The thunderstorm broke over Wrenhaven just after midnight, a mountain tempest that shook the walls of the motel and sent rivulets of rainwater streaming through the cracked concrete of the parking lot. Cassia lay awake in the darkness of Room 7, listening to the wind scream through the pines, and thought about the symmetry of it. She had come to this town looking for a witness to a murder committed during a storm, and now another storm had found her. It was as if the weather itself was reminding her that some patterns could not be escaped.
She had not slept. Alden Cross's visit had unsettled her more than she wanted to admit. The list of names, the mention of Vera Drummond's daughter, the suggestion that someone else—someone other than Gideon and the Whitmores—might have been in Windfall House on the night of the hurricane. It complicated everything she thought she knew. And it raised a question she had not yet considered: if Gideon was telling the truth, if he really had found his mother already dead, then who was the man with the cold eyes that Cora had seen? And who was the man with the cold eyes that Gideon had seen leaving through the conservatory?
She was still turning these questions over in her mind when the pounding on her door began.
It was not the polite, businesslike knock of Alden Cross. It was frantic, desperate, the sound of someone who was terrified. Cassia scrambled out of bed and looked through the peephole. Cora Hale was standing in the rain, her dark hair plastered to her face, her flannel shirt soaked through, her eyes wide with fear.
Cassia opened the door, and Cora practically fell into the room. She was shaking, her breath coming in ragged gasps, her hands clutching at Cassia's arms as if she were drowning.
"They found me," Cora said, her voice barely coherent. "The man with the cold eyes. He found me. He came to the cabin tonight. He said he was from the security company, but I knew he wasn't. I knew his eyes. I've been dreaming about those eyes for sixteen years."
"Slow down," Cassia said, guiding her to the chair. "Tell me what happened."
Cora took a shuddering breath and tried to compose herself. "I was at the cabin. The security detail that Mr. Cross hired—they were outside, two men in a car. I felt safe. I thought I was safe. And then there was a knock on the door, and when I opened it, he was there. The same man I saw in Havenmoor after the storm. The same cold eyes. He said he needed to ask me some questions about the night of the hurricane."
"What did you do?"
"I ran. I went out the back door and into the forest. I've lived in these mountains for ten years. I know every trail, every hiding place. I lost him in the trees, and I came here. I didn't know where else to go." Cora's voice broke. "The security guards—I don't know what happened to them. I heard shouting, and then nothing. I think he hurt them."
Cassia's blood ran cold. Alden Cross had promised that Cora would be protected, that a private security firm was watching her cabin. But the man with the cold eyes had gotten through them. He had found Cora despite everything.
"We need to call the police," Cassia said, reaching for her phone.
"No." Cora grabbed her wrist. "No police. The police won't believe me. They never believed me. And the man with the cold eyes—he has connections. He told me that tonight. He said if I talked to anyone, he would know. He would find me. He said he's been finding people like me for thirty years."
"People like you?"
"Witnesses. People who saw things they weren't supposed to see. He works for someone powerful. Someone who can make people disappear." Cora's eyes were wild, her grip on Cassia's wrist almost painful. "I should never have talked to you. I should have turned you away at the door. Now he knows I'm still alive. Now he knows where I am."
Cassia knelt beside the chair, trying to calm the younger woman. "Cora, listen to me. You're safe right now. He doesn't know you're here. And I'm not going to let anything happen to you."
"You don't understand. He's not just a man. He's a professional. He's been doing this for decades. My father knew about him. That's why we kept running, even after we left Havenmoor. We moved three times before I was twelve. Different towns, different names. My father was always looking over his shoulder. He died still looking over his shoulder."
"Your father knew who the man was?"
"He knew his name. He knew who he worked for. But he never told me. He said it was safer if I didn't know. He said that as long as I didn't know the name, the man might let me live." Cora's voice dropped to a whisper. "But now he's found me. After all these years, he's found me."
Cassia stood up and walked to the window, peering through the curtains at the rain-soaked parking lot. The neon sign flickered. The pines swayed in the wind. There was no dark sedan, no shadowy figure lurking in the storm. But she knew that didn't mean anything. The man with the cold eyes had found Cora's cabin. He could find the motel just as easily.
"Finnick Hale," she said. "He's staying in Room 11. He's been investigating this case for years. He might know who the man is."
Cora shook her head. "No. No more people. I shouldn't even be here. I should go back to the forest. I can survive out there. I've done it before."
"You're not going back into the forest. You're going to stay here, and we're going to figure this out together." Cassia grabbed her jacket and pulled it on. "Lock the door behind me. Don't open it for anyone except me or Finnick. I'll be back in five minutes."
She stepped out into the storm before Cora could protest. The rain was coming down in sheets, and the wind was whipping through the parking lot, and the thunder was rolling across the mountains like the voice of an angry god. She ran to Room 11 and pounded on the door.
Finnick opened it almost immediately, as if he had been waiting for her. He was fully dressed, his notebook open on the desk, his pale eyes alert. "I heard the shouting," he said. "The woman from Fire Road. She's in your room."
"How do you know that?"
"I've been watching. The storm makes it hard to see, but I saw her running across the parking lot. I saw you let her in." Finnick stepped aside to let Cassia enter. "What happened?"
"The man with the cold eyes. He got past the security detail at Cora's cabin. He tried to grab her, but she escaped. She's terrified."
Finnick's expression darkened. "Alden Cross's security detail. I told you not to trust him. I told you the Whitmores were behind this."
"Alden Cross says he's trying to protect Cora. He says the Whitmores didn't orchestrate the murder. He says someone else was involved."
"And you believed him?"
"I don't know what to believe." Cassia sat down on the edge of the bed, her wet jacket dripping onto the carpet. "But Cora is in danger. The man with the cold eyes is here, in Wrenhaven. He knows where she lives. He probably knows where I'm staying. We need to get her out of here."
"Where? Where can she go that he won't find her?"
"I don't know. But we need to figure out who he is. Cora said her father knew his name, but he never told her. She said the man works for someone powerful, someone who can make people disappear."
Finnick walked to his desk and picked up his notebook. He flipped through pages dense with handwritten notes, his brow furrowed in concentration. "I've been tracking the Whitmore family's connections for years. They have a network of fixers, lawyers, private security contractors. But there's one name that keeps coming up. A man who handled sensitive matters for Theodore Whitmore during his time in the Senate. A man who specialized in making problems go away."
"What's his name?"
"Rayburn. Marcus Rayburn." Finnick found the page he was looking for and read from his notes. "Former military intelligence. Left the army in 1975 under circumstances that were never fully explained. Went to work for the Whitmore family as a security consultant. Officially, he was a bodyguard. Unofficially, he handled blackmail, intimidation, and—according to some sources—worse."
"Worse?"
"There were rumors. A journalist in Kennebec who was investigating Theodore Whitmore's finances disappeared in 1983. His body was never found. A former aide who threatened to go public with information about the senator's affairs died in a hunting accident in 1988. No one could prove Rayburn was involved, but his name was always in the background."
Cassia felt a chill that had nothing to do with the rain. "Is he still alive?"
"I don't know. He would be in his late seventies now. But he had a son. A son who followed him into the family business." Finnick turned to another page in his notebook. "Lucas Rayburn. Born 1965. Former special forces. Dishonorably discharged in 1992 for conduct that the army declined to specify. He's been working as a private contractor ever since—security consulting, corporate intelligence, the kind of work that doesn't leave a paper trail."
"Lucas Rayburn," Cassia repeated. "The man with the cold eyes."
"It fits. He would have been thirty-two in 1997. Young enough to be physically capable, old enough to be experienced. If the Whitmores needed someone to handle the Ashford situation, Lucas Rayburn would have been the obvious choice."
"But Alden Cross said the Whitmores didn't orchestrate the murder. He said someone else might have been involved."
"Alden Cross is a lawyer. He's paid to protect the Whitmores. He would say anything to deflect blame from his clients." Finnick closed his notebook. "But there's one way to find out for certain. We need to ask Lucas Rayburn himself."
"Ask him? He just tried to abduct Cora. He's not going to sit down for a conversation."
"No. But we can make him come to us." Finnick walked to the window and looked out at the storm. "He doesn't know that Cora is here. He probably thinks she's still hiding in the forest. If we can draw him into the open, if we can force a confrontation on our terms, we might be able to get the truth out of him."
"That's insane. He's a trained killer."
"He's also old. And he's alone. And he's been searching for Cora Lindqvist for sixteen years. He's desperate. Desperate people make mistakes."
Cassia stared at Finnick, trying to determine if he was serious. His pale eyes were steady, his expression calm. He had been investigating this case for sixteen years, longer than anyone except Alden Cross. He knew the risks. And he was still willing to take them.
"What's your plan?" she asked.
Finnick told her.
The plan was simple, as the best plans often were. They would use Cora as bait—not real bait, but the appearance of it. Finnick would drive to the Wrenhaven sheriff's office and report a break-in at the motel, drawing the local authorities to the scene. Meanwhile, Cassia would stay with Cora in Room 7, the lights off, the door locked, waiting. If Lucas Rayburn was watching the motel—and Finnick was certain he was—he would see the police arrive and assume that Cora had been found. He would wait for them to leave. And then he would come.
"When he comes," Finnick said, "you'll be ready. I'll be in the room next door, watching through the window. The moment he tries to enter your room, I'll call the police again. They'll catch him in the act."
"And if he doesn't wait for the police to arrive? If he breaks in before we can stop him?"
"Then you'll have this." Finnick reached into his bag and pulled out a small canister. "Pepper spray. It's not a gun, but it'll buy you time. And Cora knows the forest. If things go wrong, you can escape out the back and lose him in the trees."
Cassia took the pepper spray and tucked it into her jacket pocket. "This is a terrible plan."
"All plans are terrible when you're dealing with someone like Lucas Rayburn. But it's the only one we have."
They put the plan into motion at two in the morning. Finnick drove away in his truck, heading toward the sheriff's office on the other side of Wrenhaven. Cassia returned to Room 7, where Cora was still huddled in the chair, her fear giving way to exhaustion.
"What's happening?" Cora asked.
"We're going to catch the man with the cold eyes. But I need you to be brave. I need you to trust me."
Cora looked at her with those dark, haunted eyes, and for a moment Cassia saw the seven-year-old girl who had hidden in a boathouse sixteen years ago, watching the devil walk through the storm. "I've been brave for sixteen years," Cora said. "I don't know if I have any bravery left."
"You do. You've survived this long. You can survive one more night."
The rain continued to fall. The thunder continued to roll. And in the darkness of Room 7, Cassia and Cora waited.
Twenty minutes later, the police arrived. Two sheriff's deputies in a cruiser, their lights flashing red and blue through the rain-streaked window. They walked around the motel for a few minutes, checked the office, talked to the night clerk. Then they got back in their cruiser and drove away. The trap was set.
Another twenty minutes passed. Then thirty. Cassia was beginning to think the plan had failed when she heard it: a soft footstep on the concrete outside. Then another. Then the sound of someone trying the door handle.
Cora grabbed Cassia's arm, her fingers digging in like claws. The handle rattled again, more forcefully this time. And then a voice, low and cold, spoke through the door.
"Miss Lindqvist. I know you're in there. Open the door. We have unfinished business, you and I."
Cassia reached into her pocket and closed her fingers around the pepper spray. Her heart was pounding so hard she could feel it in her throat. She looked at Cora, who was frozen with terror, and she made a decision.
"Stay behind me," she whispered. And then she opened the door.
The man standing in the rain was not Lucas Rayburn.
He was older, much older, his face lined and weathered, his white hair plastered to his skull by the rain. He wore a dark coat that was too heavy for the season, and his eyes—his eyes were not cold. They were desperate. They were the eyes of a man who had been searching for something for a very long time and had finally found it.
"My name is Alden Cross," the man said, his voice trembling with an emotion Cassia couldn't identify. "And I need to speak to Cora Lindqvist. It's about her father. It's about Otto."
Cassia stared at him. "You're not the man from the cabin. You're not Lucas Rayburn."
"No," Alden Cross said. "I'm not. But I know who Lucas Rayburn is. I know who he works for. And I know why he's been hunting Cora for sixteen years." He paused, his eyes moving to Cora, who was standing behind Cassia in the doorway. "Otto Lindqvist wasn't just a lighthouse keeper. He was a witness. He was the one who saw everything. And before he died, he gave me something. Something that will finally bring the real killer to justice."
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