Chapter 4 - The Shadow on Thames Street
The rain started around six o'clock, drumming a heavy, relentless tattoo against the old glass of the bay windows. Inside, the apartment was warm, illuminated only by the soft, amber glow of a single floor lamp and the flickering light of a children's cartoon playing quietly on the small television.
Corrie sat at the kitchen island, the micro-SD card resting on the counter like a tiny piece of ticking glass. She hadn't told Lily. She had fed her macaroni and cheese, tucked her into bed with her favorite stuffed rabbit, and sang two verses of a lullaby while her own mind raced through a labyrinth of terror.
Domenico Moretti was thousands of miles away in Europe. Marcus, whoever he was, had vanished back into the Rhode Island fog. And she was sitting ducks in a wood-frame apartment building with a dead husband's ghost and a syndicate looking for loose ends.
At 8:15 PM, a soft sound drifted up from the hallway downstairs.
It wasn't the heavy, authoritative double-knock of Marcus. It was a scrape—the dull, metallic slide of a master key turning slowly in the deadbolt of the apartment's front door.
Corrie’s breath hitched. She froze mid-movement, her hand resting on the counter. She silently slipped off her shoes, her socks making no sound against the hardwood floor as she crept toward the hallway leading to the bedrooms.
The front door clicked open.
A tall figure stepped into the small entryway, shaking water from a dark raincoat. The silhouette was wrong—too lean to be Marcus, too bulky to be Domenico. The intruder stepped forward into the dim ambient light spilling from the kitchen, and Corrie saw the glint of steel. A silenced pistol held low and loose at his side.
"Miss Hayes?" a raspy voice called out, cold and toneless. "I know you're awake. Don't wake the girl, and this will be very quick. Just give me the chip."
Panic, cold and sharp as broken glass, flooded Corrie's veins. She didn't retreat toward Lily's room; instinct—honed by four months of surviving Hallowmere Manor’s psychological pressure cooker—drove her toward the kitchen counter. Her hand groped blindly across the surface until her fingers wrapped around the heavy, solid-brass table lamp base.
The intruder stepped into the kitchen doorway, his eyes scanning the dark corners. "Smart girl. Make it easy—"
Before he could finish the sentence, the front door of the apartment building downstairs flew open with a sound like a small explosion of splintered pine and iron hinges.
Heavy, violent footsteps thundered up the stairs—not one pair, but three.
The intruder spun around toward the hallway just as a massive shadow materialized in the doorway. There was no shouting, no cinematic warning. A gloved hand seized the intruder by the collar of his raincoat, slammed his head against the doorframe with a sickening crack, and the pistol clattered uselessly across the linoleum floor.
"Clean it up," a deep voice rasped from the hallway.
A second man stepped over the fallen intruder, his face shadowed by the hood of a wet coat. He glanced into the kitchen, his dark eyes locking onto Corrie where she stood frozen with the brass lamp raised in her hand.
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It wasn't Domenico. It was Marcus—a hulking man with a broken nose and eyes like cold river stones.
"Mr. Moretti sends his regards," Marcus said smoothly, nudging the unconscious intruder with the toe of his boot. "He said to remind you that Newport has too many drafts. You need to keep your doors locked."
