled a thin stream of smoke from a imported Turkish cigarette, watching impassively as two armed security guards swept the perimeter with assault rifles.

“Any sign of him?” Samuel asked, not turning around as a heavyset enforcer named Viktor approached.

“Negative, Mr. Reed,” Viktor grunted, wiping rain from his scarred forehead. “We found his car parked in the lower garage, but the keys are gone. Blood trail leads from the foyer out toward the ravine, but this damn storm washed most of it away within twenty minutes.”

Samuel’s jaw tightened. He took a slow drag from his cigarette, his eyes narrowing into cold slits. “He’s wounded. He couldn’t have made it far on foot through this terrain. Check the old service roads, the hunting blinds, and every abandoned structure within a two-mile radius.”

“What about the staff?” Viktor asked. “The head housekeeper said one of the cleaning girls—Higgins, or something—didn't log out before the storm hit.”

Samuel paused. A flicker of cold calculation crossed his face. “A cleaning girl? Check her locker in the staff wing. If she helped him escape, she’s either dead in a ditch somewhere or hiding with him. Find them both. I want no loose ends.”

Meanwhile, inside the groundskeeper’s cabin, tension was reaching a boiling point.

Leo had managed to pull himself upright, leaning against the wooden headboard of the cot. His face was still pale, but the color was slowly returning to his cheeks. He was staring intensely at a small, encrypted satellite phone he had managed to fish out of the lining of his ruined inner jacket.

“Signal is completely blocked by the valley topography and the heavy storm clouds,” Leo muttered, tapping the screen in frustration. “The satellite relay towers can’t punch through this atmospheric interference.”

“Is there another way to contact your loyalists?” Leora asked from the window, peering cautiously through a crack in the rotting wooden shutters.

“There’s an analog emergency repeater radio buried in the old signal bunker three hundred yards north of here,” Leo said, gritting his teeth as he clutched his bandaged side. “My father installed it during the cold war for secure family communications. But I can’t walk out there on my own. If I try, I’ll pass out within fifty yards.”

Leora turned from the window, looking at him, then down at her muddy sneakers.

“Where is the bunker?” she asked quietly.

Leo looked up, surprised. “Leora, no. If Samuel’s men are out searching, the perimeter is crawling with armed mercenaries. You walk out there, you’ll be caught.”

“And if I stay here, when they find this cabin, they’ll execute us both,” Leora countered, her voice laced with an unyielding steel that surprised even her. “You said it yourself—you need that radio to call for backup. I know these woods better than you think. During my off-hours, I like hiking the trails to clear my head. I know every drainage ditch and ridge between here and the ridge line.”

Leo studied her face for a long, silent moment. He saw no fear there—only a fierce, desperate determination. It was the same look he had seen in survivors of brutal corporate and street wars, but stripped of all cynicism.

“Take this,” Leo said, reaching into his inner pocket and pulling out a compact, suppressed Beretta pistol. He checked the magazine, flicked off the safety, and extended it toward her.

Leora stared at the weapon as if it were a venomous snake. She had never fired a gun in her life. Her world was bleach, mop buckets, and hospital invoices.

“I don’t know how to shoot this,” she whispered.

“It’s not complicated,” Leo instructed, his voice low and steady. “Point it at center mass. Squeeze the trigger gently, don’t jerk it. If someone finds you out there who isn’t me, you don’t hesitate. You pull the trigger, or you don’t come back.”

Slowly, hesitantly, Leora reached out and took the pistol. Its cold metal weight felt alien and terrifying in her palm. She tucked it securely into the waistband of her trousers, pulling the hem of her oversized utility jacket over it.

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“Don’t die while I’m gone, Mr. Moretti,” she murmured with a faint, nervous ghost of a smile. “I’m still billing you for my time.”

With that, Leora slipped open the cabin door, stepped out into the biting rain, and vanished into the gray fog of the Catskill forest.