Chapter 3 - THE SILVER COMPASS
The rain had turned into a freezing drizzle by the time my SUV pulled up to the rundown bus terminal on the edge of the city limits.
I didn’t wait for Brendan to open my door. I pushed out into the biting wind, my overcoat whipping around my legs. The terminal was a miserable, fluorescent-lit concrete box that smelled of stale coffee and desperation.
We had tracked the prepaid cab Tessa took from the estate to this exact location. It was the last digital footprint she had left.
“Spread out,” I told my men. “Find anyone who was working the graveyard shift Tuesday night.”
I walked toward the lone diner attached to the terminal. The bells on the glass door chimed a pathetic, off-key note. An older woman with tired eyes and a stained apron was wiping down the counter.
I slid a hundred-dollar bill across the Formica.
She stopped wiping. She looked at the money, then up at my face. People in my city usually recognized me, and when they did, they got nervous. She got nervous.
“I’m looking for a woman,” I said, keeping my voice gentle, though my pulse was hammering against my ribs. “Dark hair. Quiet. She had a little boy with her. Six years old. Holding a stuffed bear.”
The waitress’s eyes darted to the door, then back to the bill.
“Tuesday night,” she whispered. “Last bus out to Portland. The storm grounded the flights, so she had to take the Greyhound.”
Portland. Three hours north.
“Did she say anything?” I asked.
“The boy was crying,” the waitress said, her expression softening with pity. “He was tired. Kept asking why they had to leave the big house with the nice old lady. The mother… she looked terrified. Kept checking the windows. Like the devil himself was behind them.”
My chest tightened. The nice old lady was Dorothy. The devil was Silas. Or maybe… maybe the devil was me.
“She paid in cash,” the waitress continued. “But she dropped something under the booth. I tried to run after her, but the bus was already pulling out.”
“What did she drop?”
The waitress reached into her apron pocket and pulled out a heavy, tarnished object. She set it gently on the counter.
It was a silver pocket compass.
I stopped breathing.
I reached out and touched the cool metal. It was my compass. The one my grandfather had given me. I kept it in the locked drawer of my bedside table. I hadn’t opened that drawer in months.
“Why would she steal this?” Brendan asked, stepping up behind me.
“She didn’t steal it,” I said, my voice thick. “She left it for me.”
I pressed the small latch on the side. The silver lid popped open. The glass face of the compass was cracked, but that wasn’t what made the blood drain from my head.
The needle had been forcefully jammed. It wasn’t pointing North anymore. It was pinned, bent at a sharp angle, pointing directly at the small engraved letters on the inner rim.
The letters S.W.
Southwest.
No. Not a direction.
“Brendan,” I said, snapping the compass shut. “She didn’t go to Portland.”
“The waitress just said she got on the Portland bus.”
“She bought a ticket to Portland to create a paper trail,” I said, gripping the compass so hard the metal bit into my palm. “S.W. Silas Walker.”
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I looked at Brendan, the grim reality settling over us like a shroud.
“Tessa didn’t run away from Silas,” I said. “She went looking for him.”
