Chapter 29 - The Silent Watcher
I returned to the house with the wooden horse sealed inside a clear plastic evidence bag. The transition from the cold, gray beach to the warm, heavily secured interior of the living room did not soften my demeanor. Daniel was sitting at the heavy oak dining table, reviewing encrypted security logs on his laptop. Caleb stood by the sliding glass doors, a silent, imposing guard monitoring the perimeter.
I walked directly to the table and placed the plastic bag on top of Daniel’s keyboard. The soft, crinkling sound of the plastic was the only noise in the room. Daniel’s eye movement dropped to the white wooden toy. He did not gasp. He did not swear. A micro-expression of pure, unrestrained menace flashed across his dark eyes for a fraction of a millisecond before he locked it away.
"It washed up precisely at the high-tide mark," I stated, my voice perfectly flat and devoid of any victimhood. "The paint is completely unweathered. It was dropped into the water no more than two miles out, calculated to drift directly to our property."
Caleb walked over from the window, his large frame casting a shadow over the table. He looked at the toy, his jaw clenching with professional, lethal focus. "The boat from last night," Caleb murmured. "It wasn't just observing. It was making a delivery."
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"Claire is in solitary confinement," Daniel said, his baritone voice a low, vibrating whisper. "She has no access to the outside. No lawyers, no visitors."
"She doesn't need access if the order was placed two years ago," I replied quietly. I looked at the men who had fought beside me, my facial expression projecting an absolute, terrifying sovereignty. "We aren't going to wait for the ghost to materialize. We are going to hunt it."
