Chapter 3 - THE WILL AND THE WOLVES
The black SUV stopped fifty feet from the front porch, its tires crunching heavily over the wet gravel and dead oak leaves. For several seconds, the engine continued to idle, sending twin plumes of pale exhaust curling into the damp autumn chill. The headlights flicked off, plunging the front yard into deep gray shadows as the tree canopy swayed overhead in the rising wind.
“Get away from the windows,” Sarah commanded in a harsh whisper, grabbing both Lily and Emma by the shoulders and pulling them back into the shadows of the central hallway. “Now.”
Lily’s heart thudded against her ribs like a trapped bird. She kept one hand on her camera, her thumb instinctively flicking the power switch to standby. “Aunt Sarah, if the fire department was right behind them, why didn’t they arrive?”
“Because there’s only one single-lane wooden bridge over Devil’s Creek on the lower access road,” Emma whispered back, her analytical brain already mapping out the geography of Blackwood Ridge. “If someone dropped a fallen branch or parked a disabled truck across that bridge, nothing gets up this mountain for an hour.”
Ethan leaned against the wall near the grandfather clock, breathing through his nose to steady his trembling hands. “Victor Kane is Julian’s executor. Julian never married, had no children. He treated Marcus Kane—and then Marcus’s son, Victor—like his personal enforcers. When Julian died last month, his public will left Hillrest to me, but his corporate voting stock remained in escrow. The probate court in Boston set a deadline: the board reconvenes this Friday at midnight to verify living heirs. If I fail to appear in person with the physical certificate of lineage, the voting trust defaults to Julian’s named secondary beneficiaries.”
“Which is Victor Kane’s private shell corporation,” Sarah said, her voice trembling with cold certainty.
“Yes,” Ethan whispered. “Victor didn’t need to shoot me. A bullet brings forensics, state police, murder investigations. He just needed me to disappear for a week. He thought this place was forgotten. If I starved to death behind a false wall in an abandoned house my uncle gave me, it would be ruled a bizarre, tragic accident—an eccentric heir who got himself trapped in his own architectural relic. Just like they claimed I did twenty-five years ago.”
A heavy car door slammed shut outside.
Footsteps began ascending the wide, rotting timber steps of Hillrest Manor’s front veranda. Heavy. Deliberate. The confident tread of a man who did not expect anyone to be standing on the other side of the threshold.
“We can’t go out the front,” Emma said, looking toward the dark corridor that branched toward the rear of the mansion. “Is there a back kitchen door?”
“Nailed shut from the outside with heavy pine boards,” Lily said, recalling what she and Emma had photographed forty minutes earlier. “The only exterior exits at ground level are the front double doors and the cellar storm doors on the south side.”
“The cellar,” Sarah whispered. “We go through the pantry, down the service stairs, and out the cellar hatch to our bicycles. We can take the footpaths through the hemlock grove down to the state highway.”
“Ethan can barely walk,” Lily pointed out, looking at the millionaire’s pale, trembling legs.
“I can run if it keeps me alive,” Ethan rasped. He straightened up, his jaw hardening despite his physical exhaustion. “Let’s go.”
Before they could take three steps toward the pantry, the brass knob of the front door rattled violently. A key slid into the antique lock with a clean, well-oiled click.
The door began to creak open.
“Too late,” Emma breathed.
Ethan’s eyes snapped to the ornate mahogany staircase leading up to the second floor. “Up. Follow me.”
They moved like phantoms, their sneakers barely making a sound on the faded wool runner covering the risers. Ethan moved with surprising fluidity now, driven by sheer adrenaline, gripping the banister to pull his weakened frame upward. Lily reached the top landing just as the heavy front door below swung inward with a prolonged groan of rusted hinges.
Through the gap in the upper balustrade, Lily glanced down.
A tall, broad-shouldered man in an olive-green waxed jacket stepped into the foyer. He wore black tactical boots and dark leather driving gloves. Under his arm, he carried a heavy canvas duffel bag. But it wasn’t his frame that made Lily’s blood run cold—it was what hung from his right hip in a kydex holster.
A semi-automatic pistol.
Victor Kane stood in the center of the foyer, his breath pluming in the cold draft. He did not call out. He did not look around with curiosity. Instead, his sharp, dark eyes went immediately to the floor.
Lily looked down at the entrance hallway and felt her stomach drop through the floorboards.
Oranges.
When Sarah had dropped her grocery bag in the kitchen earlier, three bright, round citrus fruits had rolled across the faded floorboards, coming to rest right at the foot of the arched kitchen entryway. And on the dark dust of the foyer floor, clearly visible in the gray light filtering through the fanlight, were three sets of fresh, distinct footprints leading from the kitchen directly to the stairs.
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Victor Kane dropped his duffel bag onto the floorboards with a dull, metallic clatter.
He reached down, his leather-gloved fingers resting deliberately on the butt of his sidearm. Slowly, without a word, he began walking toward the stairs.
