Chapter: Chapter 10: A Masked Man"Vivian, now!" I shouted.I'll never know how she understood. Maybe it was fear. Maybe it was something older and stronger than fear. But Vivian Prescott threw her whole body sideways, and the metal chair tipped over and crashed to the concrete floor just as the woman's pistol fired.The bullet sparked off the floor where Vivian's head had been a heartbeat earlier.My own gun was already out. I fired once, and the pistol flew from the woman's hand, spinning away across the floor into the shadows. She cried out, shaking her grazed, bleeding knuckles, and then she came at me anyway, one-armed, a knife suddenly in that same stinging hand.She was fast, faster than any of her men. She slashed at my throat, missed by a finger's width, and slashed again, and the blade opened a line of fire across my forearm right over the old burn scars. I caught her wrist, twisted, and drove her backward into a stack of crates. The knife clattered away.She was still fighting when I pinned her to the floor
Last Updated: 2026-11-02
Chapter: Chapter 9: The ShipyardThe scream cut off as suddenly as it started.Then a voice came from a loudspeaker bolted to the warehouse wall, cool and amused, the same voice I'd heard on the radio in the Prescott mansion."Good evening, Nightfall. Right on time. I was told you were always on time."I pulled the black mask down over my face and stayed in the shadow of the gate post."Your mother-in-law has a beautiful voice," she went on. "She sings very loudly when I hold her hair. Come inside, and walk in the middle of the yard where my men can see you. If you hide, she screams again. If you run, she stops screaming forever."The speaker clicked off.She wanted me in the open, walking down the center of the yard like a target at a fair. She'd have the rooftop rifle on me the whole way.So I didn't go through the gate.I went along the fence line instead, low and fast, to the spot I'd marked from the hill that afternoon, where the chain-link had rusted away from its post. I slid under it on my back and came up in
Last Updated: 2026-11-02
Chapter: Chapter 8: Midnight TomorrowNatalie had seen the screen over my shoulder. Her face had gone white.I stood up, slid the phone into my pocket, and walked out of the living room into the back hallway, past the police officer at the door, as if I only needed some air. She followed me ten seconds later."Show it to the detective," she whispered. "Right now, Adam.""No.""No?" She grabbed my arm. "They have my mother! There's a detective sitting twenty feet away with a whole police department behind him!""And the message says if I bring police, she dies.""They always say that! That's what kidnappers say in movies, and then the police save everyone!""Natalie, listen to me." I kept my voice low and steady. "These aren't movie kidnappers. These are the same people who walked into your grandfather's house dressed as waiters. They cut the cameras an hour early. They hit the yacht club from the water, where nobody was watching. They plan everything. If they see one police car within a mile of that shipyard, your mother
Last Updated: 2026-11-02
Chapter: Chapter 7: The Yacht Club"I told Dr. Weiss the word meant nothing," I said. "She didn't believe me."Natalie looked up from her coffee. It was seven in the morning on Tuesday, and we were standing in the cottage kitchen, the neutral ground, both of us pretending last night's talk hadn't happened."Who's Caleb Brooks?" she asked."A friend from the army. He got hurt. Badly." I set my cup down. "He's in Hollowbrook.""Are you going to see him?""Soon. Not while those men are still out there and your family is sitting in a house with a cut camera line."She studied me for a long moment. "You're really worried they'll come back.""I'm sure they will."She didn't argue. That told me she was starting to believe me, at least a little.An hour later, I found Vivian in the front hall, pulling on white gloves while her driver waited outside. She wore a pale pink suit and her pearls, and her ash-blonde hair was perfect, as if nothing had happened in this house two nights ago."Where are you going?" I asked.She didn't e
Last Updated: 2026-11-02
Chapter: Chapter 6: Half the TruthAt eight o'clock exactly, Natalie knocked on the door of my own room.In two years, she had never done that. We lived in the same little cottage at the back of the Prescott grounds, but we lived the way two strangers share a train carriage: polite, quiet, careful not to touch. Her room was on the left. Mine was on the right. The kitchen in the middle was neutral ground."Come in," I said.She stepped inside and looked around. There wasn't much to see. A narrow bed I rarely slept in. An old armchair by the window, where I sat most nights with the lights off. A shelf of books, a small toolbox, a photo of my mother turned face down because I couldn't look at it on bad days.Natalie sat on the edge of the bed. I stayed in my armchair."I lied to a police officer last night," she said. "I've never lied to anyone in my life, Adam. Not even to my mother. And I lied for you.""I know. Thank you.""Don't thank me. Explain." She folded her hands in her lap, the way I imagined she did when she s
Last Updated: 2026-11-02
Chapter: Chapter 5: Two Million ViewsBy eight in the morning, I was famous."Two million views!" Tyler slapped his phone down on the breakfast table so hard the coffee cups jumped. "Two million, and it's not even nine! Look at the comments, Mom, look!"We were eating in the sunroom, because the dining room was still sealed with yellow police tape. Somebody had scrubbed most of the blood off the hallway floor overnight, but the whole house smelled of bleach and wet stone.Vivian didn't look at the phone. She was reading the morning paper, and her face was the color of chalk.On the front page, under a photo of the mansion surrounded by police cars, the headline screamed in thick black letters:MASSACRE ON HARBOR CREST: SIX DEAD AT PRESCOTT MANSION.Under it, smaller, in a box on the side:Psycho Veteran Son-in-Law Melts Down at Family Dinner. Video inside.The paper didn't say who the killers had come for. It couldn't; the only proof was folded in my jacket pocket, the photo with my face and my address and that tiny gover
Last Updated: 2026-11-02
