Chapter Four: The Stranger In The Harbor Pt. 2
429 Words
She backed away, the paper fluttering from her fingers.
A sound upstairs.
Floorboards creaking.
She stood still, heart in her mouth, eyes wide. The house groaned its age, its history but tonight it felt aware.
She turned slowly toward the stairs, the silence stretching long and tight.
From the top landing, the shadows were deeper than they should have been.
Then a whisper, not a word, not quite.
Just the sound of someone breathing where no one should be.
Detective Rourke didn’t sleep.
The rain had stopped, but the fog hadn’t lifted it pressed against the harbor like a held breath. He stood on the wooden deck of the harbormaster’s office, cup of lukewarm coffee in one hand, the other tapping the edge of a manila file.
The harbormaster, a wiry man named Ellis Crane with a cigarette perpetually glued to his lip, squinted at the ledger spread across the counter between them.
“I don’t get paid to ask questions,” Ellis said. “But that boat gave me the damn creeps.”
“What kind of boat?” Rourke asked.
“Old. Rusted. No nameplate. Came in last week, just before the storm. Said he was here for fuel and weather shelter. Paid in cash. Didn’t stay long.”
Rourke pointed to a line in the logbook. “This entry. It’s blank.”
“No ID. No manifest. I asked for a name. He just smiled.”
“What did he look like?”
“Gaunt. Salt-gray beard. Eyes too sharp for a man that quiet.”
Rourke flipped open his file. Pulled out the photograph of Marcus Vane.
Ellis’s mouth twitched. “Could’ve been. Older, maybe. But something about him…”
He didn’t finish the sentence.
Rourke snapped a photo of the ledger. “Did he say where he was going?”
Ellis shook his head. “But he asked about the Harrow place. Gave me that look. Like he already knew.”
Rourke’s stomach turned cold.
He stepped outside into the morning fog. The boats bobbed gently in the still water, ropes creaking. Somewhere far off, a foghorn groaned like something mourning.
tight
As he walked down the dock, a thought circled in his mind and suffocating.
What if Marcus Vane never died?
What if he came back for the one thing Gideon left behind?
The Harrow widow.
The key.
And maybe… the final piece of a game that had started long before Gideon’s body washed up on the rocks.
Rourke glanced out toward the sea.
A dark shape drifted on the horizon.
Watching.
Waiting.
- Writer
