The Edge

Chapter 77

The gates to the bing mansion did not open this time, so he nimbly scaled the fence and dropped down to the other side. The rain had lessened, but the black clouds and the approaching growls of thunder and flashes of lightning in the distance promised a hell of a storm in a short while.

The house was dark, the only illumination the landscape lights.

He looked in one of the windows but saw nothing helpful. He ran around to the side and found a wall encircling the entire rear of the property. He quickly scaled it and dropped to the grass. The rear grounds were impressive, with a pool, now winterized, a large fire pit, a putting green, tiered landscaping as the ground sloped toward the bluffs overlooking the ocean, and what looked to be a guesthouse that resembled the main house but in miniature.

He checked the guesthouse first. The door was locked but he quickly picked it. He found the place empty.

He tried to pick the back door of the main house, but the lock wouldn’t open. He went around to the front and tried to do the same thing, with the same result. Devine eyed the window next to the door. He tried to remember something. Yes, there had been an alarm pad next to the front door. He looked in the window and in the reflection of a mirror on the opposite wall he saw that the alarm was not on. He put his elbow through the window, reached in, and unlocked the door.

Breaking and entering, for a good cause. I doubt Harper will see it that way.

He stopped just past the foyer. He was waiting for Guillaume or maybe her brother to rush in, see him and the shattered glass, and call the police.

But no one came. He heard nothing except his own breathing.

This place would take a long time to search thoroughly. And he didn’t have time. He eyed stairs going up and stairs going down. He doubted they would have hidden Alex on the main level.

So up or down. Heaven was up, Hell was down.

So Devine went down to Hell. Sometimes it was as simple as that.

Alex blinked once, twice, and then managed to keep her eyes open. She rubbed at her arm where it hurt and felt the slender mattress under her. She didn’t remember much. Lying in her bed trying to sleep and then waking up and being surprised to find a masked person looming over her. She had dressed hastily, at the intruder’s instructions.

Then, at some point, it all went blank.

Like when she had woken up in that field near the woods. After having been...

Alex felt around the darkened space with one of her hands, but feeling clumsy and slow; her fingers weren’t really registering what they were touching. She shivered because it was cold. She clearly sensed this was not a safe place, but seemed to lack the energy to do anything about it.

She strained to hear any noise, someone else’s breathing, movement, a car, or plane, or even the smell of the ocean. Alex understood she should be afraid, fearful for her life. Deep inside her fuzzy thoughts she had concluded that this was connected to what had happened to her fifteen years before.

She lay back on the mattress. In her mind she saw the image she had started to sketch. The man who had attacked her, robbed her of much of her life, made her afraid to do the things that anyone would want to do: travel, get a job, make friends, find romantic companionship. She had decided that her art might lead her mind to pluck the memory out of her, freeing it and her at last. Alex had finally concluded that the limbo she was in could only be broken by remembering who had done this to her. Then, and only then, could she move on with her life.

She hadn’t gotten far on it, but she had commenced the painful journey, letting her mind guide her hand, going back over familiar, and yet unfamiliar, ground. A line here, a shadow there. She felt it coming together, she really did. This represented progress when she had been at a standstill for so long.

And now?

Will I not get a chance to finish? Will I not get a chance to keep on living?

She covered her face with her arm where the needle had gone in, to deepen the darkness even more. Alex felt herself shrinking away, to nothing.

Then she heard someone coming.