Page 67 of The Sea-Mist Cottage Inn
Remembering about the camera feed, I grabbed my phone and woke the app up again. Roman sat right beside me, his body pressed to mine, and watched with me.
The cameras were motion-activated, so they captured only actual activity. It was night-vision, or whatever that was called, so the images were funky but clear enough. Until tonight, the cameras had recorded only large animals moving through the property in the dead of night—coyotes, mostly, but also deer, elk and a very buff racoon we’d named Bruiser. Once a black bear and her cub lumbered through the yard.
Though the cameras had recorded those visitors, I’d never gotten an intruder alert for them. Just a notification on my phone that the camera had recorded a few minutes of footage. The intruder alert must have been generated another way.
What Roman and I saw on the footage from that night: a big SUV coming onto the parking lot. Four hooded figures in dark clothes piling out. Those four splitting into two groups as they crossed behind the main cabin—where Wyatt and I would have been sleeping on any other night—and then ... doing something. As more than one camera was activated at the same time, the view on my screen split into two, showing both feeds at once.
Two teams of two people. They had weapons ... bats or poles or ... axes? No. Sledgehammers.
“What are they doing?” Roman asked as a man swung at something at the side of one of the cottages—Cottage 2, I thought.
I tried to think what was at the side of the cottage, and when I had it, I thought I’d be sick. “Oh god—the utilities! The gas meter! Are they trying to blow—”
Before I could finish that panicky sentence, I had my answer. A plume flew up over the man’s head and rained down on him and his accomplice.
Not gas. Water. They were breaking the water pipes.
Flooding the property.
Destroying what I’d only hours ago saved. My inheritance. My birthright.
My home.
TWENTY-SEVEN: Un-Natural Disaster
It took almost an hour to hear from the cops, and then it wasn’t just to tell me that it was safe to return to my home, but to demand that I get there. Bluster was nowhere near big enough to support a police force of its own, so the sheriff’s office was our law enforcement. It was Cameron Durbin, Del Norte County Sheriff, who called. He wanted to talk to me, on the scene.
He wasn’t from Bluster; he was from Crescent City, the county seat. The sheriff was a stranger to me. However, I remembered how Darryl Manfred had made a show of being golf buddies with ‘Cam’ Durbin. I didn’t know how much of that show was real and how much was pretend, but seeing as I suspected Manfred of whatever chicanery had been perpetrated on the Sea-Mist, I wasn’t enthusiastic about meeting with the sheriff.
Roman drove me over at nearly four o’clock in the morning. Though the Sea-Mist was tucked up from the road and had a long driveway, it was obvious there was trouble before we reached the turn-in—bright work lights and flashing emergency lights turned my corner of the forest into a scene like a demented rave.
“Oh god,” I muttered, staring at the chaotic flash and glow through the trees.
Roman slowed the truck to a stop right before the turn. He squeezed my hand. “Whatever it is, we’ll deal with it. Us. Together. Okay?”
Turning from the glow of disaster, I found his eyes on mine, beaming sincerity at me. It was precisely what I needed: reassurance that I wasn’t alone.
I nodded and squeezed his hand back. “Okay.”
With that settled, he turned onto the drive and headed toward trouble.
Despite Roman’s presence, despite his reassurance, my stomach did an Olympic gymnastics routine as we arrived on the parking lot. It was full of emergency vehicles and their flashing lights—a fire truck, a paramedic van, two cruisers from the Sheriff’s office (the word SHERIFF sprawled across the driver’s door of one), and a utility truck from the Bluster Community Water District.
The flashers on the paramedic van went off, and the van headed toward the exit. At least there was no need for paramedics here.
“Jesus,” I muttered as Roman parked along the far edge of the lot, out of the way of all that commotion.
“I’m with you,” he said before we climbed out of his truck.
For a minute, we stood on the parking lot, hand in hand, trying to understand what was going on. I didn’t see anyone who looked like the sheriff or any other law-enforcement type—but then Roman tugged on my hand and, when I looked his way, nodded at a man in jeans and a hoodie heading toward us.
“That’s Cam Durbin,” Roman said.
“That? Him?” I asked, surprised. The man coming our way didn’t look any older than me. Also, he was good looking. I guess television and movies had led me to expect some old dude with a doughnut belly and a grey buzz cut to be a sheriff. Also, I’d expected a sheriff’s uniform, but probably that was a lot to ask at four in the morning.
“Mrs. Braddock?” Durbin asked as he reached us. “Hey, Roman.”
“Cam,” Roman murmured back. He clearly wanted to fade back a little and let me lead here, as was right.
