Chapter 17 - The Storm Gathers at Midnight
The legal machine began to churn, but Eleanor knew that corporate predators like Vincent Cruz did not wait for subpoenas to arrive. They struck when the wounded animal was cornered.
By Monday evening, a severe nor'easter was bearing down on St. Jude’s Cove. The weather bureau issued coastal flood warnings, and the narrow spit of highway connecting Eleanor's road to the mainland was threatened by storm surges. The local police department was stretched paper-thin, responding to downed power lines and stranded motorists.
Detective Vance had promised to station an unmarked unit at the foot of her driveway, but Eleanor had lived through enough rural emergencies to know that when the elements rage, help is a concept, not a guarantee.
At 9:00 PM, the wind began to scream through the eaves of the cottage, driving sheets of saltwater against the windows. The power grid flickered twice and died completely. The backup battery system in Eleanor's house clicked on, its low inverter hum offering a small island of order amid the roaring chaos outside.
Eleanor did not sit in the dark. She dressed in heavy wool trousers, work boots, and Thomas’s old canvas field jacket. She placed the .38 on the kitchen counter, alongside a twelve-gauge pump-action shotgun she had retrieved from her storage locker that afternoon—cleaned, oiled, and loaded with double-aught buckshot.
She turned on her battery-powered marine radio. Through the crackle of static, she heard the chatter: *“All units, county road 4 is washed out near the causeway. Tree down on Route 12. Response times delayed by at least forty-five minutes.”*
Then, the driveway sensor on her perimeter chime sounded: *Ding... ding.*
Eleanor looked out the ocean-facing kitchen window. Down by the sea wall, where the waves were breaking against the granite rip-rap with concussive force, two figures were moving up the rocky slope toward the rear of the cottage. They hadn't come by the road. They had come by sea, landing an inflatable zodiac boat on the rocky shore beneath the radar of the state troopers.
Cruz was not sending another pair of clumsy burglars. He was sending his cleanup crew to eradicate the evidence, recover the survey maps, and ensure Eleanor Vance never took the stand before a federal grand jury.
May you like
Eleanor reached down and clicked off the interior safety lights, plunging the house into total darkness. She racked the slide of the shotgun, the heavy metallic chambering sound slicing through the roar of the gale.
"You picked the wrong farm woman," she whispered into the shadows.
