The Trench

Chapter 50 - Clues

Kanes POV

I sit on the edge of my leather seat inside the Lincoln car, biting at my nails anxiously as I watch buildings pass by. The driver throws glances at me from behind the steering wheel, he is completely cool and unaffected by the situation at hand.

Unlike me.

"Will you stop fidgeting, you're freaking me out." He says gruffly as he adjusts his grip on the wheel staring out into the night. I roll my eyes, a habit I picked up from Mae that I do not normally condone but seems appropriate for the mess we are in.

I stare at him with mixed feelings in my gut; loathing, jealousy, admiration, and guilt. It was such a combination of scattered emotions it felt like a boulder sitting in my lower abdomen, weighing me down so much I feel if we crashed I wouldn't need my seatbelt. He catches my gaze and raises an eyebrow.

"What?" His voice is icy, not giving away any hints to what he's thinking or feeling at the moment and I sigh and shake my head.

"How can we have lost her, how did she slip past us so easily..." I say quietly, still chewing my nails deep in thought thinking back to the shipping yard.

We had followed Mae in her car all the way there, we saw her park and scale the fence before emerging from the gate at the entrance and pulling her car inside. We waited a few moments before pulling in behind her, apparently she had cut the security camera cord, broke into the office and found the key and opened the gate.

Once inside we found three different roads and couldn't see her car anywhere, we ventured down the left side first and figured we could work our way around. The roads quickly became webbed and weaved in and out of large shipping containers, some multicolored and defiled with graffiti. We realized after a few minutes we had lost her through the back entrance, as if she had disappeared in the night probably aware of the two people on her tail.

"You didn't know there was a back entrance? I thought you did your research." My counterpart said without taking his steel blue eyes off the road. I slowly turn to look at him, doubt written all over my face.

"I tried, I got online and I even looked at the satellite image of the place and there wasn't a damn road."

I hear him sigh slightly in annoyance, even though we've been working side by side on this for months doesn't mean we see eye to eye. I'm not sure who detests the other person more, considering our previous history our relationship is strained to say the least.

"Lets focus on where she went instead of your incompetence to figure out escape routes. You're her brother, where would she go to escape?"

I rack my brain for any hints she may have dropped or anything she may have said recently that would give away the rest of her plans tonight, but nothing came to mind. I had seen an alarm on her phone to be here and that's the only reason I knew to follow her tonight, but without her phone I find myself lost.

Until a thought occurred to me.

"What if.." I venture to say slowly "What if we go to my parents house? If she's there she won't be expecting us and we can get her by surprise, OR if no one is there I know where they keep the spare key and we can see if she left any clues behind in her room."

From behind the wheel my partner is silent, so silent for a moment I thought he wasn't listening to me. After a few minutes he starts to nod his head slowly, contemplating my plan.

"That's the first good idea you've had today, what's the address?"

-

Standing outside my parents house I'm digging through the garden trying to find the rock the spare key was under. I find it and rip if off the underside quickly and turn to open the backdoor, I glance at him and his blonde hair is whipping against his head in the wind. I look up at the sky and I feel the storm getting closer as I feel a drop of rain hit my cheek.

I open the door and usher him inside just as the clouds open up, washing away the sins of the earth in a sudden downpour. I flip the kitchen light on as we make our way through the large room towards the foyer, then beyond the foyer is the stairs leading up towards the bedrooms.

"Take your shoes off." I point to his feet as I'm ripping my Converse off my feet and he rolls his eyes again as he takes off his Nike's. The entire downstairs is tile and hardwood, but for some forsaken reason our mother wanted white carpet on the stairs and in the entire hall and rooms upstairs. Being a child in this house was a nightmare trying to keep stains off the floors, lord help us all if you didn't.

We make our way upstairs, keeping most of the lights in the front of the house off just in case she comes home. Down the hall I make my way to the end and through the last door on the right and flip her light on, her light faces the backyard and I'm hoping if she comes home she will come through the front.

"Check for notes, scribbled words, maps, coordination's, pictures, anything that could give us some insight on her thoughts. Check the computer, the desk, the trash cans, under the mattress, everywhere." I tuck my chin in a half nod and head for the computer desk, being a whiz with technology means I can hack any password and find any file that otherwise wouldn't be findable. I flip it on and a login screen comes up, it took me five minutes to get in and search around.

As I'm pulling up files and search history I glance behind me, he is flattening out papers from the wicker basket under her end table by her bed and I shake my head.

A few minutes go by with him rummaging around her room before I find something interesting. In the deleted browser history that I had recovered, I found a search for the Harrington Lighthouse. I pressed my mouth in a thin line as I tried to remember anything about this place, Mae had mentioned it before I just can't remember...

"The hike.." I mumbled out loud and I hear him stop searching, steps come up behind my chair and he leans over my shoulder peering at the screen.

"What hike?" He demands icily, this guy used to be so friendly until that night of the incident. After that he changed over the years, when I reached out to him a few months ago I couldn't believe it was the same person. When he reached out to me to punch me in the face I knew it was.

"Mae and Riley went hiking a while back up to Harrington Lighthouse, that haunted one on the shore." I pointed to the satellite map on the screen. "That was around when I had started following Mae, right before I contacted you. I followed Riley and Mae up the trail from a ways behind so she didn't see me, I know I know it sounds creepy but you have to understand that was the point where I started suspecting her. The first moment I saw my sister as a potential murderer instead of a shy, broken little girl." My insides started aching and I frown, thinking how happy she used to be.

"Very touching, Kane, but stay focused please." His stone cold heart made me irritable and I grit my teeth, I wasn't much for showing emotions either but this is my sister for fuck sakes!

"Anyways, on the way back from the lighthouse they found a trail and followed it to a clearing with a cabin. I stayed on the far side of the clearing watching them from inside a cave I had found, the vines covering the opening was ideal for spying until Riley noticed the damn thing. They came over to the cave and I had to run inside blind and hide, once they were inside I tried to muffle my breathing. I was puffing so hard from keeping up with them, I'm no adventurer, but Riley heard me. After she got Mae's attention I practically had to suffocate myself so they wouldn't hear me! Once they turned to leave I felt something on my leg, something furry and I damn near had a panic attack! I tried to kick it off and I stumbled and accidentally let out a muffled moan as my ankle twisted and they freaked out and took off running."

I started chuckling at the memory, the look on my sisters face was priceless.

"Get to the point we don't have all night." He growled.

"Don't you see, she's searched this specific spot on numerous occasions online. She has the paperwork saved from a website saying the lighthouse property is a protected historical site, the cabin is on that property meaning no one owns it. Just an occasional visit from the city to keep maintenance on the lighthouse."

I glance at the satellite image again at the woods surrounding the lighthouse. "The cabin doesn't even show on the map..."