The Edge

Chapter 6

The cottage was comfortably furnished, with a big four-poster bed being its chief feature with a duvet and matching canopy done in seascapes and lobsters. A blackened-faced wood-burning fireplace with a small stack of cedar logs and kindling set next to it in a wrought iron holder took up much of another wall.

He put his things away and laid out several telltale traps in case anyone breached his room while he was away. He then sat at a small desk set up by the window and looked over the briefing book on his phone.

Jenny Silkwell could have certainly made enemies in her line of work. But if a foreign government wasn’t behind her death, who else would have the motive?

Well, that’s what you’re here to find out. So let’s get to it.

He slipped his Glock into a belt holster, locked his door, deposited the one-pound lead slug key in his pocket, climbed into his Tahoe, and set off.

He drove slowly past the harbor and marveled at the beauty of nature’s rock carvings. He saw a few boats puttering back in, the men on them looking bleary-eyed and exhausted, and smoking cigarettes and gulping bottled water, even in the cold.

Tough way to make a buck. Hope they scored big on whatever they were going out for.

He drove to Jocelyn Point along the winding coast road. As dusk set in, the equal parts grim and picturesque landscape assumed patches of pulsing darkness shouldered with sections still lit by the fading sun. Devine pulled out his military-grade optics and took a look.

Set far off the road on an otherwise deserted stretch of land, the home’s backdrop was the black rock-strewn craggy coastline that the Atlantic pummeled unceasingly.

Devine had seen pictures of the home, but it hadn’t done the place justice. The building itself looked like every haunted house you had seen in movies or on TV. Grim, stark, joyless, it stood like a defiant remembrance of a far more somber and unforgiving era.

Constructed of rough-hewn timbers and rugged dark stone that was probably locally quarried, Jocelyn Point possessed the tall, looming face of a hunk of marble statuary with a wooden-railed widow’s walk at its zenith. Multiple turrets, both cone- and square-shaped, all topped by slate roofs fouled by the elements, stuck out here and there from the home’s façade like wayward strands of hair. The exterior was covered with nature’s makeup — chunks of moss and patches of lichen, which evidently flourished in the damp, briny air.

He saw other buildings dotting the large property. Some looked abandoned, others were falling down, but still others looked reasonably habitable. Maybe these were old servants’ quarters, he thought, for when people actually had them on properties like this.

The grounds had been allowed to mostly go to ruin. The hefty wrought iron gates that had once been attached to stout stone pedestals — emblazoned with the letter J on one and the letter P on the other — were both hanging on to life by a single rusted hinge each.

The place had innumerable windows, all small, gleaming, and mullioned, like the eyes of a spider, with little ability to capture much sunlight but only to reflect it back. The large wooden door that was the main entrance to the place was battered and sullied by weather. Straggly, leafless trees stood next to the house, their bare limbs caressing the crudded walls with every passing breeze.

Devine lowered his optics as the sun fell rapidly into the pocket of the western sky. Darkening clouds scudded overhead as the northeasterly breeze stiffened. As he continued to watch, a light came on in a second-floor window. Devine once more lifted his optics to his eyes. The range and clarity on this piece of surveillance equipment was impressive. For what it had cost the government he knew it should be.

Twenty minutes later, as the darkness deepened, someone appeared at the lighted window, and Devine was quick to focus his device on the person.

Alexandra “Alex” Silkwell had blond hair piled on top of her head, with a few tendrils slipping down to bookend her elegantly chiseled features. Her eyes were full of intensity, or at least it seemed to him that they were.

Devine noted all of these things secondarily. Chiefly, he was riveted by the fact that she wore no clothes.

Embarrassed, he lowered his optics but kept his unaided gaze on her, though he couldn’t make out the finer details now.

Does she know she’s being watched?

His was the only car out here. And she could obviously see it and its lights. Was she being defiant, giving the curious a show? Or did she not think anyone would be watching the house with the optics Devine was using?

Yeah, that might be it, thought a shamed Devine. I’m a peeping Tom with next-gen hardware.

He waited until the room went dark once more before driving off.

As he headed along the whipsawing coast road he wondered what Alex and Dak thought about the violent end of their older sibling’s life.

He also wondered whether one of them had killed her. Or knew who had.

Dak had been in the Army, where he had obviously received extensive weapons instruction. Devine would have to find out why the Army and Dak Silkwell had parted company. The Army didn’t give up its recruits easily. They didn’t have nearly enough volunteers to fill the ranks, which had caused them to overlook things that in the not-too-distant past would have resulted in outright dismissal.

He stopped and sent off a text to Campbell asking for these details.

As he drove north to his prearranged meeting with the local cops, Devine thought back to the woman at the window of an ancient house that had long outlived its useful life and was aging with little grace; and yet two young people still resided there.

This case might turn out to be even more complicated than he had thought.

He checked his watch, hit the gas, and sped up. Time to go look at the body of a woman who should not be dead.