“This isn’t about sexy pirates,” she told him.
He gave her a knowing grin. “Right. It’s about scholarship.”
She ignored him. “Enjoy your college tour.” She smiled at her uncle. “Thanks for the ride. I’ll see you in a few days.”
“Have fun. Steer clear of carpenters.”
Samantha wished she hadn’t told her uncle how Duncan McCaffrey had come to fire her. Being spotted in the snow by a small-town carpenter paled in comparison to some of the ways her father and his baby brother had gotten themselves into trouble over the years.
Caleb and Isaac didn’t linger. Samantha waited for the Mercedes to disappear back out the winding road to the highway before she set off. There was nothing she needed to pick up at the general store. She didn’t have to ask for directions—she had a paper map and a map on her phone, but she’d committed her route to memory.
* * *
Ninety minutes later, Samantha slipped off her backpack and set it at her feet as she paused on a simple wooden bridge. It spanned a rock-strewn stream that had to be Cider Brook. She was on a back road that meandered among green fields, old stone walls and woods that were changing color with the arrival of autumn.
She could see a sliver of the Quabbin Reservoir in the distance, its quiet waters shining blue in the afternoon sun. Before Quabbin, three branches of the Swift River had run through a valley of peaceful New England villages. The valley’s abundance of freshwater streams, rivers, ponds and lakes had proved too tempting for growing, thirsty metropolitan Boston to resist. In the 1930s, the villages had been forcibly cleared out, razed and the valley flooded to create a pristine source of drinking water for their neighbors to the east.
The “accidental wilderness,” as it was called, was a stunningly beautiful sight on an early-autumn afternoon.
Samantha wished the weather was cooler. The day had turned warmer and more humid than she’d expected. She unbuttoned her jacket and was tempted to take it off altogether. She doubted she would have use for the merino wool throw she’d packed, in anticipation of a chilly night looking up at the stars. With little ambient light out this way, the night sky would be spectacular.
Across the bridge, the narrow road curved uphill to a rambling white clapboard farmhouse with black shutters and a red barn set on a hill that overlooked the valley. Huge maple trees, their leaves just starting to turn color, shaded the front lawn. A dark brown dog slept in the driveway, and a white duck—a pet, Samantha assumed—paraded across the grass as if it owned the place. She could hear an unseen rooster crowing in the summerlike stillness.
If she remembered her map correctly, the farmhouse was at a hairpin turn in the road, which then wound back toward the village. That meant the stream under the bridge definitely was Cider Brook.
She lifted her backpack again and slung it over one shoulder. She would strap it on properly once she was on her way again. She crossed the bridge and left the road, pushing through knee-high ferns down a steep incline to the edge of the brook. The brook was narrow here—far too narrow to support even a small cider mill—but would widen farther downstream. The coppery, clear water was shallow, winding downhill over and around rocks and boulders that created natural pools and mini waterfalls.
She brushed away a mosquito buzzing by her head. A hundred years ago, this area had been largely farmland. Now much of it had been reclaimed by a mixed hardwood forest.
An old cider mill could easily be tucked in the woods, and she could walk right past it.
At the rate she was going, she would be finished with Knights Bridge well before her uncle and cousin headed back this way. She hadn’t calculated the exact distance from the bridge to the reservoir, but it would be a pretty hike—an adventure, even if she didn’t come across a nineteenth-century cider mill.
More mosquitoes found her, and she stopped alongside the brook to refresh her bug spray. Thunder rumbled off to the west. She looked up at the sky, hazy and blue directly above her but with ominous dark clouds behind her. Tucked in the trees as she was, she couldn’t see far enough to get a sense whether the storm was coming her way or moving off in another direction. This late in the season, she hadn’t considered she might run into a thunderstorm. Of course, once she thought about it she realized a storm wasn’t out of the question.
She noticed a trail on the other side of the brook. She had a feeling she was close to the spot where Cider Brook curved toward a dirt road that jutted off the paved one she had followed to the bridge. If she got in trouble with the weather, she could always work her way out to the road and find a house or a shed or flag down a car. Something. Right now, she wanted to get across the brook and on the trail.
Adjusting her backpack, Samantha tested a jagged, half-submerged rock. When it didn’t move, she stepped onto it, then jumped to a flat-topped hunk of granite, the cold brook water swirling and gurgling, soothing her sudden sense of dread as more thunder growled. She leaped to the opposite bank, sinking slightly into the soft ground, and thrashed through ferns and skunk cabbage onto the trail.
Lightning flashed, and the darkening clouds created eerie shadows. She picked up her pace. She didn’t need a detailed weather forecast to know a nasty storm was bearing down on her. The trail continued to follow Cider Brook into the woods. As she’d anticipated, the brook widened as smaller streams joined it on its gentle descent toward Quabbin.
As the trail curved past a huge, old red-leafed tree, she could see sunlight ahead—a clearing of some kind. A simultaneous bolt of lightning and ferocious clap of thunder propelled her into an outright run. Trees swayed in strong wind gusts, and she could hear the hiss of rain in the woods behind her. Fat raindrops splattered on the dirt trail.
Breathing hard, debating whether she should seek shelter in a protected spot in the woods, she emerged into a clearing. She came to an abrupt halt in front of an old rough-wood building, maybe thirty feet by twenty feet, tucked next to a small stone-and-earth dam and quiet millpond.
Damned if she hadn’t found her cider mill.
Or a cider mill, anyway.
It resembled the one depicted in the painting in her grandfather’s office, but it was run-down, obviously abandoned and definitely not new or painted a rich, vibrant red.
Hail pelted her, an unpleasant reminder of her immediate situation. It was dime-size and quickly covered the ground.
“Ah, damn.”
Of course there was hail.
She bounded up to the mill’s solid wood door, but it was padlocked. Why, she couldn’t imagine. Three small windows were encased in thick, dirty plastic. A garage-style door, where wagons had once unloaded apples and loaded cider, was boarded shut.
She knew how to pick a padlock. Her uncle had seen to teaching her that particular skill himself. “It’s only to be used in self-defense, Sam. No breaking into a vault or anything like that.”
She noticed faded Do Not Enter and Danger signs to the left of the door.
Lightning lit up the sky, and thunder echoed in the woods.
She needed to get inside.
Now.
Two
