Chapter 41

The parlor felt too quiet after the crowded buzz of the meeting hall, the clock in the hall hollow and gloomy as it began to strike nine. Michael pocketed his car keys and headed for the stairs without so much as a word. Lane watched him go, his feet slow and heavy as they negotiated the steps. He hadn’t even bothered to remove his jacket.

He hadn’t said a word on the ride home, his eyes intent on the road, hands locked on the wheel, as if driving through a storm only he could see. She had wanted to go for coffee, or maybe grab some dinner, since neither of them had eaten, to talk about the meeting and ask what he thought she should do next. Instead, she had decided to leave him to his mood. This was her fight, after all. He’d made that plain from the start.

Her head was throbbing, and had been since about halfway through the meeting. In the kitchen, she scared up a couple of Advil, washed them down with a glass of milk, made a peanut butter sandwich, then climbed the two flights of stairs to her rooms. She hadn’t done much work of late, almost none, in fact, and she had an article due next week. It was only nine. Maybe she could get the thing started, scribble down an outline, a few bullet points. Except she didn’t feel like working. Her thoughts were too jumbled, outrage and impotence and disgust all roiling together like water behind a dam, bottled up with no outlet.

Tomorrow she’d have to tell Mary how things stood, that they had two weeks to find a way to block the mayor’s plans or Hope House would be shuttered, its residents scattered who knew where. Two weeks. She dreaded being the bearer of such news. But what of the recipient? What would it be like for someone like Mary to hear such a thing, to know the one safe thing in her life was about to be yanked away?

After changing into her sweats, she wandered into her writing room and flipped open her laptop, hoping the muse would descend. Instead, she checked her e-mail. Her mother had arrived home safely. Robert promised to have his people on Hope House’s funding trail first thing in the morning. Well, it was something at least. And maybe she’d hear something back from R&C Limited in the next few days.

It took only a few minutes of staring at her notes to realize she was wasting her time trying to work in her present mood. Instead, she shut down the computer, removed the battered sketchbook from the desk drawer, and padded back to the bed to prop herself up against a bank of pillows.

As always, the fairy-tale images spoke to her, a beautiful queen and handsome young knights, castles twined with flowers like small white moons. But tonight there was something new—or rather, something she’d missed—tiny, almost imperceptible differences between one page and the next that she now realized created a kind of visual timeline. Suddenly, it was clear, in the gradual but steady climb of vines up castle walls, the subtle leaching of color from the queen’s golden hair, the growing gloom of a darkening sky and mounting gray waves, all of which seemed to culminate on the book’s final page, with the red-haired siren calling across the waves to a beached and broken boat. It was an ominous chronology, a cautionary tale woven from page to page—but a caution against what?

Not liking the dark direction of her thoughts, Lane closed the book and slid it into the nightstand. She had enough on her mind without worrying about a collection of old drawings. Flicking off the lamp, she rolled onto her back, praying that sleep would come quickly, and without dreams. Instead, she lay awake, counting the seconds between the rhythmic blue-white strokes of Starry Point Light.

She had just dozed off when something, a creak or a thud, brought her up with a start. Propped on one elbow, she trained her ears to the silence. There was nothing. Convinced that she’d imagined the whole thing, she lay back down, then heard it again, though perhaps sensed was a more apt description. She was used to the inn’s arthritic moans and groans, the creaking of walls and floors, like century-old bones settling at the end of a long day, but this was different. This was man-made and furtive somehow—the kind of sound a person made when trying to make no sound at all.

Breath held, she padded to the door, peered out into the empty corridor, then tiptoed down the first flight of stairs. Michael’s door was closed, no sign of light leaking from the narrow chink beneath. At least someone could sleep.

Downstairs, she moved from room to room, bumping about in the dark as she checked doors and windows, but nothing seemed amiss. She had just placed a hand on the newel post, preparing to return to her rooms, when she caught the muffled but unmistakable crack of breaking glass, shards ringing in the quiet night air as they tinkled to the ground.

It came again, from outside, from somewhere near the front of the house. Lane hurried to the parlor and pushed back the curtains, peering across the street at the Rourke House, bone white now, and bled of color beneath the waning half-moon. She saw nothing at first, just vacant windows and the stark silhouette of its long-forsaken tower. Then her heart squeezed against her ribs as a light appeared, not inside the house this time, but moving stealthily through the greenhouse. A prickle coursed the length of her spine as she stared at the hollowed-out structure, eerily skeletal with half its panes gone.

With hands gone suddenly clammy, she eased open the window, wondering how she’d ended up in a bad episode of Scooby-Doo. The sound came again, jarring in the icy stillness, but this time it was punctuated by a wild arc of thin white light. Again and again, the brittle shattering repeated, each blow synchronized with a similar blade of light.

It took a moment to make sense of what she was seeing, but eventually she realized the intruder must be using a flashlight to smash out the greenhouse’s few remaining panes. She shivered as it came again, a stark and chilling sound, of long-held anger finally being unleashed—of someone gone mad.

She should wake Michael, she knew, but she was shaking all over, and her legs seemed to have grown roots to the floor. And then, as suddenly as it had appeared, the light was gone, the night dead still. She was about to head for the phone when she was struck with the uneasy notion that she was being watched, that whoever was in the greenhouse not only knew she was at the window but was staring right back at her.

The thought sent a shot of adrenaline through her. Finally, she was able to move, to think. Should she phone the police, or would it only fuel Landon’s plans when the story hit the Islander Dispatch the next morning, as it almost certainly would, complete with quotes from Starry Point’s illustrious police chief? On the other hand, if she did call and they managed to catch the real perpetrator, the mayor’s accusations would be exposed as the utter nonsense they were. Hope House would be spared.

Easing the window closed, she flipped the latch to the locked position, double-checked it, and made a beeline for the phone. She no longer cared about being quiet. Michael would be up soon enough when the police arrived. She had just picked up the handset when she noticed a pale spill of light from the kitchen, a light that hadn’t been on when she came down. Had she been so distracted that she’d left the back door unlocked?

The phone felt slippery against her palm as she crept toward the kitchen. She was still trying to decide whether to use it to dial 911 or wield it as a weapon when she heard what sounded like the refrigerator door opening and closing. She let her breath out. Unless the intruder had worked up a thirst and rushed across the street for a cold beverage, she was probably safe.

Michael tossed her a look as she peered tentatively into the kitchen, his face in shadow from the small fluorescent over the sink. The sight of him, standing there with a carton of orange juice in his hand, nearly made her legs buckle with relief.

“God, Michael,” she said breathlessly, moving to check the bolt on the back door. “I thought you were asleep. Actually, I’m glad you’re not. I was about to call the police. There’s someone over at the Rourke House again, in the greenhouse this time.”

“You saw them?”

“No, but I saw a flashlight and heard glass breaking. Breester won’t be able to pretend it was all a figment of my imagination when there’s glass everywhere.”

Michael made no reply, just stood there, looking at her, his glass of juice untouched, a faint sheen of sweat slicking his forehead.

“Michael, are you—”

She saw it then, his jacket draped on the peg beside the door, the collar glistening with splinters of broken glass. She reached out to touch the sleeve—still cool—and bumped against something protruding from the pocket. With a dawning sense of dread, she pulled it free—a heavy black flashlight, its lens shattered.

She took a step back, and then another, until her spine was against the door and there was nowhere to go, nothing to do but stand there, a flashlight in one hand, a phone in the other, as she put the pieces together, remembering another night, another mysterious beam of light.

“It was you?”

Michael said nothing. He was breathing heavily, she saw now, his nostrils flared with the effort to appear composed. But his eyes were somewhere else, vacant and filled with something that made her mouth go dry.

“What were you doing at the Rourke House tonight?” she demanded, holding up the phone. “Tell me now, or I’m dialing 911.”

Michael set down his juice and met her eyes without flinching. “I grew up in that house.”