Free Off the Grid by Cassandra Carr

Chapter One
     
    “What the ever-loving fuck?” Ethan Jackson muttered, as he read the letter from some bankruptcy lawyer telling him he owed several million dollars to people he’d never even heard of. Looking around his five-bedroom, four thousand square foot house, he said, “Not fucking likely. I’ve got this house, the lake house, my cars, spending money. How could this be possible?” But apparently it was more than possible. It was a nightmare, one he’d never even considered, come true.
    Ethan began to read aloud, hoping that would help him make more sense of this. “Your parents, acting on your behalf, squandered and/or illegally diverted funds into interests such as bad real estate deals and high-risk investments.” His hands shook, shock and outrage warring inside his head. He read on. “Many loans were taken out, which have not been repaid, in order to back businesses, including supposed oil and gas interests, which never materialized, making the funds your parents invested disappear, along with increasing the debt load on the accounts they controlled.”
    Shifting in his chair, his heart ramming inside his chest and heat suffusing his body, Ethan read more. “Your parents have not filed taxes on your behalf for the past three years, and it’s estimated that $1.8 million is owed to various government entities, including state, US federal, and Canadian provincial agencies. Holy shit. Almost two million just in taxes owed?”
    Back when he’d been just nineteen, his parents had fired the agent who’d taken him through the NHL draft and his entry-level deal, saying they could do just as good a job as the man and not take fifteen percent of his earnings. Ethan snorted. Nope, looks like they took way more than that. Once his entry-level years had been completed, and soon after signing a much bigger contract, he’d signed financial power of attorney over to his mom and dad.
    Ethan certainly wasn’t an anomaly. None of his teammates managed their own money; most used a financial planner or someone similar. Ethan had never even considered that, since his dad had been an accountant. He’d seen and heard a few oddities relating to his finances over the years, but he’d trusted his parents and the few times he’d asked about his finances, they’d always assured him all was well. After a couple of years, he’d gotten used to them handling all the details and never bothered to question anything else or take a more active role. It had been easier to not have to deal with all that. Taking that tack had obviously been a mistake.
    Now his life was destroyed, all he’d worked for, gone.
    He threw the letter on the table. As usual, he’d been going through the mail as he ate breakfast, before getting dressed for practice. His stomach churned and he glared at the remains of the protein shake in front of him in disgust.
    Just as he’d risen to throw the shake away in the sink, two men burst through his locked front door so fast it fell off the top hinge and banged into the brushed steel coatrack hard enough to send it tumbling. The coatrack hitting the ceramic tile floor sounded like gunshots, and Ethan gasped, dropping the plastic glass, the remainder of the shake flying in all directions as he met the sinister eyes of one of the men.
    “You Ethan Jackson?”
    Ethan stumbled backward and his back hit the wall behind him. He glanced around, frantically looking for an escape route. The breakfast bar lay to his right and, a couple of feet away, the hallway to the rest of the house beckoned.
    I need to get the fuck out of here.
    “I guess the big, tough hockey player’s just a pussy after all. You owe our boss some money, and we came to collect.”
    “What boss?” He could barely get the words out around the lump of fear clogging his throat.
    “Don’t play dumb, rich boy,” the other man sneered. “The boss doesn’t like to be kept waiting.”
    “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
    The two