Chapter 6 - The Ghost in the Rain
The gun in my hand suddenly felt a thousand pounds heavy.
I stared through the pouring rain, my mind violently rejecting what my eyes were seeing.
It couldn’t be.
But it was. The same slope of his shoulders. The same nervous habit of chewing his bottom lip. The same man who had kissed my forehead three years ago and told me he was going to buy milk.
Mark.
“Hello, Anna,” Mark said softly. His voice didn’t tremble. He sounded completely, terrifyingly normal.
I couldn’t breathe. “You’re dead. You were mugged. I buried you.”
“You buried an empty casket, Anna,” Dominic said, stepping further into the boathouse. The rain lashed against his expensive suit. He kept his pistol leveled at Ellie. “Your husband has been very much alive. And very useful.”
Ellie peered around my leg. She looked at the man holding the umbrella.
“Daddy?” Ellie whispered, her tiny voice barely carrying over the crashing waves.
Mark looked away. He couldn’t even meet his four-year-old daughter’s eyes.
A sickening, horrifying clarity washed over me.
Mark hadn’t been a victim. He had faked his death. He had abandoned us to work full-time for a monster.
“Why?” The word tore from my throat, raw and agonizing. “We mourned you, Mark! We had nothing! I had to scrub floors in a mobster’s house just to feed your daughter!”
“I didn’t have a choice, Anna!” Mark finally snapped, defensive and pathetic. “Dominic offered me ten million dollars to fix the port ledgers permanently. If I stayed, you and Ellie would have been in danger. I did it for us!”
“You did it for yourself,” I spat, raising the heavy handgun. My hands had stopped shaking.
I aimed directly at my husband’s chest.
“Put it down, Anna,” Dominic warned, stepping closer. “You don’t have the stomach for this.”
“Try me,” I snarled.
Isabella squeezed my leg. I looked down quickly. The seven-year-old was pointing at the floorboards beneath Dominic and Mark’s feet.
The boathouse was ancient. The wood was rotten. And right where they were standing, the heavy iron winch used to pull boats out of the water was suspended above them, held back by a single rusty locking lever.
I didn’t need to shoot them. I just needed to shoot the lever.
“Give me the girl, Anna,” Dominic demanded. “Give me Vincent’s brat, and I will let you and Ellie walk away. Mark will even give you a cut of the money.”
“I’d rather die,” I said.
I shifted my aim instantly.
I pulled the trigger.
The gunshot was deafening in the enclosed space.
The bullet struck the rusty locking lever of the iron winch. The metal shattered.
With a horrific, grinding scream, the massive iron pulley system gave way. The heavy steel cable whipped across the boathouse like a striking snake.
It caught Mark square in the chest.
The force threw him backward, crashing through the rotting wooden railing of the boathouse. He plunged into the freezing, violent waters of Lake Michigan.
Dominic dove to the side to avoid the swinging iron hook, dropping his gun.
“Run!” I screamed at the girls.
I scooped Ellie into my arms, grabbed Isabella’s hand, and bolted out the side door of the boathouse into the freezing rain.
Behind us, I heard Dominic bellowing in rage.
We ran through the thick woods lining the lake. The mud sucked at our shoes. Branches whipped at my face, but I didn’t stop. The adrenaline burned through my veins like battery acid.
My husband was alive. And he was a monster.
We burst through the tree line onto the deserted coastal highway. A pair of headlights cut through the storm, approaching fast.
I stepped into the road, waving my arms frantically, the gun still gripped in one hand.
An old, battered pickup truck slammed on its brakes, skidding on the wet asphalt before stopping inches from us.
An older man in a flannel shirt rolled down the window, looking terrified at the sight of a soaked woman holding a gun.
“Please,” I begged, lowering the weapon. “My daughters. Please, we need to get to the city. To Union Station. Someone is trying to kill us.”
The old man looked at Ellie, who was shivering violently in my arms, and Isabella, who looked like a pale ghost in the rain.
He popped the locks. “Get in. Quick.”
We scrambled into the heated cab of the truck.
As the truck peeled away, accelerating toward Chicago, I looked out the back window.
Dominic Vesceri had reached the edge of the road. He stood under the streetlamp, completely soaked, watching us drive away.
He didn’t look angry anymore. He looked desperate.
Because he knew where we were going.
I looked down at the brass key clutched in my freezing hand.
Whatever Sofia had hidden at Union Station, it was the one thing that could finally end this nightmare.
“Mommy,” Ellie whispered, her head resting on my shoulder. “Is Daddy gone again?”
I swallowed the lump of grief in my throat. “Yes, baby. He’s gone. It’s just us now.”
I looked over at Isabella. She was staring at the small, fading scar on her wrist. A scar I knew she had gotten the night her mother’s car crashed.
I leaned closer to her.
“Bella,” I asked gently over the rumble of the engine. “What else did your Mommy tell you that night?”
Isabella looked at me. Her brown eyes were ancient and heavy.
“She didn’t tell me anything,” Isabella whispered. “She gave me something.”
Isabella reached toward her neck. From under her collar, she pulled out a delicate gold chain.
May you like
Hanging from the chain wasn’t a locket or a cross.
It was a small, encrypted USB flash drive.
