Chapter 3: Ghost in the walls
928 Words
The front door groaned like a dying thing as Kai shoved it open. Rainwater streamed from his jacket, pooling on the marble foyer floor. I stepped inside after him, shivering not just from the cold, but from the weight of memory.
Blackwater Cove hadn’t changed.
Still the same vaulted ceilings, the same oil portraits of Voss ancestors staring down with judgmental eyes, the same grand staircase that had witnessed my mother’s last scream before she vanished when I was twelve.
“Place gives me the creeps,” Kai muttered, scanning the shadows with the practiced ease of a man who’d seen real monsters.
“It’s just a house,” I said, though my voice wavered.
“Houses like this don’t forget,” he said quietly. “They remember everything.”
He moved through the rooms like a ghost himself checking windows, testing locks, placing motion sensors near the doors. I watched him, arms crossed, trying to ignore the way his wet shirt clung to the hard lines of his back.
“Bathroom’s down the hall,” he said without turning. “Hot water’s probably sketchy, but it’s better than hypothermia. Go.”
I hesitated. “What about you?”
“I’ll take the study. Dry clothes are in the linen closet.” He finally looked at me. “Don’t make me say it twice.”
I didn’t. But as I passed him, I caught the scent of rain, gunpowder, and something else—cedar and salt. The same smell he’d had the night we were sixteen, sitting on the docks behind the old warehouse, sharing a stolen bottle of wine and dreaming of escape.
Stop it, I told myself. That boy is gone. This man hates you.
Upstairs, the bathroom was just as I remembered—black marble, gold fixtures, a clawfoot tub big enough for two. I stripped off my soaked clothes, wincing at the bruise blooming on my hip from the car crash. In the mirror, my reflection looked pale, haunted.
I turned on the shower. Steam rose like a veil.
Halfway through washing my hair, I heard it.
A soft click like a door opening.
Then footsteps. Slow. Deliberate. Coming up the stairs.
My breath stopped.
I grabbed the nearest thing a heavy glass soap dish—and pressed myself against the tiled wall, heart hammering.
The bathroom door creaked open.
“Elena?” Kai’s voice, low and urgent.
I sagged against the wall, relief and fury twisting together. “What the hell are you doing?!”
He stood in the doorway, eyes scanning the room, hand on his sidearm. “Motion sensor tripped near the east wing. Thought you might’ve wandered.”
“I don’t wander,” I snapped, pulling the shower curtain shut. “I assumed you’d check before barging in.”
A beat of silence. Then, “You’re right. My bad.”
But he didn’t leave.
“Kai,” I said tightly. “Out.”
He turned—but not before I saw the flicker of something in his eyes. Not lust. Not anger.
Worry.
When I finally emerged, wrapped in a thick towel, he was gone. But on the vanity sat a steaming mug of tea and a folded blanket.
I touched the mug. Still warm.
Downstairs, I found him in the study, shirt off, towel slung around his neck as he examined a map of the estate. The scar on his shoulder from the IED in Kandahar caught the firelight.
“You remembered my tea order,” I said.
He didn’t look up. “Two sugars. Earl Grey. You’ve had it the same way since you were fifteen.”
My throat tightened. “You remember that?”
“I remember everything.”
The words hung between us, heavy as stone.
Then a sound from the walls.
A faint tap… tap… tap like fingernails on wood.
We both froze.
Kai moved first, drawing his gun. “Stay behind me.”
We followed the sound to the library. There, behind a bookshelf of dusty legal tomes, was a hidden panel slightly ajar.
Inside: a small safe. And on the floor, a single muddy boot print.
“Someone’s been here,” Kai whispered.
My hands trembled as I knelt. The safe was old my father’s. I knew the combination.
My mother’s birthday.
I turned the dial. Click.
Inside wasn’t cash or jewels.
It was a file. Labeled: “Project Nightingale – TERMINATED.”
And beneath it—a photo of Kai and Daniel in uniform… with a red stamp across their faces: “DISPOSABLE.”
Kai’s breath hissed out. “Your father ordered our unit silenced.”
Before I could respond, the lights died.
Darkness swallowed the room.
Then, from the hallway a voice, distorted, echoing through a speaker we hadn’t seen:
“Welcome home, Elena. Did you miss me?”
It was my mother’s voice.
But she’d been dead for ten years.
- Writer
