Chapter 20
The wind howled like a living thing, clawing at them as Champion, Austin, and Charlotte trudged through the knee-deep snow toward the lighthouse.
Every step was a battle, the icy drifts dragging at their boots and threatening to swallow them whole.
The storm hadn’t let up for a second, turning the world into a featureless white void.
Charlotte pulled her scarf tighter around her face, her teeth chattering as she fought to keep up with the two men.
Her chest tightened. The thought of Cowboy—alone, hurt, maybe worse—made her legs push forward despite the exhaustion burning her muscles. “He’s probably back at the house by now, wondering why we’re the idiots out here, freezing to death.” She didn’t believe it, but she wanted to.
“Maybe,” Champion said, though his tone wasn’t any more convincing than her own.
Austin’s flashlight beam cut through the swirling snow, illuminating the faint outline of the lighthouse up ahead. It loomed like a dark sentinel against the blizzard, the stone walls battered by the relentless wind. Charlotte shivered, not just from the cold, but from the eerie aura of the place.
As they reached the base of the lighthouse, Champion motioned for them to stop. He pulled out his handgun, his movements precise despite the biting cold. “Stay close. We don’t know what we’re walking into.”
Austin nodded, his own weapon at the ready, while Charlotte tightened her grip on the flashlight she carried. It wasn’t much, but she’d bash someone over the head with it if she had to.
A heavy wooden door creaked open under Champion’s hand, revealing a dark, icy interior. The wind immediately died down, the thick stone walls muffling the storm to a distant roar. A resounding silence inside was oppressive, broken only by the crunch of their boots on the frosted floor.
Charlotte shone her flashlight around the entryway, the beam illuminating the spiral staircase leading upward and the faint dusting of snow that had blown in through cracks in the door. “Leo?” she called, her voice echoing off the stone walls.
Nothing.
Champion motioned for them to spread out, keeping within sight of each other.
They moved cautiously through the lower level, their flashlights sweeping over every corner.
The faint, acrid tang of something metallic lingered in the air, making Charlotte’s nose wrinkle.
She didn’t know what it was, but it felt wrong.
“Upstairs,” Champion said, nodding toward the staircase.
They ascended slowly, each step creaking under their weight. Charlotte’s pulse quickened with every turn of the spiral, her flashlight bouncing shadows across the walls. Austin broke off to explore the lower gallery, while she and Champion continued to the top.
When finally she entered the small, empty room, her hopes disappeared in an instant. No one was here. The lantern mechanism stood in the center, its rusted gears silent and still. Broken glass littered the floor near the windows, snow drifting through the jagged openings. Where could he be?
Austin’s voice echoed through the lighthouse. “The gallery is clear. You find anything?”
Champion and Charlotte shared a look. “Not a goddamn th—” Champion’s words were cut off by the sound of a distant crash below, and they flew down the steps, shadows dancing on the imposing stone walls from the jostling of their flashlights.
She reached the bottom of the stairs just a step behind Champion, who held his weapon at the ready.
“It sounded like it came from behind this wall,” said Austin, his fingers tracing the mortared joints. “There has to be a hidden door or compartment.”
Charlotte’s breaths came in quick puffs as she ran her fingers over the rough surface, searching for clues.
They were considering giving up when she found a large fieldstone tucked into the wall beneath the shadow of the stairs, empty space where solid mortar should have been. “I think I found something.”
Austin moved in front of her. He turned to Champion. “Cover me.” With the other man ready with his weapon trained on the wall, Austin worked to pry loose stones from the wall one by one, until a wooden door was revealed.
“I can’t believe this,” said Charlotte, her mouth open in astonishment. “I never knew that was there.”
“Is someone in there?” Austin bellowed, then knocked on the door.
Silence.
He tried the handle, but it seemed to be locked. He stepped back, motioning for Champion to help him. Champion turned to Charlotte. “Get back.”
She did as he asked, her heart pounding. Anything could be in there, or nothing at all. There were no other people on this island right now, were there? And if there were, how the hell was that even possible? But Cowboy hasn’t returned, and that was even more unlikely than the last possibility.
Fear was a living presence in her gut as she watched the men work, their muscles straining against the task, and it occurred to her that whatever had happened to Cowboy might well happen to them to. And she’d left Tom with her grandmother!
Suddenly, the door flew open with a loud crack, the wood near the door jamb splintering with a distinctive clap.
Charlotte’s flashlight illuminated a narrow staircase heading deep underground.
“Holy shit,” she said, suddenly torn between exploring the mysterious depths and staying firmly on solid, familiar ground.
The men showed no such hesitation, and she followed them into the subterranean passageway.
The air grew colder and heavier as they descended and her hands trembled, every instinct screaming at her to turn back.
But she pressed on, thinking about Cowboy, her grip tightening on the flashlight as if she really could use it to defend herself should the need arise.
The staircase ended in a hidden storage room of sorts.
The acrid smell was stronger here, and Charlotte’s light swept over shelves lined with chemical canisters, wires, and what looked like timers.
She would have thought her sense of foreboding wasn’t capable of intensifying, yet her stomach dropped even further than before.
“What the hell is this?” Austin muttered, his voice tight.
Champion shrugged. “Looks like chemicals of some sort.”
Charlotte wasn’t paying much attention to the men. Her hand shook as she moved the flashlight toward the far corner of the room—and froze.
A group of people huddled behind a metal shelving unit, their faces gaunt, their eyes wide with fear.
Broken glass lay on the dirt floor beside the shelves.
She saw a woman with a baby clenched close to her chest, wrapped in a blanket, her eyes connecting with the mother’s on some visceral level. “Guys…” she said.
The men’s flashlight beams turned toward her, then to the people beyond. “Don’t move,” yelled Austin. “Let me see your hands.”
“Who are they?” Charlotte asked, her voice barely more than a whisper.
Slowly, the man next to the woman stood. “Please. We mean you no harm.”
“What are you doing here?” barked Austin.
“We’re refugees.”
“Refugees,” repeated Champion with a tone of disbelief. “How did you get here?”
The man shook his head. “Please, we’ve done nothing wrong. The owner said we could stay here until the storm passed.”
Charlotte stepped forward from the background. “Who said that? Describe the owner—what they look like.”
He looked back to the woman, who nodded almost imperceptibly, before answering. “There are two. A man and a woman. Both older. She has short white hair and he has no hair, but a gray beard.”
For a minute there, he’d actually had her believing Grams had given him permission to be here, and her delirious comments about hungry people in the lighthouse suddenly made sense. But his description of Tom was way off—he had a full head of salt-and-pepper hair and no beard at all.
Austin was looking at her for confirmation, and she shook her head. “That’s not right.”
She watched as Austin and Champion easily overpowered the man, locking zip-cuffs on his wrists as the woman with the baby rose to her feet and began hysterically screaming.
Their reaction was so authentic, so raw, that Charlotte questioned her own beliefs, mentally scanning all that she knew. “Wait.”
The men froze, the woman’s sobs the only noise in the underground room as Charlotte took her phone out of her back pocket.
Her battery was nearly dead, and she knew it would shutoff at any moment.
“Come on,” she said quietly, opening her mail app and scrolling to the one she’d received from her mother.
“Don’t die on me,” she whispered. Hopefully, she’d downloaded the video, though she couldn’t remember if she had.
A link wouldn’t do her any good now. Her cell phone hadn’t had a signal for some time.
The email’s subject line read, “WATCH THIS - IMPORTANT” all in caps.
Charlotte’s mother forwarded her tons of email, ninety-nine percent of which was useless and at least a few that had similar taglines.
She only hoped now she’d been smart enough to download the video and had not simply scrolled past.
Clicking on the email, a preview of the video came up on the screen.
Even from the thumbnail, she suspected the truth.
She hit play on the Cute Old Couple Proposal video, and there was her grandmother, screaming with joy, a beautiful, smiling man who was definitely NOT the Tom Vanderhoffen she knew kneeling down on one knee before her.
“Jesus,” she breathed, watching as a handsome older man stood and embracing Grams, then swung her out onto an impromptu dancefloor in a snow-covered park, her phone suddenly going dead mid-twirl.
“Oh my God, Grams!” She made a dash for the stairs.
“The man in the house is an imposter. He isn’t Vanderhoffen. ”
A rich baritone voice behind her gave her pause. “Wait!” called the handcuffed man. “This imposter, does he have a scar on his face? Like a big line?”
“Yes! Who is he?”
A somber blankness took over his face as if it had been dipped in a vat of terror. He nodded slowly. “He is Jan Sarkisyan. The leader of the terrorist group called the PFP. And if Miss Loretta is there with him alone, I’m afraid she’s in very big trouble.”