Chapter 13 - The Black Town Car on the Fog-Drenched Cliff
Sheriff Miller didn't look annoyed anymore. His face had drained of every drop of color. "I'm calling the state barracks. We’re putting a tactical cruiser at the bottom of your access road. You two are coming down to the precinct house in Belfast tonight."
"No," David said coldly.
"David, are you insane?!" Leah yelled, leaping up from the rocking chair, her voice cracking with terror. "Did you hear what the warden said? She’s here! She left the teething ring on the table! She’s inside our perimeter!"
"The precinct house has glass doors and three volunteer deputies on night shift," David said, his voice terrifyingly calm now, the panic burning off into pure, lethal adrenaline. "Victoria owns half the private security syndicates on the Eastern Seaboard. If she wants to hit a rural police station, she’ll drive a dump truck through the front lobby and gun everyone down before backup leaves Augusta. We stay here. This cottage is built on solid granite. It has one road in, two hundred feet of cliff behind it, and only one blind approach."
David turned to the sheriff. "Leave your sidearm’s spare magazines on that counter. Take your cruiser to the highway junction and run roadblock duty. If a vehicle approaches without Maine plates, blow the tires."
Sheriff Miller stared at David, saw the cold, murderous fire of a son who had survived a monster, and silently unclipped two twelve-round magazines of .40 caliber ammunition, setting them beside the silver tray. "God help you, David."
By 8:00 PM, the storm arrived. Rain lashed against the heavy cedar shakes of the roof with the ferocity of buckshot. David had boarded the ground-floor windows with four-by-four spruce timbers, hammering long lag bolts through the framing until his hands were raw and blistered.
Leah sat in the dark upstairs bedroom, holding a loaded twelve-gauge shotgun across her lap while Noah slept in a laundry basket lined with down pillows at her feet. She hadn't blinked in an hour.
Suddenly, a dull flash of amber light swept across the wet ceiling.
Leah crept toward the dormer window, peeling the edge of the blackout curtain back a fraction of an inch.
Parked fifty yards away, perched right at the precipice of the jagged granite sea-cliff, was an immaculate black Lincoln Town Car. Its headlights were off, but its amber hazard lights blinked slowly, rhythmically, casting grotesque orange shadows across the crashing waves below.
"David," Leah whispered into the two-way walkie-talkie pinned to her collar. "There’s a car at the cliff edge."
"I see it," David’s voice crackled back from the downstairs deck. "Stay down. Keep the safety off."
Through the rain-streaked glass, Leah watched David emerge into the tempest, carrying a high-powered deer rifle. He moved like a ghost through the wet ferns, staying low, flanking the driver’s side of the luxury sedan.
He leveled the barrel through the driver's window, kicked the door handle, and tore it open.
Leah held her breath.
David didn't fire. Instead, he lowered the rifle, reaching inside with one hand. A moment later, he sprinted back toward the cottage, slamming and dead-bolting the heavy door behind him.
He stormed up the wooden stairs, his coat dripping seawater, his face pale as chalk. In his hand, he held a ticking brass object.
It was an antique mechanical metronome, set to sixty beats per minute.
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Taped to the swinging metal pendulum was a small, water-damaged Polaroid photograph. It showed an eight-year-old David sleeping in his bed, taken thirty years ago. Across his sleeping forehead, written in fresh red lipstick, were five words:
*“I brought your brother back.”*
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