The cabin was not a Montgomery property. Had it been, it would be three times as large and perched on a lake ten times the size. The latest (and most expensive) trends in architecture would have replaced the cabin’s rustic quaintness. A fleet of powerboats and jet skis would have lined the shoreline. Everything would have been ornate and overdone. It also would have been repossessed by the Unites States government, like every other property Garth Montgomery had owned. But Ma Bell’s cabin was none of those things. It was simple and charming and far removed from anything Avery’s family owned. It was an oasis from the glitz and wealth that followed the Montgomerys everywhere they went. The cabin held for Avery the same appeal as Connie Clarkson’s sailing camp. Avery had never been happier than when she was tucked away for summer nights in cabin number 12 in Sister Bay, Wisconsin. She found the same joy each year when she visited Ma Bell’s cabin in Lake Placid.

As a child, Avery never knew how she was actually related to Ma Bell. The road to get there was too complicated for Avery and her brother to ever explore. Ma Bell was the second cousin of Avery’s uncle, and just far enough removed from the Montgomery bloodline to stay off the feds’ radar. There was no direct link to the Montgomery family, and as soon as the postcard had arrived Avery knew where her father had been hiding. The three sevens written at the bottom of the postcard represented the cabin’s address:

777 Stonybrook Circle, Lake Placid, New York

Welcome to The Sevens, Ma Bell used to say when they arrived each August. How long her father had been there, and in what kind of shape he was in, Avery had no idea. She only knew that she came this far for a reason, and she wasn’t going to allow anything to derail her plans. Not her doubts, not her fear, and certainly not her goddamn conscience.