Chapter 21 - The Shadow on the Glass
I backed into the darkest corner of the cottage living room, dropping to my knees behind the heavy oak credenza and pressing Leo tight against my collarbone. His tiny breath came in warm, rhythmic puffs against my skin, completely unaware of the iron dread freezing the blood in my veins.
Outside, the rain began to fall in earnest, drumming against the cedar shingles and lashing the sliding glass door of the deck. Through the lace curtains, the red glow of the sedan’s tail lights bled into the coastal mist. Then, the engine cut off. Silence fell over the bluff—thick, suffocating, broken only by the tide crashing against the rocks a hundred feet below.
A heavy footstep creaked on the wet deck planks.
My heart slammed against my ribs like a caged bird. I reached down blindly into the diaper bag beside me, my fingers curling around the cold, heavy handle of the steel kitchen shears I had stashed there days ago.
*Clack.*
The ringing on the deck abruptly stopped. Someone had picked up the abandoned phone.
I held my breath, burying Leo’s face into the crook of my shoulder so that not even the faint sound of his suckling could betray us. Through the sheer fabric of the curtain, a tall, slender silhouette separated itself from the gray fog. It wasn't Julian. The figure was too narrow, the posture too upright, draped in a long, tailored wool overcoat that fell past the knees.
The silhouette approached the glass door. A gloved hand rose and tapped gently against the pane. Three deliberate, measured raps.
*Tap. Tap. Tap.*
"Clara," a woman’s voice spoke through the weather-stripping. It was low, modulated, and terrifyingly calm—the very voice that had whispered across the static from Switzerland just moments before. "Do not distress the child. You have run remarkably far, but the probate jurisdiction of the Vane estate does not end at the state line. Open the door. It is time for Leo’s scheduled examination."
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My breath hitched. *Examination.* The word made my skin crawl with the memory of the empty vial found in his crib. They hadn't come to kill him. They had come to collect him as if he were an overdue clinical specimen.
The brass handle of the deck door rattled as she tested the lock.
