She palmed her gun, an unreasonable panic rising in her chest. She’d never been one to back down, but maybe she could have given herself more time to recover from yesterday’s attack, at least psychologically—and physically, given the way her chest constricted and ached.
Her shoulders too.
Cressida turned and hurried back. Another quarter of a mile and she’d be at the private steps again. Breathing hard, she moved as fast as she could without appearing to be in an all-out sprint. Somewhere in her psyche floated the rule that running from a predator only caused them to give chase. Right or wrong, she maintained a controlled escape.
Finally, she made it to the stairway that would take her up to the top. A glance back told her the figure was closing the distance.
Okay. I’m climbing these stairs up this cliff.For all she knew, the steps simply led to another park and not necessarily Driftwood Manor.
Cressida started up the staircase. Taking one step at a time, she didn’t look down. Didn’t look back. By the time she made it to the top, she struggled to catch her breath. This climb might have been easy for some, but not for her.
She peered down the steps and saw no one climbing afterher, and she released a heavy sigh of relief. Maybe she’d panicked for nothing and could have kept walking on the beach to the Cedar Trails Lodge steps.
But now she was here, and she’d have to find her way back to the lodge.
She moved away from the cliff and assessed her surroundings. And yep. She was on the property surrounding the mansion.
Cressida tried her cell. Maybe she could get Remi to send someone to pick her up. But she had no bars. What did she expect?
As a journalist, she liked to set up interviews with willing interviewees, but this wasn’t a perfect world. And she was no longer a journalist. She was simply completing her late father’s book. While she was here, she might as well try to set up an interview in person. To get to the drive to the house, she had to walk along a trail through a beautiful meadow outside the main gate. The path coursed along next to a thick growth of spruce and red cedars.
Cressida followed the trail toward the house. It was a big old mansion that belonged in a gothic novel, especially when you factored in that—on the one side—it sat right on a cliff, overlooking a rocky beach.
Evelyn Monroe was an enigma herself. Cressida had taken a shallow dive into her backstory, learning she’d moved to the area approximately twenty years ago and bought the old manor from someone who’d moved here from Baltimore and built it at the turn of the century. The place had a history of its own, but she suspected Evelyn Monroe also had an interesting story.
As she approached the house, dusk was well and truly falling, and she wanted nothing more than to get away from the darkness edging the trail. She pressed her hand on the G26 at her side. Maybe not the best way to approach thehouse. But it was still quite a walk. A long private road led to a circular drive at the front.
Near the manor, a shadowed figured slipped from a corner of an outbuilding and crept to the house.
Cressida froze.
Those weren’t the actions of someone who had come to the mansion for aboveboard reasons.
Did she have time to warn Mrs. Monroe? Would she, too, be seen as an intruder? One who approached wielding a gun?
What should I do?Rush forward and pound on the door to warn the residents? Tugging her cell out, she prayed for a signal. It was worth a shot. And she got one bar here, standing in this exact spot.
Cressida pressed the number for Detective Sanders. Of course, he didn’t answer. He could also be in a place without cell service. She didn’t have a radio to reach him.
Should I leave a message? Not like he could help me rightnow if I did.
Then again, if she ended up going missing, someone needed to know where she’d been last, so she left Braden a quick voicemail. “Listen, I’m at the Monroe place—Driftwood Manor? I climbed the steps from the shore. Someone’s sneaking around the house. Can you get here fast?”
Her gun easily accessible, she rushed forward, keeping her eyes on the area around her. The shadowed figure—a man, if she was going by height and build—had gone to the back of the mansion, closer to the cliffside. She could bang on the front door. Two old classics—a Mercedes and a Jag—sat in the drive. Somebody was home.
Cressida approached the double door with the lion’s-head knocker. Another classic. She would love a picture of that and to document this entire experience from a journalist’s point of view, but later. Grabbing the lion knocker,she banged on the door, and she also pressed the doorbell many times as she stared at the doorbell camera.
Bang.
Bell.
Bang.
Bell.
Nothing. Nada.
Her palms grew slick. Had someone already gained access to the house and started wreaking havoc? Causing harm took mere seconds.
