Chapter 13: The Tire Iron

Chan's POV

The headlights went out, and I was already moving.

I didn't decide to. My legs did it before Mara had finished turning her head.

"Stay on the porch," I told Hyunjin.

"Hyung, he's here for me."

"That's why you stay."

I went up the gravel slope with the flashlight pointed at my boots.

I kept it dark on purpose. A lit torch tells a man where to aim.

My ribs pulled at every step. I ignored them.

The logging track runs along the top of the bluff, and the ferns on both sides were soaked and black.

Behind me, a truck door groaned on its hinge.

I knew that sound. It was the door on Mara's pickup, which needs a hip to close.

I looked back.

She had left Hyunjin at the porch and was coming up the yard in her hoodie.

She had a flashlight in one hand and a tire iron in the other.

"Go back," I said.

"It's my road."

"It's a car with its lights off on a track at midnight."

"Which is why I brought a tire iron."

She walked past me.

I have run a seven-member group through airports with ten thousand screaming fans. I have never been walked past.

I caught up and kept half a step ahead of her, and she let me, and she was smiling a little.

The car sat nose-first in the ferns with its engine ticking.

It was a grey rental sedan with Ontario plates.

The window was down, and the man in the grey parka sat behind the wheel with a camera on the passenger seat.

He didn't hurry. He turned his head and gave me a polite nod.

"Evening," he said.

Mara stepped to the front of the car and put her flashlight full on his face.

"This is private land past the gate," she said. "The sign is nailed to that tree."

"I didn't see a sign."

"Then you didn't look, which is a professional failing."

He squinted into the light and smiled at her.

"Ms. Larkin," he said. "Mara Larkin. Lighthouse caretaker, forty-nine, a cabin on the bluff."

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