Chapter 3 - The Ghost of Blackwood
The coastal fog off Blackwood, Maine, was thick enough to taste, heavy with the bitter salt of the Atlantic.
Nora stood on a rocky crest three hundred yards from the iron gate of the Vance compound. She was wearing dark rain gear, a heavy canvas backpack slung over her shoulders, holding a pair of military-grade night-vision binoculars she had rented from an army surplus store in Portland six hours earlier.
Through the green-tinted lenses, the compound looked like a fortress from a gothic nightmare.
A three-story stone mansion sat precariously on the edge of a hundred-foot granite cliff overlooking the boiling ocean below. Surrounding the five-acre property was an eight-foot chain-link fence topped with barbed wire and infrared motion sensors mounted every fifty feet.
Nora adjusted the focus.
On the ground floor of the house, a warm light glowed behind a set of double French doors leading out onto a wide stone terrace.
A small figure was standing near the glass.
Nora’s breath hitched in her throat. Her heart hammered against her ribs like a trapped bird.
It was her.
The little girl from the supermarket was wearing a yellow raincoat over her pajamas, her dark curls resting against her shoulders. She was holding her stuffed rabbit by its faded ear, pressing her forehead against the glass, looking out into the foggy darkness as if she were waiting for someone.
Beside the child stood an older woman with silver hair pulled back into a tight, pristine bun—Eleanor Vance. Eleanor’s hand rested on the child’s shoulder, not in an embrace, but in a firm, possessive grip that kept the girl from moving away.
"Hold on, sweetie," Nora whispered, lowering the binoculars, her chest swelling with a protective fury so immense it burned away every trace of fatigue. "Mommy is coming."
Nora dropped down into the tall grass along the fence line, moving silently toward a drainage culvert she had spotted on the property map Clara had given her.
The culvert ran beneath the southern section of the perimeter fence, designed to drain rainwater from the inner lawn into the sea. It was narrow, choked with muddy gravel and slick sea moss, but wide enough for a woman of Nora’s slim frame to crawl through.
Nora dropped to her hands and knees, sliding into the cold, damp concrete tunnel.
The water was ice-cold, soaking through her jeans instantly, but she ignored the biting chill. She dragged herself forward inch by inch, her fingers digging into the gravel, pushing her backpack ahead of her.
Five minutes of grueling crawling brought her to the inner drainage grate on the compound lawn.
Nora pulled a small, high-leverage bolt cutter from her backpack. She jammed the hardened steel jaws onto the rusted iron bars of the inner grate, squeezing the handles with all her strength until the old metal snapped with a quiet crunch.
She pushed the grate open and climbed out into the tall rhododendron bushes bordering the rear lawn.
Ten yards away, a guard carrying a flashlight and leading a German Shepherd paced along the gravel walkway.
Nora froze, pressing her body flat against the wet soil, holding her breath as the beam of the flashlight swept across the leaves inches above her head. The dog paused, sniffing the air, its ears pricking up.
"Come on, Max," the guard grunted, tugging the leash. "It's just the wind."
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The sound of their footsteps faded down the path toward the front gate.
Nora stood up, slipped out of the bushes, and darted across the open lawn toward the warm glow of the terrace doors.
