Chapter 11 - The Shadow of the Crash
The freezing wind blew rain across my face.
Standing on my porch, drenched from head to toe, was not Gavin Vance. It wasn't the police, and it wasn't a corporate messenger.
It was a young woman, no older than nineteen or twenty, shivering violently in an oversized hooded raincoat. Her hands were caked with dirt, her breath coming in ragged, terrified gasps.
"M-Mark Lawson?" she stammered, her teeth chattering so hard they clicked.
"Who are you?" I asked, gripping the edge of the door, every instinct screaming that something was terribly wrong. "What's going on?"
She looked frantically over her shoulder toward the pitch-black street, where the silhouette of a dark, unmarked sedan sat idling at the curb with its headlights off.
She reached into her soaked pocket and pulled out a silver chain. Dangling from it was a heavy, antique gold locket engraved with the initials *E.C.S.*—Eleanor Cross-Sterling.
It was an exact match to the heirloom pendant Eleanor had been wearing around her neck when I pulled her from the wreckage on Route 9.
My blood ran cold.
"Please... let me in," the girl begged, tears cutting through the grime on her cheeks as she shoved the pendant toward me. "Eleanor sent me. She's in danger."
"What are you talking about?" I unlatched the chain and pulled the door wide open, pulling her into the shelter of the foyer. "Eleanor is safe at her estate. She has round-the-clock private security!"
The girl grabbed my jacket with trembling, ice-cold hands. Her eyes were wide with sheer, unadulterated terror.
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"You don't understand," she sobbed, casting a terrified glance back toward the street as the idling car slowly turned on its high beams, bathing my front porch in blinding white light. "The crash on Route 9 wasn't an accident. Eleanor’s brake lines were cut. Gavin wasn't just a bad boss, Mark... he works for Eleanor’s nephew. And they just realized she survived because of you."
Before I could speak, the tires of the dark sedan screeched violently outside, surging forward straight toward my driveway.
