Chapter 5 - Cranberry Cove
The coastal fog hung over Maine like a shroud.
Tall, jagged spruce trees lined the gravel road that wound toward Cranberry Cove, their dark needles dripping with mist. The Atlantic Ocean churned somewhere to my left—a cold, slate-gray monster crashing against black rocks.
My truck’s engine sputtered as I coasted to a stop half a mile down the private lane. I killed the lights and the ignition.
According to the map Harlan Burke had texted me, the cottage sat at the end of this spit of land, isolated from the rest of the fishing village. As I stepped out into the biting October air, the smell of salt and pine filled my lungs.
Then I saw it.
Tucked into a clearing behind a stand of birch trees, a silver sedan was parked with its lights off. The hood was still warm.
My instincts, dulled by years of soft corporate living, sharpened into pure adrenaline. I kept to the tree line, my boots sinking into the wet moss, moving silently toward the saltbox cottage.
The house was small, weathered shingles painted a faded gray, with a wraparound porch overlooking the rocky bay. A single warm light glowed from a downstairs window.
Through the glass, I saw her.
Maren.
She was wearing an oversized beige wool sweater, her dark hair pulled back into a messy knot at the base of her neck. She looked thinner than I remembered, the sharp line of her collarbone visible beneath the wool, but she was alive. In her arms, she held Noah, rocking him gently as she hummed a melody I recognized instantly—the lullaby her grandmother used to sing.
Noah’s tiny head rested against her shoulder, a tuft of dark hair curling against his scalp.
Tears burned the backs of my eyes, blurring the sight of my son. He was four months old now. He had grown. His cheeks were round and pink, his small fist clutching the wool of Maren’s sweater.
I had missed an entire lifetime in three months.
A sudden, sharp snap behind me shattered the trance.
I whirled around.
Ten yards away, creeping through the low brush toward the back porch of the cottage, was a man in a dark canvas jacket. He wasn't looking at me; his eyes were locked on the illuminated window where Maren stood holding Noah. In his right hand, partially concealed beneath the sleeve of his jacket, was a heavy iron tire iron.
Cassie had warned me: *Julian’s associates aren't going to take an eighty-million-dollar loss quietly.*
Vance was facing twenty years, and his investors—shadowy foreign capital partners who had funded his front companies—wanted the encryption keys Maren had locked away. They didn't want to negotiate. They wanted leverage.
The man reached the bottom step of the porch.
I didn't think. I didn't calculate the odds. For the first time in my miserable, selfish life, I acted entirely without self-preservation.
I launched myself across the clearing.
My boots hit the wet gravel, and before the man could turn, I slammed into his back with the full momentum of my body. We crashed through the wooden railing of the porch in an explosion of splintering cedar, tumbling hard onto the rocky dirt beneath.
The man grunted, swinging the tire iron wildly. The blunt metal grazed my temple, tearing the skin and blinding my left eye with a sudden gush of hot blood.
Pain exploded through my skull, but the sight of the cottage window—and the sudden, terrified scream from inside—drove the pain away.
I grabbed the man’s wrist, smashing it against a sharp granite boulder until the iron slipped from his fingers. He threw a heavy fist into my ribs, cracking bone, knocking the wind out of my lungs, but I didn't let go. I pinned him against the rock, wrapping my hands around his collar, my teeth bared, wild and feral.
"Don't you touch them!" I roared, my voice raw and broken. "Don't you ever look at my son!"
The man struggled, kicking violently, but fear flickered in his eyes as he saw the blood running down my face and the absolute madness in my gaze. He realized I wasn't fighting to win—I was fighting to kill, or to die right there on the rocks.
A deafening crack echoed across the cove.
A shotgun blast sheared through the pine branches above our heads.
The man froze beneath me.
I slowly turned my bleeding head toward the porch.
Standing at the top of the broken steps, her face pale as parchment, her dark eyes blazing with an unholy fire, was Maren. She was holding a double-barreled twelve-gauge shotgun leveled directly at the intruder’s chest.
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Behind her, through the open front door, I could hear Noah crying—a loud, healthy, indignant wail that cut straight through the fog and into the deepest, most broken chamber of my heart.
***
