Chapter 9 - The Lighthouse at Cape Horn
An hour later, the jagged silhouettes of the coastal cliffs loomed ahead through the dense morning fog.
I pulled the SUV off the main highway onto a narrow, unpaved service road leading toward the Cape Horn Historical Reserve. The rusty iron gates of the park were wide open, their locks sheared clean off with bolt cutters.
Someone was already here.
I killed the engine a hundred yards down the trail, concealing the vehicle behind a dense thicket of towering pine trees. I turned to Oliver, placing my hands gently on his shoulders.
"Listen to me, Oliver. We are going to walk up to the old lighthouse keeper's cottage. I need you to stay right behind me, step for step. If you hear anything, you drop low behind the stone wall. Do you understand?"
Oliver swallowed hard, his dark eyes shining with unshed tears, but he nodded bravely. "I understand."
We stepped out into the damp, salt-scented air. The wind whipped off the river gorge, howling against the rocky cliffs. We crept silently along the cobblestone path, following the weathered stone walls of the 19th-century lighthouse complex.
As we rounded the corner of the keeper’s cottage, the scene unfolded before us like a nightmare snapshot.
A black sedan was parked sideways across the gravel courtyard. Standing near the open doorway of the cottage were two men in dark tactical jackets—the same men who had broken into my apartment in Portland.
And in the center of the courtyard, hands bound behind her back with plastic zip-ties, stood Rachel.
Her hair was matted with rain, her jacket torn at the sleeve, but her chin was held high with that same fierce, unyielding defiance I remembered from our college days.
"I told you, I don't have the primary drive anymore!" Rachel shouted defiantly as the taller man shoved her forward against the hood of the sedan.
"Don't play games with us, Rachel!" the man snarled, drawing a heavy black pistol from his holster. "Arthur gave up the encryption keys before we left him in the county jail. All we need is your fingerprint to unlock the secondary partition on that micro-SD card, and you can walk away."
"You think I'm stupid?" Rachel laughed bitterly, blood trickling from a small cut on her lip. "The second you get that unlock code, you'll drop me off this cliff and make it look like an accident. Do it yourself."
The man raised the pistol, pressing the cold barrel directly against Rachel’s temple.
"Mom!"
The agonized scream tore from Oliver’s throat before I could stop him.
Rachel’s head snapped toward the sound. Her eyes widened in absolute horror as she saw her son standing at the edge of the courtyard.
"Ollie! No! Run!" Rachel screamed.
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The two armed men spun around, their eyes locking onto us.
"Well, well, well," the gunman grinned evilly, lowering the weapon from Rachel’s head and pivoting it toward us. "Looks like we caught the whole family."
