Heather went back into the cottage and retrieved her knife. She put on her coat, tucked the blade into an inner pocket, and ran out into the darkness.

CHAPTER

43

HEATHER HEARD THE ocean long before she could see it; a huge, hissing roar, both loud and quiet, the canvas that all the other noises were painted on—the crunch of dry leaves underfoot, her own labored breathing, the wind in the trees.

The woods had been dark, yet she had not felt afraid. Instead, she’d had the strangest feeling of being watched—not by enemies, or by this monster she was currently chasing, but by a warm silent presence that urged her on. When she emerged from the tree line she stood still, letting her eyes adjust to the moonlight glinting off the vast stretch of sea, to the pale sand that seemed to contain its own luminescence. To the right was the Folly, a darker shape pointing up into the night sky. She could see no lights there, no glow from the narrow windows, but there was a smaller shape crouched at the base of it. The small, dilapidated house had been missing from the images she had seen of the beach, and she suspected people had been careful to crop it from their photographs. Squat and covered in cheap pebbledash, it quite ruined the bleak romance of the shoreline and the wind-blasted tower.

There was no one in sight, and no movement to be seen anywhere. Checking once more that the knife was still in her coat, Heather began to climb down the rocky bluff that separated the forest from the beach, until she stood on the plain of shingle that led down to the sand. Something about the angle had changed her view of the house, and she could now see a tiny slither of light emerging from under the blind of one window.

“Bastard.”

She curled one hand around the handle of the knife. Fear still felt like a very distant thing. Instead, the dry kindling feeling of rage that had nestled in her chest when she’d slammed the pen through her colleague’s hand was back. It didn’t matter what happened next, because she was right. This person she was chasing, the person she intended to hurt, was a monster, and she couldn’t be feeling guilty for wanting to hurt him. And perhaps she would find the woman who looked like Lillian and hurt her, too. The sensation was incredibly liberating.

As she drew closer to the Folly and the house, she got a better idea of the layout of the place. The Folly didn’t sit directly on the sand—she supposed that would have been a very unstable foundation—but on a spur of rock that had been laid, spiking out from the forested area toward the sea. There was a rough sort of road leading away from it, curling away into the dark somewhere out of sight, and the house crouched within its shadow, a strange sort of afterthought.