Chapter 11 - The Knock in the Night
Seven months passed.
Spring had swept through the valley, melting the winter pack into roaring mountain creeks and bursting the orchard on the north ridge into an ocean of pale pink apple blossoms. Megan and I spent every weekend at 114 Orchard Lane, working alongside Marcus Keller and his crew as we painstakingly restored the historic timber-frame home.
It was honest, exhausting, deeply satisfying work. My hands were calloused, my mind was untroubled, and for the first time in memory, the name Prescott carried an untarnished reputation of quiet reliability in the county.
Derek was entirely gone from our horizon. The town council had long since appointed a respectable retired schoolteacher to the open seat. Arthur lived quietly at Elm Street, his monthly promissory note payments arriving at David Vance’s office with mechanical, humiliated punctuality on the twenty-eighth of every month.
It was a Tuesday night in late June. A summer thunderstorm was rolling over the mountains, rattling the windowpanes with distant, rhythmic thuds of thunder. Megan was asleep upstairs, exhausted after a long day coordinating landscape architects for the orchard property.
I was in the downstairs kitchen, pouring a glass of cold water under the dim amber glow of the range hood.
Then came the knock.
It wasn't a standard knock. It was a frantic, irregular pounding against the heavy oak front door—hollow, desperate, vibrating with terror.
My cybersecurity instincts flared instantly. I set the glass down silently on the granite counter, stepped into the hallway, and brought up the high-definition security camera feed on my phone.
Standing on our covered front porch, soaked to the bone from the torrential downpour, was Arthur Prescott.
His cane was gone. His grey hair was plastered wildly against his hollowed face. He wasn't wearing a coat, only a stained white dress shirt clinging to his frail frame, his chest heaving with ragged, choking breaths.
Behind him, parked haphazardly at the foot of our driveway with its engine running and its headlights cutting through the sheets of rain, sat a beat-up, unmarked black sedan. The driver’s side door was open, swinging slightly in the wind.
I walked to the door, unlocked the deadbolt with a sharp metallic click, and pulled it open four inches, keeping the security chain engaged.
"Arthur?" I said, my voice guarded, cold. "What are you doing here? You know the court order. You cannot be on this property."
Arthur fell against the doorframe, his bony fingers gripping the edge of the wood. His eyes were wide with a manic, paralyzing dread that went far beyond his usual theatrical manipulations. He was trembling violently, his teeth chattering so hard I could hear the enamel clicking.
"Shane..." he gasped, his voice cracking into a ragged sob. "Shane, you have to let me in. Please. You're the only one who knows how to trace them."
"Trace who?"
May you like
Arthur swallowed, looking over his shoulder toward the dark woods lining our driveway, his eyes wild with terror.
"Derek didn't just borrow from the bank, Shane," Arthur whispered, tears cutting pale tracks through the rain on his cheeks. "The eighty thousand... he didn't use it for a business line. He borrowed it from people in the city to pay off a sports betting syndicate. They found out he lost his job. They came to Elm Street twenty minutes ago. They took your mother."
