Chapter 2
CHAPTER TWO
Celeste
The gravel driveway crunches under my tires, a sound that throws me back to seventeen years old, sneaking in past curfew.
Same sound, same house, same trees pressing in from all sides like they're trying to reclaim the property.
Only now I'm thirty-one, successful, and still feel like that teenager the moment I see Dad's silhouette in the doorway.
The Sterling family lodge looks exactly as I left it—cedar shakes weathered to that particular grey-brown that screams Adirondack practical, green metal roof already carrying a fresh load of snow.
The carved wooden sign Dad made when I was ten still hangs by the door:
Sterling Home - EST. 1993.
The year Mom left, he'd built that sign and acted like our family was just beginning instead of falling apart.
I grab my bags from the trunk, noting the unfamiliar sedan parked down the road.
Maybe Mrs. Hartz finally replaced that ancient Subaru.
But something about it feels wrong—too clean, too careful in its positioning.
Like it's trying to be unnoticed.
"Are you going to stand there all day, or are you coming in?"
Dad's voice carries across the yard, gruff with something that might be emotion or might be the cold.
He's wearing his uniform still, probably came straight from whatever scene had him ignoring my calls for the last hour.
Sheriff Sterling doesn't take time off, even for his only daughter's homecoming.
"Just admiring the complete lack of change," I call back, hauling my laptop bag over my shoulder. "Very on-brand for you."
He doesn't smile, but his eyes soften as I climb the porch steps.
Up close, he looks exhausted.
New lines around his eyes, grey in his stubble that wasn't there last Christmas.
He pulls me into a hug that smells like coffee and duty leather, and for a moment, I'm eight years old again, believing my dad can fix anything.
"You look tired, kid," he says into my hair.
"You look worse."
That gets a laugh, short and rough. "Come on. Coffee's fresh."
Inside, the house wraps around me like a time capsule.
Knotty pine walls that turn everything amber in the afternoon light.
The massive stone fireplace still dominated by that twelve-point buck he shot the year I was born.
Cast iron woodstove in the corner ticking as it cools.
The plaid couch where I wrote my first terrible poetry, convinced I was the next Sylvia Plath.
But there are new things too.
A security panel by the door, its LED light blinking green.
New deadbolts that weren't there before—Schlage, I note, the kind that costs three times what Dad usually spends.
Motion sensor lights visible through the kitchen window.
"Redecorating?" I ask, nodding at the security panel.
"Just updating things." He pours coffee into the same chipped mug I used in high school. "Town's growing. Can't be too careful."
Lie number one. This town hasn't grown since the paper mill closed in 2008.
I follow him to the kitchen, noting how he keeps positioning himself between me and the windows.
The kitchen hasn't changed—yellow walls that Mom painted trying to "brighten the place up," an ancient coffee maker that runs 24/7, same scarred wooden table where we've eaten thousands of silent meals.
"So," I say, settling into my old chair, "want to tell me what's really going on?"
He freezes, coffee mug halfway to his lips. "What do you mean?"
"The security system. The new locks. The fact that you've checked your phone six times since I walked in. And—" I glance out the window, "—whoever's in that sedan down the road who's been watching the house since I arrived."
His jaw tightens. "You always were too observant for your own good."
"Occupational hazard. I write thrillers, remember?"
"I thought you wrote romance."
"Dark romance. There's a difference." I take a sip of coffee, waiting.
I learned interrogation techniques from him, after all.
Silence is more effective than questions.
He breaks after thirty seconds. "We've had some incidents."
"What kind of incidents?"
"The bad kind."
"Dad."
He sets down his mug hard enough to slosh coffee onto the table. "Four women dead in the last six months. Young women. Now some men, too. That's all you need to know."
My writer's brain lights up like Christmas morning. "Serial killer?"
"Jesus, Celeste." He runs a hand through his hair. "These are real people. Were real people. Amy had two kids. Monica Reeves—" He stops, jaw working.
"I'm sorry. You're right. It's just—"
"It's research for you." His voice is bitter. "Everything's research."
We sit in silence, and my stomach churns. I crossed a line just now, and I know it.
Outside, snow begins to fall again, fat lazy flakes that will bury everything by morning.
I notice footprints in the snow near the tree line—large, boot prints, fresh enough that the edges haven't softened yet.
They lead from the woods almost to the back door, then veer away.
"Is that why there's someone watching the house? Because of the footprints?"
Dad's head snaps up. "What footprints—where?"
I point toward the trees.
He's up and at the window instantly, hand moving to his service weapon.
The gesture is so automatic, so practiced, that my chest tightens.
How long has he been this afraid?
"Probably just a hiker," he mutters, but he's already pulling out his phone. "Johnson? Yeah, check the tree line behind my house. Fresh tracks... No, she just noticed them... Right."
The sedan down the road starts up, and I catch a glimpse of a young officer I don't recognize heading toward our backyard.
"Protection detail?" I guess.
"Just a precaution."
"Because of the murders?"
He turns from the window, and for the first time, I see real fear in his eyes. "Because the last victim had a page from one of your books with her."
The coffee mug slips from my hand, shattering on the worn linoleum.
Hot coffee spreads across the floor like blood.
"What?"
"First page of your first novel. Laminated, placed under her hands like—like some kind of offering." He grabs paper towels, starts cleaning up my mess with the efficiency of someone used to dealing with chaos. "That's why I didn't want you coming home."
My mind races. Someone's reading my work. Someone who kills.
"Which page exactly?"
"Celeste—"
"Which page?"
He sighs. "The one where your heroine meets the villain. The part about him looking at her like the universe had already decided they belonged together."
I remember writing that line.
Middle of the night, halfway through a bottle of wine, trying to capture that feeling of inevitable doom disguised as destiny.
Now someone's turned it into a crime scene.
"I need to see the file."
"Absolutely not."
"Dad—"
"You're here to write, not play detective." He throws the coffee-soaked towels in the trash. "Promise me you'll stay out of this."
I cross my fingers behind my back, a childish gesture he taught me to never use. "Promise."
He doesn't believe me, but Officer Johnson appears at the back door before he can press the issue.
"Tracks lead into the woods, Sheriff. Lost them about thirty yards in. Looks like size eleven, maybe twelve. Male, based on the stride."
"Recent?"
"Within the last hour."
They exchange a look that makes my skin prickle.
Someone was here, watching the house, less than an hour ago. Maybe watching me arrive.
"Double the patrol," Dad says quietly. "And I want someone walking the perimeter every hour."
Johnson nods and heads back out.
Dad turns to me with his Sheriff face on. "You don't go outside alone. You don't go into town alone. You don't—"
"Don't live my life because you're scared?"
"Don't end up as female victim number five because you're stubborn."
The words hang between us like a threat. Or a prophecy.
"Show me my room," I say, suddenly exhausted. "I promise to be a good prisoner."
His face softens. "It's exactly how you left it."
He's not lying.
My childhood bedroom is a shrine to teenage angst—purple walls I painted in rebellion against all the wood paneling, band posters for groups I don't listen to anymore, a bookshelf crammed with King and Rice and all the dark fiction that horrified my mother.
The quilt my grandmother made still covers the full-sized bed, and the dormer windows still frame the forest like a threat.
I set up my laptop on the old desk, positioning it so I can see both the woods and the driveway.
The sedan is back in position, guardian angel or prison guard, I'm not sure which.
"Dinner's at six," Dad says from the doorway. "I'm making—"
"Spaghetti with sauce from a jar?"
"It's called consistency."
He leaves me alone, and I open a new document.
The cursor blinks at me, waiting.
Outside, the footprints are already filling with fresh snow, erasing evidence of whoever was watching.
But I can still feel them—eyes in the forest, waiting for something.
I start typing:
The hunter always knows when his prey comes home.
Delete.
Too on the nose.
But something about this place, these woods, the knowledge that someone who kills women is out there reading my words—it's exactly the inspiration I came here for.
Dark and dangerous and real in a way my recent books haven't been.
A sound drifts through the window—high and mournful, almost like singing.
No, not singing.
Violin.
Someone's playing a violin in the woods, the melody carried on the wind like a secret.
It's beautiful and wrong, classical music in a place that should only know silence and wind.
I open the window despite the cold, trying to locate the source.
The music grows clearer—Bach, I think, though I was never good at classical.
It's coming from deeper in the mountains, maybe a mile or two away.
Who plays violin in the woods in December?
"Dad?" I call down the stairs. "Do you hear that?"
"Hear what?"
"The violin."
A pause. Then his heavy footsteps on the stairs.
He appears in my doorway, frowning. "That would be the Lockwood place. Guy's a hermit, lives about three miles up the mountain. Plays at all hours."
"Lockwood?" The name feels familiar somehow.
"Cain Lockwood. Moved here about five years ago. Keeps to himself, but..." He trails off.
"But what?"
"But he fits the profile. Loner, hunter, knows the woods better than anyone. And those damn deer skulls he keeps—" He stops again, clearly having said more than he intended.
"Deer skulls?"
"Forget it. Just stay away from him, Celeste. I mean it."
He heads back downstairs, leaving me with more questions than answers.
Cain Lockwood.
I roll the name around in my mind like wine, tasting its edges.
A hermit who plays violin in the woods and decorates with deer skulls.
Who fits the profile of a serial killer.
I should be afraid.
Should be packing my bags and heading back to the city where the only danger is overpriced cocktails and bad Tinder dates.
Instead, I'm typing:
Cain was a name for a marked man, a killer, the first to spill blood in anger.
But this Cain played violin in the woods and decorated his cabin with bones, and when she heard his music drift through her window that first night, she knew she'd found her monster.
This time, I don't delete it.