The call came in on a Thursday night, swallowed by the sound of rain hammering the dispatch center.

Up on Blackwood Ridge, Natalie’s phone chimed. She answered immediately.

"Natalie, it's Eric," the dispatcher's voice rang clear. "Ashley told me about a third note! Andrew left it under her pillow right before he left for the store."

"What did it say?" Natalie asked, signaling for the K-9 unit to pause near a dense thicket of blackberry brambles.

"Ashley couldn't read all the big words," Eric explained, "but she remembered him saying that Mr. Vance offered to pay for her life-saving treatment if Andrew met him at the old sawmill near the bridge to sign over the deed to their home."

The realization struck Natalie like a bolt of lightning.

Andrew hadn't just gone out for groceries and medicine—he had been coerced into a trap. Marcus Vance had leveraged Ashley’s critical medical needs to force Andrew into surrendering his land. When the storm washed Andrew's truck off the bridge, Vance didn't rescue him; he saw an opportunity to let the wilderness finish the job and claim the land through default foreclosure.

"Search and Rescue!" Natalie shouted to the tactical squad behind her. "Redirect all units to the abandoned sawmill at the top of Blackwood Ridge! Move!"

The search party pressed through the thick, tangled forest. Copper the bloodhound suddenly let out a sharp bay, lunging forward on his leash toward an old wooden structure hidden beneath towering pines.

The abandoned sawmill stood crumbling, its corrugated metal roof rusted and sagging. The heavy timber doors were chained shut from the outside with a heavy padlock.

"Someone locked this recently," Dave noted, pointing to the fresh grease on the padlock latch.

Natalie stepped up to the massive wooden doors, pulling out her flashlight and aiming it through a gap in the rotting wall planks.