Chapter 5 - The Grinding Wheel
The river was a roaring black beast in the dark.
I hit the bottom of the ravine feet-first, sliding across wet moss and slamming my hip directly into an ironwood root. Pain spiked up my spine, but the freezing mountain water swallowed the scream before it could leave my throat. The water was waist-deep, moving fast enough to rip the sneakers off my feet if I wasn't careful.
Keep the ring in your sole. Keep moving east.
Up on the ridge, the gunshots stopped, replaced by the angry static of hand-held radios and the frantic barking of dogs. Grant Ashford hadn’t just sent two hitmen down the mountain; he had brought handlers with tracking hounds from the estate’s hunting lodge. The baying cut through the howling wind like rusty blades.
I waded through the icy current, keeping close to the muddy bank beneath the overhanging roots. Every step felt like walking on broken glass. The heavy gold ring pressed hard against the bruised arch of my left foot inside the soaked canvas of my shoe, a constant, dull ache that kept me awake as hypothermia tried to numb my brain.
Two miles. In the dark, through a November blizzard masquerading as rain, two miles felt like walking across the entire continent.
My mother’s face flashed behind my eyelids every time I blinked. Blood in her hair. Her hand pushing me out. Was she still alive up there? Were they pulling her out of the wreckage, or were they letting the mountain finish what the guardrail started? Rage—hot, bitter, and way too big for an eight-year-old girl—burned in my throat, choking back the sobs.
Around a sharp bend in the river gorge, the roar of the water changed. The steady rushing sound became a heavy, rhythmic churning.
Through the veil of pouring rain rose the silhouette of Old Miller’s Mill. It was a massive, decaying structure of dark timber and river stone, half-swallowed by creeping ivy. Its monstrous waterwheel groaned as it turned slowly in the churning foam, grinding against centuries of river silt. No lights shone from the high, narrow windows. The whole place looked abandoned, a ghost ship rotting on the bank.
I scrambled up the slick rocks, my hands numb and bleeding from grasping wild blackberry briars. I reached the heavy oak door beneath the covered loading bay and pounded on the wood with both fists.
"Silas!" I screamed, my voice cracking, lost beneath the roar of the wheel. "Silas! Open the door!"
Nothing. Only the groaning wood and the steady hiss of the storm.
Behind me, half a mile up the riverbed, a bloodhound let out a sharp, triumphant bay. They had found my scent trail where I entered the water.
Desperate, I grabbed a rusty iron link from an old hoist chain and slammed it against the door frame. "Please! Julian’s daughter is alive! Let me in!"
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The door didn't open. Instead, a cold circle of machined steel pressed firmly against the hollow space behind my right ear.
"Don't breathe, kid," a voice rasped from the shadows beside the woodpile. "Give me one reason I shouldn't paint this timber with whatever's inside your skull."
