Chapter One
Sunday Night
What the hell am I doing in Ireland?
Dawn Winter shoved the car door open against the wind and struggled to stand in the slashing rain. A flash of lightning illuminated a huge, black stone against the dusky sky in front of her car. She screamed and staggered backward, hitting the open door. Only for an instant had she seen the carved faces in the obelisk, round and primitive, staring at her through dead eyes. But it was enough. She shuddered and clutched her thin rain jacket closer.
Another flash. The faces. Frozen in horror.
“You and me both,” she muttered, her voice carried away by the wind.
The obelisk mirrored the terror she tried to cover using gallows humor. Even now, it rose like bile in her throat, threatening to shatter the tenuous hold she had on her frayed nerves.
Using her cell phone as a flashlight, she slogged around the car, assessing the damage. It had sunk lug-deep into the sandy loam of Ireland’s western coast, hopelessly stuck, listing drunkenly on one side. From what she could tell, the narrow lane she had turned into dead-ended at the obelisk, standing sentinel in a tiny clearing, the craggy cliff beyond dropping who-knew-how-far into the ocean below.
The headlights flickered once, twice, then blinked off.
That can’t be good.
A flash of lightning illuminated the obelisk for another spine-chilling second. The accompanying clap of thunder made her jump, getting her boot stuck in the mud. She jerked it loose with a thwack.
“What am I going to do?” she asked herself aloud.
She had begun talking to herself when Matt died three years earlier, as if he were still there, listening, breathing.
But, as usual, no one answered. She was lost and alone in Ireland.
She had landed in Dublin that morning, then driven six torturous hours to the other side of the country, navigating the twisty, turny streets, the two-lane highways, the impossibly narrow country lanes. Getting closer to her rental house outside the little fishing village of Dingle on the desolate west coast. Racing to get there before dark.
The woman at the car rental desk had told her a storm was coming, bigger than they’d seen in years. Hurricane-strength winds heading straight for her cozy retreat on the coast. It would hit later that night, she’d said.
Alarmed, Dawn had called Peter Lange, the owner of the house. “I hadn’t heard about a storm,” he said, his German accent evident. “But it’s no problem. We’re in a windshadow.”
“What’s a windshadow?” she had asked, but he had already hung up.
“Well, that was rude,” she grumbled. Peter Lange didn’t seem particularly friendly, certainly not in the Southern hospitality way she was used to. Maybe she wouldn’t have to spend any time in his company. She had plenty of research to keep her away from his inn during the day.
She repeated the word: Windshadow. That sounded safe, reassuring, comforting, even. It reminded her of a song her mother used to play. She loved that song. So, she had driven across Ireland. Alone. On the left side of the road. Mostly.
But the car’s GPS had led her astray. Which turn was wrong? She had turned a dozen times since Dingle. She had no idea where the house actually was. And worse. How was she going to get the car out of the mud? In the pouring rain? And the darkening dark?