Story code: ST-000797
Part 2: The Decoy
Two pounds of pressure. That was all it would take to break the sear. Elias held his breath, his finger tightening on the curved steel of the trigger, his mind already bracing for the deafening, concussive roar of the rifle in the enclosed cabin.
The intruder’s hand whipped out of his jacket.
Elias committed to the shot.
But a harsh, artificial blue light erupted in the darkness before the hammer could fall. It wasn’t the blinding white flash of a muzzle, but the cold, rectangular glow of a smartphone screen. The sudden illumination cast harsh upward shadows under the intruder’s hood, revealing the face beneath it.
Smooth skin. Wide, panicked eyes squinting against the rain. Braces gleaming on clenched teeth.
It was a kid. A teenager, no older than sixteen, trembling violently in the freezing downpour.
Elias wrenched the rifle upward. The crosshairs ripped away from the boy’s chest, settling on the ceiling joists just as Elias’s finger locked into rigid stillness. He exhaled a ragged breath, the sudden, violent spike of adrenaline leaving a metallic taste in the back of his throat. He had been a fraction of a millimeter away from painting the front porch with a child’s blood.
Outside, the boy was entirely oblivious to how close he had just come to dying. He held the phone up with shaking hands, pointing the camera lens toward the cabin’s dark front door. The camera flash strobed once, a brilliant white lightning bolt that momentarily blinded Elias’s night-adjusted vision.
Elias didn’t wait for his eyes to clear. The tactical advantage of the dark house was gone. He lowered the weapon, sidestepped the window, and closed the distance to the front door in three long strides. He unlocked the deadbolts with a fluid, silent motion, gripped the handle, and threw the heavy wooden door outward.
The storm roared into the entryway, bringing a blast of sleet and freezing rain. Elias stepped onto the threshold, raising the rifle and snapping on the barrel-mounted tactical light. A blinding beam of pure white lumens hit the teenager center mass.
“Drop the phone! Hands away from your body! Now!” Elias’s voice was a low, commanding bark that cut cleanly through the drumming rain.
The boy shrieked, a high, reedy sound of pure terror. The smartphone slipped from his thick gloves, clattering hard onto the icy porch planks. He stumbled backward, his boots losing traction on the freezing wood, and fell hard onto his back. He threw his hands over his face as if shielding himself from the blinding light.
“Don’t shoot! Please, man, don’t shoot! I’m just a driver!” the kid screamed, his voice cracking wildly.
Elias kept the rifle tucked tight against his shoulder, sweeping the muzzle left and right, scanning the tree line and the empty driveway before bringing the blinding beam back to the boy on the floor. The unmarked sedan sat motionless in the yard, its doors still closed, the interior dark.
“Who else is in the car?” Elias demanded, stepping out fully onto the porch, ignoring the freezing rain soaking into his flannel shirt.
“Nobody! I swear to God, it’s just me!” The boy was sobbing now, his chest heaving as he scrambled backward against the porch railing, trying to get away from the towering silhouette of the armed man. “I’m alone!”
Elias advanced to the top of the stairs, keeping the light pinned on the boy. “Hands on your head. Interlace your fingers. You move, you die.”
The kid scrambled to comply, locking his trembling fingers over his soaked hood.
“You drove up a chained, private mountain road in the middle of a winter storm with your lights cut,” Elias said, his voice terrifyingly calm. “Why?”
“I was told to!” the boy sobbed, shivering violently as the sleet pelted him. “I just took a gig! Some guy on a secure messaging app! Three hundred bucks in crypto to pick up the car at the diner off Route 9, drive it to exactly this GPS pin, drop the box, take a picture of the door, and walk back down!”
Elias processed the information with cold efficiency. A disposable courier. A blind drop. Someone had hired a clueless teenager to do their dirty work, knowing the kid might walk straight into a shotgun blast.
“Walk back down?” Elias repeated, his eyes darting to the heavy, tape-wrapped box sitting just three feet away on the porch. “Where are the keys to that car?”
“In the ignition!” the boy cried out. “He said leave it running! Just turn the lights off so I wouldn’t wake you up, drop the box, text the proof, and hike down to the county road. He said there’d be a ride waiting for me!”
Elias’s gaze locked onto the taped box. It was a cubic yard of dense weight, sitting ominously on his freezing porch. The rainwater was beginning to pool around the base of the cardboard, but as Elias’s weapon light grazed the bottom corner, he saw the fluid seeping out from under the heavy layers of tape wasn’t just clear rainwater. It was thick, dark, and viscous. It was staining the gray wooden planks a deep, rusty crimson.
A heavy, sickening dread settled in Elias’s stomach. He stepped closer to the box, keeping the kid in his peripheral vision. The dark liquid was definitely blood, and it was fresh enough not to have frozen solid yet.
“What’s in the box, kid?” Elias asked, his voice dropping an octave.
“I don’t know!” The teenager pressed his back harder against the railing, his eyes wide with horror as he noticed the blood pooling near his boots. “I swear, I never opened it! I just dragged it out of the backseat! It’s heavy, like… like meat or something.”
Suddenly, a muffled, wet thud echoed from inside the taped cardboard.
Elias froze. The kid whimpered, pulling his knees up to his chest.
Something inside the box had just shifted. It wasn’t the settling of dead weight. It was a deliberate, agonizing movement.
Before Elias could process the sound, the dropped smartphone on the icy planks lit up, vibrating violently against the wood. The screen flashed a glowing notification through the driving rain.
Elias shifted his aim, keeping the rifle on the box, and kicked the phone over with the toe of his boot. He glanced down at the illuminated screen.
It was a text message from the employer’s unknown number.
*Picture received. You didn’t walk away fast enough.*
Elias’s head snapped up toward the driveway. The unmarked sedan, the one the kid swore was empty, suddenly roared to life. The headlights flared on, blindingly bright on high beams, catching Elias and the terrified teenager perfectly in their crosshairs.