Chapter 4 - The Flight North
The Cessna 410 private charter touched down on the tarmac of Bangor International Airport under a heavy, bruised autumn sky that threatened freezing rain.
I didn't bring my driver. I didn't bring my luggage, aside from a single leather duffel bag thrown into the passenger seat of a nondescript Ford Explorer I had rented under an alias at the terminal.
The drive from Bangor down toward Bar Harbor took two hours along Route 3, cutting through dense stands of pine and birch that had turned brilliant shades of crimson and gold before shedding their leaves to the biting Atlantic wind.
As the coastal air grew heavier, smelling sharply of salt, seaweed, and woodsmoke, the suffocating weight of Chicago’s glass and steel began to peel away from my shoulders.
By the time I reached Mount Desert Island, dusk was settling over the jagged coastline.
I didn't check into the Bar Harbor Grand or any of the upscale luxury resorts where we used to stay during our anniversary trips. Instead, I drove past the harbor into a sleepy, weathered fishing village a few miles south, pulling up in front of a modest, cedar-shingled motel with a flickering neon sign humming in the damp air: The Anchorage Inn.
The desk clerk, an elderly woman wrapped in a hand-knit wool cardigan, peered at me over half-moon spectacles as I dropped a fifty-dollar bill onto the laminate counter without asking for change.
“Room four,” she rasped, pushing a heavy brass key across the wood. “Checkout’s at ten. Don't leave your car parked under the gulls; they’ll ruin your paint by morning.”
“Thanks,” I muttered, taking the key.
The room smelled faintly of cedar, bleach, and old salt. I stripped off my designer wool overcoat, tossed my suit jacket over the sagging armchair, and sat down on the edge of the twin bed, staring out the salt-streaked window at the dark, churning waters of Frenchman Bay.
My phone—the secure corporate device that usually buzzed with fifty emails an hour—sat silent on the nightstand. I had left my primary cell phone locked inside the safe at my penthouse in Chicago. Here, I was unreachable. Unimportant.
I pulled the Polaroid from my pocket again.
October 14th.
Tomorrow.
According to the business registration Marcus had pulled, the LLC Tide & Pine was linked to a small commercial property located right on the rocky edge of downtown Bar Harbor—a historic converted boathouse operating as an independent bookstore and artisanal press.
If Claire was hiding anywhere, that was where the trail would end.
May you like
Or where the final reckoning would begin.
I stretched out on the narrow bed, staring up at the popcorn ceiling as the wind rattled the windowpanes. For the first time in six years, I fell asleep without a spreadsheet in my head, haunted only by the memory of a woman walking away down a Chicago sidewalk without looking back.
