Chapter 3: The House Is No Longer Safe
Clover packed with one hand and listened with the other.
Brucie slept in her carrier on the kitchen table, her tiny breaths barely audible beneath the rasp of Bruno testing the front-door lock. The baby’s feeding bottles went into the diaper bag beside a packet of hospital instructions, spare onesies, and the little knit cap she’d worn home from the NICU. Clover added the medication schedule, then checked it twice.
The back door still wouldn’t close right. Bruno had wedged a chair beneath its handle, and the broken window near the kitchen had been covered with a sheet of plywood. Their home had become a collection of things that might hold for one more hour.
“We’re leaving,” Clover said.
Bruno tried the front lock again. “I said we’d go when I know where.”
“You said you’d help me get Brucie’s things together.”
“I’m doing that.”
“You’re checking the same lock for the fourth time.”
His hand stayed on the dead bolt. In the dim light, he looked older than he had that morning—not just tired, but worn at the edges, as if the secrets he’d carried were finally heavier than his body.
“I’m not letting anyone take you two somewhere I can’t protect you,” he said.
“I’m not asking you to.”
“I can keep you safe here.”
Clover looked at the boarded window. “You can’t even keep the glass in the frame.”
Bruno’s jaw tightened. He didn’t answer. That silence hurt more than another order would have.
She slipped Mara’s letter into the inside pocket of her coat. On the final page, beneath her mother’s cramped warning, she’d found a number and a few words written in the margin: Former test engineer. Sterling vehicle testing. West Calder.
The number felt too small to matter. It was the only lead they had.
A sharp crack split the house.
Brucie startled awake and began to cry.
Clover’s body moved before her thoughts caught up. She snatched the carrier from the table while Bruno turned toward the sound—a window breaking somewhere behind the kitchen.
“Back room,” he said.
This time it wasn’t an order. It was fear made audible.
Clover carried Brucie down the hall to the reinforced closet Bruno had once used to shelter them from tornado warnings. She pressed the baby against her chest and eased the door almost shut, leaving herself a narrow view into the hall. Brucie’s cry rose against her collarbone. Clover cupped a hand around the back of her daughter’s head and breathed in the clean, milky scent of her hair.
Footsteps crossed the kitchen.
Not Bruno’s. Too quick, too light.
A drawer slammed. Then another. The intruder was moving through the rooms with purpose, not the frantic confusion of someone looking for cash. Clover heard the metal box scrape against the tabletop.
Her fingers tightened around Brucie’s blanket.
“Where is it?” a man demanded.
Bruno’s voice came from the kitchen. “Get out of my house.”
A crash answered him. Something heavy struck the floor.
Clover shifted her grip so Brucie’s face was tucked against her shoulder. She could feel the baby’s heart beating fast through the thin cotton of her sleeper. The closet door trembled as something bumped the wall outside.
Then Bruno shouted, “I said get out!”
There was a scuffle, a grunt, and the sound of glass crunching underfoot. Clover stood frozen, every muscle braced around the child in her arms.
The front door banged open.
A moment later, Bruno called her name.
She waited, listening for the second voice, for another set of footsteps. Only when Bruno said her name again did she open the closet door.
He stood at the end of the hall with a fireplace poker in his hand. His shirt was twisted at the shoulder, and a thin line of blood marked his cheek.
“What happened?”
“He got out.”
“Who?”
“I didn’t see his face.”
Clover looked past him. The metal box sat open on the kitchen table, its contents thrown across the floor. Photographs and letters lay scattered among the splinters of broken glass.
The old photograph of Gideon Sterling was gone.
Beside the empty space where it had been lay a scrap of paper. Bruno picked it up, then stopped as if he couldn’t bear to read it aloud.
Clover took it from him.
The message was printed in block letters: STAY AWAY FROM WEST CALDER.
The ink was still wet enough to smear beneath her thumb.
“He knew what to look for,” she said.
Bruno’s gaze moved to Mara’s letter inside Clover’s coat. “Yes.”
“And he knows we know where the evidence is.”
“Yes.”
“Then we can’t stay here.”
He glanced toward Brucie. His face softened, but he didn’t reach for her or tell her what to do. “You’re right.”
The words landed strangely. Clover had spent her whole life trusting that Bruno would step between her and danger. Now she wasn’t sure whether to be grateful he’d stopped trying to decide for her—or furious it had taken this much for him to let her choose.
“Take the baby bag,” he said. “I’ll get the car.”
Clover kept her eyes on him. “You’re coming with me. You’re not driving me somewhere and telling me to wait.”
A flicker of pain crossed his face. He lowered the poker.
“I’ll follow your lead,” he said. “I won’t ask you to trust what I won’t explain.”
It wasn’t forgiveness. It wasn’t even an answer to everything he’d kept from her.
But it was a choice he hadn’t made for her.
They went to the car. Bruno drove, one hand tight on the steering wheel, while Clover held Brucie in the back seat and called the number from Mara’s letter. It rang six times.
A man answered, voice low. “Who is this?”
“My name is Clover. My mother was Mara. She left your number in a letter about the Sterling test garage at West Calder.”
Silence.
“I need to know what she hid there.”
“I can’t help you.”
“Please. My parents died because of what happened at that test site.”
The line remained quiet. Clover glanced toward Bruno. His eyes met hers in the rearview mirror, but he didn’t interrupt.
She swallowed. “I know Gideon Sterling is involved.”
The call ended.
Clover lowered the phone. Her hand shook, so she steadied it against Brucie’s carrier. For a few seconds, there was nothing but road noise and the soft rush of the heater.
Then the screen lit.
May you like
An unknown number.
Don’t go to that garage unless Luke is with you.
