Total pages in book: 108
Estimated words: 102280 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 511(@200wpm)___ 409(@250wpm)___ 341(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 102280 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 511(@200wpm)___ 409(@250wpm)___ 341(@300wpm)
Now he’d brought Vivienne there. And Brooks would walk into that trap to save her, whatever the cost.
His phone buzzed again. Another text from the unknown number.
Ten minutes. Then I start hurting her.
Brooks typed back:
On my way. Don’t touch her.
No response.
Sullivan parked two blocks from the lighthouse, and they approached on foot. Rain soaked through their jackets within seconds. Brooks’s weapon felt heavy in his hand.
“FBI will have eyes on us in five minutes,” Sullivan murmured. “We just need to keep him talking until then.”
“And if we can’t?”
“Then we adapt.”
They reached the lighthouse grounds. The door stood open, darkness beyond. Brooks stepped inside, Sullivan covering him.
“Winston!” Brooks called. “I’m here. Let her go.”
Silence. Then footsteps on the spiral stairs above.
“Come up, Detective. Alone.”
Sullivan started to object, but Brooks shook his head. “Stay here. If I’m not back in five minutes, come get me.”
“Brooks—”
“Five minutes.”
Brooks began climbing the spiral stairs, each step taking him higher into the tower. His weapon stayed ready, his senses alert for any sound, any movement.
The iron steps rang under his boots. Water dripped from somewhere above, echoing in the confined space. Wind howled around the lighthouse walls, making the entire structure groan.
He climbed past the first landing, then the second. The lamp room was at the top. Where Lily had hidden her evidence twenty-five years ago. Where Winston now held Vivienne.
Brooks’s phone buzzed in his pocket. He ignored it. Focus on the stairs. On what waited above.
Another landing. The air grew colder as he climbed higher. His breath misted in front of him.
Then he heard it. Vivienne’s voice, muffled but unmistakable. She was alive. She was up there.
Brooks quickened his pace, taking the stairs two at a time now. His heart hammered against his ribs.
He reached the final landing. The door to the lamp room stood partially open, pale light spilling through.
Brooks took a breath, steadied his weapon, and pushed through the door.
What he saw inside made his blood run cold.
SEVENTEEN
vivienne
The lamp room stank of old metal and fear.
Vivienne’s wrists burned where the zip ties cut into her skin. Winston had forced her to kneel in the center of the room. The space was empty now—the FBI had stripped it clean days ago, removing all the evidence, all the artifacts. Only dust outlines remained where crates had stood for decades, ghost impressions of the Aldrich family’s crimes.
“Brooks is coming.” Winston checked his phone again, pacing between the windows. Rain hammered the glass, turning the world outside into a blur of gray and black. “Good. I want him to watch.”
Blood trickled from Vivienne’s split lip where Winston had struck her when she’d tried to reach for her pendant. The silver chain lay broken on the floor three feet away, Mathilde’s protective stone glinting in the weak light. Without it, her connection to the spirits felt muted, like trying to hear through water.
But they were still there. She could sense them pressing against the boundaries of this world, desperate to help but unable to manifest strongly enough. Lily’s presence hovered closest, her spirit crackling with rage at Winston’s violation of the space where she’d died.
Hold on, Lily whispered. He’s almost here.
“Did you know your great-great-grandmother tried to stop my family?” Winston knelt in front of Vivienne, his gun resting casually on his knee. “Mathilde Hawthorne. She put protective wards all through this lighthouse, thinking she could trap us, force us to abandon our operation.”
“She succeeded.” Vivienne’s voice came out steady despite the fear coiling in her stomach. “Your family couldn’t use the lighthouse the way they wanted. That’s why you expanded into the tunnels, why you had to hide.”
Winston’s laugh was bitter. “She delayed us. Nothing more. We adapted. That’s what the Aldrich family does—we adapt, we survive, we thrive. Your family just . . . watches. Listens to ghosts. What good has that ever done?”
“Lily found the evidence. Martha never stopped believing. And now you’re finished.”
“Am I?” Winston stood, moving to the window. “Gerald is in custody, yes. Jeremy and Tyler too. But I’m still free. And once I eliminate you and that detective, I’ll have time to disappear. New identity, new life. The Aldrich operation will go dormant for a generation, then resurface when everyone’s forgotten.”
He said it so casually, as if their deaths were minor inconveniences rather than murder.
“Brooks won’t come alone.” Vivienne tested the zip ties again, but Winston had secured them tightly. “The FBI is watching this lighthouse.”
“Let them watch. By the time they move in, you’ll both be dead and I’ll be gone through the tunnels. They’ve already searched the network—they think they found everything. But there are passages even Gerald doesn’t know about. Passages my great-great-grandfather dug in 1875 that lead to a cave system two miles up the coast.”
Footsteps echoed from below. Heavy boots on iron stairs.
Winston raised his gun, positioning himself behind Vivienne. The cold metal pressed against her temple.