Her mind drifted, slipping toward the fragile edge of rest—
A car door thumped.
Not loud. Almost polite. But it cut the quiet clean in half.
Heather’s eyes snapped open. Byrdie lifted her head, ears flat, her purr dying mid-rumble.
Another sound followed: tires crunching wet gravel.
The drive. Not the lane.
Someone had come all the way up.
“Flynn?” she whispered, though she already knew. Flynn didn’t drive like a ghost. He announced himself with reckless headlights and the occasional swear.
She slipped from bed, staying close to the wall. Moonlight pushed through a break in the clouds and silvered the yard.
Down by the gate, a car sat crooked in the dark, engine ticking as it cooled.
A man stepped out.
He shut the door quietly. Too quietly.
A flashlight switched on. Its beam skimmed the hedges, the front steps, the study window. Slow. Deliberate.
Heather’s stomach coiled. No one stumbled onto Glenoran. Not unless they were looking for something—or someone.
She reached back and slid the brass latch across the bedroom door. The click sounded like a gunshot in the hush.
The beam paused at the study window. Her mind leapt instantly to the papers strewn across the desk—Eilidh’s handwriting, Eleanor’s address exposed in plain sight.
Byrdie crept closer, pressed against Heather’s ankle, tail puffed to twice its normal size. Her low rumble wasn’t a purr this time; it was a warning.
The flashlight drifted. Then lifted. Then stopped exactly where Heather stood behind the curtain.
Her breath caught.
The light didn’t move.
Enough.
She threw on the overhead switch. The room exploded into brightness—curtain, bed, her silhouette stark against the window.
Outside, the man jerked. The flashlight veered wildly. He stumbled back, then sprinted for the car. The engine coughed,caught, and the tires spat gravel as he peeled away, red taillights disappearing down the lane.
Heather stayed where she was. The silence surged back around her like a tide.
Byrdie launched herself into her arms, tucking her head beneath Heather’s chin the way she only did during storms.
“It’s all right,” Heather whispered, though neither of them quite believed it. “We’re all right.”
She kept the lamp on. Watched the empty drive. One minute. Five. Ten. Nothing.
Her thoughts slid backward, unbidden, to that day at Loch Arkaig.
The figure in the mist.
The unblinking stare.
