👉 Previous Decision: You chose to use the cabin’s old landline phone to secretly dial audio engineer Evelyn Kincaid for help.
The cabin’s old rotary phone, connected to a party line, sat on a dusty shelf. While Silas slept, snoring loudly in the next room, Arthur crept to the phone. He carefully dialed Evelyn Kincaid’s number, whispering his request into the mouthpiece.
“Evelyn, it’s Arthur. I’m isolated. My uncle and O’Rourke… they’re hiding something big. O’Rourke sealed Bunker #4, where the killer tape was made. And he mentioned the ‘dead wives.'”
Evelyn, meticulous and sharp, listened patiently. “O’Rourke? The VA land claims adjuster?”
“Yes,” Arthur confirmed. “Can you cross-reference his land claims around Fort Bragg with the death certificates of the missing military wives? See if there’s a pattern, anything connected?”
“That’s a long shot, Arthur,” Evelyn said, her voice tight with caution. “That information is buried deep in federal archives. It might take me days.”
“Please, Evelyn. Just try,” Arthur pleaded. “I have a bad feeling about this.”
He hung up, the silence of the cabin pressing in on him. He felt trapped, desperate.
Two days later, just as the cabin’s provisions were running low, the phone rang. Arthur snatched it before Silas could stir.
“Arthur, it’s Evelyn,” her voice was urgent, strained. “I found it. It’s exactly as you suspected.”
“What did you find?” Arthur gripped the receiver, his knuckles white.
“Every single murdered military wife,” Evelyn declared, “Clara Evans, Sarah Miller, Margaret Peterson—all of them. They each refused to sell their family homesteads to a private development firm that Harlan O’Rourke personally represented.”
Arthur’s breath caught in his throat. A cold financial motive. “So O’Rourke wanted their land?”
“More than wanted it, Arthur,” Evelyn replied. “He needed it. Their resistance was holding up a multi-million dollar military base expansion project. They were getting in the way. It wasn’t about a rogue killer. It was about money. And O’Rourke was at the center of it.”
The missing pieces clicked into place. The “serial killer” was a distraction. The real motive was cold, hard cash, tied to powerful people. And O’Rourke wasn’t just involved; he was orchestrating it.
➡️ Read CHAPTER 8 to continue the story
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