Mike Carter’s rotary hammer screamed as it bit into the concrete. Dust billowed up in a thick cloud. Under the old floorboards of the aging lake cabin, instead of bare ground, there was a concrete slab nearly six inches thick.
There wasn’t a word about that slab in any of the paperwork. When the drill punched through another crack, something flashed gold in the gap. Mike Carter shut the tool off at once.
Silence dropped over the room. All he could hear was spring runoff dripping from the roof and a dog barking somewhere in the distance. He crouched down and carefully reached inside.
His fingers found a thin chain. He gave it a gentle pull. Out of the concrete came the letter “A.”
Then the edge of a faded synthetic fabric appeared. A second later, a heavy, sickening odor hit him. Carter stumbled out onto the porch, fighting back a wave of nausea.
By the time the sheriff’s deputies arrived half an hour later, the thirty-two-year-old homeowner looked ten years older. It was March of 2003.
The small lakeside subdivision, Birch Hollow, looked deserted. The thaw had turned the dirt roads into deep mud. Fog drifted over empty lots where no one had stayed in years.
Cabin number seventeen sat at the very end of a dead-end lane. It was a one-story place sided in weather-darkened wood. Mike Carter had bought it the previous summer through a real estate agency.
The previous owner was some Realtor who had acquired the property through a transfer agreement. The title work had been clean. At the time, the low price had felt like a lucky break.
He’d planned to fix the cabin up by summer so he could bring his wife and kids out there. He started the renovation with the floor. The old boards squeaked badly, and some were plainly rotted through.
He pulled up the crumbling planks. And found something that had no business being there. The crime scene team didn’t arrive until evening….
