Chapter 19: Whispers in the Coastal Fog

Valkyrie's POV 

The tea was cold, but I couldn't bring myself to set the ceramic cup down.

My knuckles were translucent as I held the handle, sitting at the small pine table by the kitchen window. 

Outside, the fog came in from the Bass Strait in heavy, rolling, floating waves, engulfing the sharp shapes of the trees and turning the morning lurid, milky grey.

In the adjacent corner of the room, Chloe's ventilator made a clicking and hissing sound, a fragile, mechanical pulse that measures every minute of my stolen life.

Hamish was sitting across the table in his wet wool cardigan, his fingers wrapped around his own cup. Steam came up between us, forming a thin veil that separated his calm and clinical composure from the intense, quiet panic gripping at the inside of my ribs.

He hadn't touched his breakfast nor had I.

“You seem distant this morning, Val," Hamish said softly. His voice was always like that, careful and quiet, with the calm tone of a doctor who had delivered tons of bad diagnoses and never let his posture relax.

"I'm just listening to the wind,” I said smoothly.

“It's not the wind you're listening for," he answered, taking a slow sip. 

He put his cup down, the porcelain clinking against the wood. "It's the engines. You've been staring at the turn in the access road since five in the morning."

I took a sharp breath as I kept my gaze fixed on the windowpane. "Lachlan is still asleep; if I open the latch too early, the cold air will get into his chest."

"Val."

Hamish stretched his hand across the table, placing his warm, calloused palm over my frozen fingers. He was a good man, a patient one who had spent four years hiding a disgraced fugitive and her dying sister in the damp, forgotten areas along the coastline of Victoria. But beneath that calm exterior I could sense the tension vibrating in his skin.

"I went down the town docks at first light,” Hamish said softly, searching my face with terrifying intensity. "To pick up the fresh oxygen canisters from the supply boat arriving from Apollo Bay." 

My body tensed, my heart struck against my breastbone with a sharp, unpleasant thud. "Has the boat arrived?"

"It arrived," Hamish said. He stopped for a moment, lowering his eyes to the worn surface of the table before raising them back at me. 

"There were two men on the timber pier close to the slipway. Wearing tailored coats, cars parked behind the bait shop with Melbourne plates. They weren't tourists, Val; they were asking the harbormaster if anyone had rented the old lighthouse keeper's cottage on the bluff."

"Did… did the harbormaster say anything?” the words rubbing harshly against my throat.

"Old Pete knows how to keep his mouth shut for a twenty-dollar note and a bottle of whiskey," Hamish answered. "He told them the cottage was empty, but they didn't go away, Val; instead they went up to the bakery asking questions about a dark-haired woman traveling with a young boy."

I pulled my hand free from under his, crossing them tightly over my chest as a cold shiver went down my spine. 

For four years I had been living like a ghost in the shadows, using burner phones, never staying on a public network for more than six minutes at a time.

I had created this small, fragile existence using scraps of paper and great determination, all in order to keep Lachlan safe and Chloe breathing. 

Now, the influence of Vance Global was spreading across the damp sand of Port Campbell.

Kaelen.

Merely thinking of his name caused my stomach to twist into a tight, intolerable pain. 

I could almost feel the weight of his eyes piercing through the fog, looking for the ghost who had broken his heart and ruined his company. 

He didn't know the truth. He could never know. 

Should he ever find out what his mother had made me do, what she was still making me do, he would destroy his entire empire, and Chloe would be the first person to suffer in the aftermath.

"Valerie," Hamish said, using my real name, a name that felt like a sharp pain in my skin after all those years of hiding under false IDs; he leaned closer, and his face took on a rather subtle and probing look, which made my chest constrict even more. 

"I need to ask you a question, and I need you to be honest with me."

“I'm always honest with you, Hamish,” I said, though the lie tasted like ash.

"Do you feel safe here?" he asked in a soft voice.

"With me?"

The question hung in the air between us, heavy and full of all the things unsaid. Hamish had abandoned his medical career in the city for us; each time he forged Chloe's prescription records or allowed rogue server traffic to pass through his private relay node, he had risked going to prison. 

But lately, there has been a quiet, suffocating pressure beneath his kindness, a silent expectation that one day, when the storm had passed, I would look at him the way I used to look at Kaelen Vance.

“You've kept us alive, Hamish,” I whispered, looking in the hallway where Lachlan’s shoes aligned neatly on the wall. “I will always be grateful for that.”

"Gratitude isn't safety, Val," Hamish replied, raising his tone a little. He got to his feet, standing tall over the table, his shadow covering the morning light coming through the window. 

"Gratitude doesn't stop Kaelen Vance's private security team from breaking down that door using a federal search warrant. If those scouts find this cottage, I'll no longer be able to keep you safe. We have to leave tonight."

"Move?" I looked at him in horror, raising my voice. 

"Hamish, Chloe can't cope with a long journey in the back of a van! Her pulmonary pressure went up again yesterday! Moving her now might kill her!"

"Staying here will destroy us all!" Hamish snapped, his voice breaking with a sudden flare of genuine emotion that startled me. He took a deep breath, smoothing his wool cardigan, clearly pushing his doctor's attitude back into shape. 

"A fishing boat is coming into the inlet at midnight. Operated by a friend from Tasmania; he'll take us across the Strait to a farm near Devonport. It's off the grid and completely safe."

I stared at him, my heart pounding like a trapped bird inside my ribs. A fishing boat in the coastal fog across the Bass Strait is suicide for Chloe, but staying is suicide for Lachlan.

Before I could answer, a gentle “pitter-patter” of bare feet sounded on the worn floorboards of the hallway.

Lachlan was standing by the door in his large blue pajamas, using one small fist to rub the sleep from his eyes, while holding on to his favourite carved wooden chess piece, the black rook.

He didn't look at Hamish. He didn't look at the breakfast table.

He walked straight by us in the direction of the front window, pulled back the lace curtain, and stared at the thick white fog lying over the coastal road.

"Lachlan, my dearest," I said softly, standing up to kneel next to him. I wrapped my arms around his warm body, tucking my face into his soft hair. 

"What are you doing so early? It's freezing outside."

Lachlan didn't turn around; he raised a small, trembling finger, placing it flat against the cold glass, pointing down the empty driveway where the fog was thickest.

"The tall man with the silver eyes is standing by the gate, Mommy," Lachlan whispered into the quiet room, his voice sweet and terrifyingly clear. "He’s wearing a wet coat, and he’s holding your ring."