Chapter 18 - broken glass
At three in the morning, a convoy of three unmarked police cruisers wound silently down the narrow, overgrown coastal road leading toward Deadman's Cove. The rain had slowed to a freezing drizzle, but a thick, impenetrable sea fog rolled off the ocean, obscuring the dark pine trees lining the cliffs.
I sat in the back of the lead cruiser beside Catherine and Detective Vance, my heart pounding against my ribs with every turn of the road.
"You should have stayed at the mansion, Clara," Catherine whispered, holding my hand tightly in the dark car. "This isn't safe."
"I spent five years letting other people decide what was safe for me," I said, looking into my sister's eyes with a quiet resolve I had never felt before. "I'm not running anymore. We finish this together."
The cruiser pulled to a stop behind a thick clump of bayberry bushes three hundred yards above the cove. Through the dense fog below, the faint yellow glow of work lights shone from the windows of a dilapidated wooden boathouse sitting on concrete pilings above the churning dark water.
Tied to the boathouse dock was a sleek, fifty-foot black motor yacht, its engines idling with a low, rhythmic vibration that echoed off the granite cliffs.
Detective Vance unholstered his sidearm, signaling to his four officers to form a perimeter around the boathouse. "Stay in the vehicle until we secure the structure," he ordered sternly before slipping out into the foggy darkness.
May you like
Catherine and I watched through the rain-streaked windows as the officers moved silently down the slippery stone path toward the dock. For three long minutes, there was only the sound of the ocean waves crashing against the rocks below.
Then, a sharp, deafening gunshot shattered the stillness of the night, followed immediately by the sound of breaking glass and shouting men.
