Chapter 3
Chapter 3: The Island of Shadows
I pressed my back against the wall, holding my breath so tightly my lungs burned. The heavy footsteps thudded up the wooden steps of the shack. The floorboards groaned. The flashlight beam swept through the doorway, cutting a sharp line through the dust motes in the air.
"I know you're in here," the voice sneered. "You left your car down the road. Pretty sloppy for an investigator."
As the silhouette stepped through the doorway, I didn't think. Instinct, fueled by eight years of agonizing grief and sudden, blinding hope, took over. I lunged from the shadows, swinging the heavy iron wrench with all the strength in my body.
Crack.
The wrench connected solidly with the side of the man's head. He let out a muffled grunt and stumbled backward, dropping his flashlight. He crashed through the frail wooden railing of the porch and fell into the dirt below. I didn't wait to see if he would get up. Clutching the leather ledger to my chest, I bolted out of the shack, ran through the gap in the fence, and sprinted down the dark street to my car.
My hands were shaking so violently I could barely get the key into the ignition. The engine roared to life, and I tore away from the industrial district, my eyes constantly darting to the rearview mirror. Nobody followed.
The next morning, I didn't go to Detective Miller. If Marcus Vance had eyes on the scrapyard, he might have eyes on the police station too. Instead, I drove straight to a private internet cafe in the next town over, determined to find out what "The Vanguard Institute" on St. Jude’s Island was.
St. Jude’s Island, according to the maps, was a private, heavily forested island located about fifty miles off the coast. It was legally owned by a reclusive billionaire medical tech mogul named Dr. Arthur Vance—and a sickening realization hit me. Vance. Marcus Vance wasn't just a random smuggler; he was supplying test subjects or labor to his own family's dark operations.
Publicly, the Vanguard Institute was registered as an elite, highly restrictive psychological research facility and sanctuary for troubled youth. But looking at the forums of conspiracy theorists and missing persons advocates, a much darker picture emerged. It was rumored to be a front for illegal human experimentation, catering to wealthy elites who paid millions to harvest organs, clone tissue, or buy untraceable, brainwashed servants.
"My god, Sarah," I whispered, staring at the glowing screen. What kind of hell had my little girl been living in for the past eight years? Was she even still alive, or had she become a statistic in some twisted laboratory?
I knew I couldn't just knock on the front door of a private island. I needed a way in.
I spent the next two days tracking down local fishermen who frequented the waters near St. Jude’s. Most of them refused to go anywhere near it, citing armed patrol boats and strange, high-frequency radar that scrambled their navigation equipment. But money talks, especially to a desperate, indebted fisherman named Silas.
"I won't take you to the docks," Silas warned me as we stood on the pier under the cover of a foggy dawn. "They have thermal cameras there. But there's a rocky cove on the western cliff side. The currents are treacherous, and the rocks will tear my boat to pieces if I get too close. I can drop you in a kayak a quarter-mile out. The rest is up to you."
"That's enough," I said, handing him a envelope containing the entirety of my savings account.
The journey across the ocean was brutal. The fog was a thick, gray shroud that swallowed the horizon, and the waves tossed Silas’s small fishing trawler like a toy. When we finally approached the dark, towering silhouette of St. Jude’s Island, the sheer cliffs looked like the walls of a medieval fortress.
Silas lowered a black fiberglass kayak into the freezing water. "If you're not back at this exact spot in forty-eight hours, I'm leaving. And lady? If they catch you, the ocean will be the kindest thing that happens to you."
May you like
I climbed into the kayak, gripping the paddle. As I rowed away from the trawler, the fog closed in behind me, cutting off the last tie to my normal life. The waves slammed me against the jagged rocks of the cove, overturning the kayak just as I reached the shallow water. I gasped, swallowing mouthfuls of salty, freezing water, but managed to drag myself onto the narrow strip of black sand.
Looking up, a steep, treacherous path wound its way up the cliff face, disappearing into the dense, pine forest above. Somewhere up there, past the trees and the security fences, was my daughter. I squeezed the water out of my clothes, checked that the ledger was securely waterproofed in my backpack, and began to climb.
