Private Property

CHAPTER ONE

A gust of wind rocks the Toyota Prius.

I clench my teeth together. I'm pretty sure this compact eco-friendly car wasn't designed to travel up a mountain. Rain falls in sheets, heavy on the thin roof. Through the window a half moon reveals an endless climb. I cling to the plastic handle, shivering against the worn fabric of the seat.

They didn't have mountains this high in Houston. I thought the plane ride was scary, but this hour and a half drive is worse. Much worse. I knew Eben Cape was on the coast, but I pictured something sandy with gentle waves.

Not steep cliffs that drop into nothing.

"Do you come this way often?" I ask.

"Nope."

Not a talkative one, my driver. He had a low rating on the app, but that's what you get for an economy ride share. The pounding of rain unnerves me. As does the slope on the road. Water will make it slippery. I'd almost ask him to turn around, except that seems more dangerous on this narrow road. The only way left is forward. And up.

My ears do that strange hollow feeling I got when the airplane took off. I can't see much in the dark, can't hear anything. It's a surreal sensation, like floating through space.

I look down at my phone. Its light almost blinds me.

No signal.

If I lost signal, then maybe the driver did, too. "Do you still see the map?"

"Only one place this leads," he says, almost shouting to be heard over the storm. "The Coach House. Nothing to do but keep going now."

The Coach House. That sounds comforting. A lot better than the number and street address I punched into the app. I'm picturing something with sturdy bricks and a birdbath. I close my eyes and hold the image in my mind, clutching my phone so tight it hurts.

I know precious little about the family I'm going to work for. Only that a man recently got custody of his niece. I wonder if he's a fisherman. Maybe he catches lobsters out in that wild ocean spray. He'd wear rubber boots and have a white beard.

The car jerks suddenly, pulling out of its endless turn, the whole frame rocking on the tires as we reach some pinnacle. I let out a squeak that's swallowed by the gales of wind.

Shadows shift through the windshield. Something looms ahead of us-large like another mountain to climb. Except it's not a mountain. It's a house. No, more than that. It's a mansion. Don't stop, I think. Don't stop here. There's something forbidden about this place. I'm too practical to believe in ghosts, but this place feels somehow haunted.

The car skids to a stop, the brakes pumping in some automated fashion to stop the slide. The man already has his blinker on, ready to turn around in the small space as soon as I'm out the door. I peer through my window at the mass of slick night-blackened stone.

"Listen," I say, my hands shaking as I pull up my phone. It still has no signal. The map of Maine has no little dot to show where I am. It only spins and spins. "Are you sure this is the right place? I don't see a street number written anywhere."

"This is the Coach House," he says, impatient now. He still doesn't turn. I'm talking to the back of his head. To the side of his shoulder.

"Okay. Okay." He doesn't want to talk to me anymore, and maybe that doesn't matter. It's not really for him. I'm pumping myself up. For someone who never set foot outside Harris County her whole life, this trip has been like shaking up a goldfish in a bag. "I can do this."

No answer to that.

"I'm going to walk in that house. And work there. And live there. For a year."

He turns the radio on. The Weeknd vibrates through the tinny speakers. It's not precisely reassuring, the way the music fights with the storm for dominance and loses. I open the door. Wind tries to keep it closed, but I use my body weight to half-step, half-fall onto the soggy grass. I drag the carry-on luggage I picked up from Walmart last week with me.

The car inches forward, the door hanging open, rain pooling on the dark fabric, and I jump forward to slam the door so he doesn't end up driving down the mountain that way.

Tires slide against wet ground. Mud flings against me in a hard splatter.

Great.

I head to the front door, which naturally does not have much of an overhang. Rain slicks my clothes to my body as I ring the electronic doorbell, trying to school my expression to one of calmness in case anyone's watching with their phone. A bong reverberates from inside, but no one answers the door. I count to twenty in my head. Then thirty. Then sixty.

I ring again. Nothing.

The cold and wet has numbed me almost to my core, but worry begins to seep in. What if there's no one here? What if I'm at the wrong house? What if the entire upscale nanny agency was a setup, and I'm being filmed on some kind of terrible Netflix mockumentary about how desperate poor people are to find a job?

No. Listen, I tell myself. They probably can't hear the doorbell over the storm.

This time I knock, but the heavy wood seems to stifle the vibration. It might as well be made from the same stone as the rest of the house for all the sound it makes.

I try to shield my phone from the rain with my body. I don't have the latest fancy waterproof Apple device. Mine is the free-with-twelve-month-contract phone. With no signal. Don't panic, Janey girl. That's what Dad used to call me. I can still hear it sometimes, even if the voice is probably made up and sounds nothing like him.

If I'm in the wrong place, with no lights for miles around me, high in a mountain, and no phone signal, I would sit down in the sludge and cry.

Therefore, that can't be happening.

I have to believe that the Rochester family of two is inside this house.

It's only a matter of getting to them.

Four floors rise above the tallest point of the mountain. There isn't a strong light to let me know that someone's home, but that doesn't mean it's empty anyway. The house has a sort of melancholy presence that makes me feel like someone's inside.

I head for the side of the mansion, dragging my suitcase behind me. If no one's answering the front door, there's probably someone in the back.

As soon as I round the corner, I realize exactly how massive the structure is. It stretches along the cliffs in rows of dark windows across a pale stone face. The farther away I get from the gravel road, the more rocky the terrain becomes. I squint down at my feet, trying to make sure I stand on grass or rock. The mud itself is too slippery.

That's what I'm doing when I hear the roar of an engine.

I jump back as white lights blind me, moving in wild arcs across my body, across the building. It's a car. It's a car! And it's coming for me. I scream and back up against the wall as if it can somehow protect me from the careening vehicle.

Lights flash and flicker. The stone is freezing cold through my clothes.

And then stillness.

As suddenly as the headlights appeared, they stop moving.

I'm still pinned against the mansion like a butterfly in a frame, but at least I'm still alive. A car door slams, and then there's a large shadow looming over me.

"What the fuck are you doing? You could have been killed," says the shadow.

Somehow his voice booms over the rain, as if it's above ordinary things like the weather. I open my mouth to reply, but pinned butterflies can't speak. Everyone knows this. Shock holds my throat tight even as my heart pounds out of my chest.

"You don't belong here. This is private property."

I swallow hard. "I'm Jane Mendoza. The new nanny. Today is my first day."

There's silence from the shadow. In the stretching silence he turns into a man. A large one who seems impervious to the cold. "Jane," he says, testing my name. "Mendoza."

He says it with this northeastern accent I recognize from the Uber driver. Mend-ohhh-sah. In Texas, most people were used to Mexican last names. I'm wondering if that will be different in Maine. Maybe I would do a better job of defending myself if I weren't about to get hypothermia, if I hadn't just traveled two thousand miles for the first time in my life.

All I can hear are the words you don't belong here.

I've never belonged anywhere, but definitely not on this cliffside. "I work here. I'm telling the truth. You can ask inside. If we can get inside, I'm sure Mr. Rochester will tell you."

"He will."

I can't tell if it's disbelief in his tone. "Yes, he knows I'm coming. The Bassett Agency sent me. They told him I'm coming. He's probably waiting inside for me right now."

"No," he says. "I'm not."

My stomach sinks. "You're Mr. Rochester."

"Beau Rochester." He sounds grim. "I didn't get an email, but I haven't checked lately. I've been busy with. other things."

I fumble with my phone, which is incurably wet at this point. "I can show you. They sent my resume. And then the contract? Well, that's what they told me anyway-"

He's not listening. He turns around and circles back to the driver's side of the vehicle, which I can see now isn't a car, but is instead some kind of rough-terrain four-wheel thing. There are apparently no windows, only metal bars forming a crude frame. The kind of thing a rancher might use to move around his property or a good old boy might use for recreation.

I have no idea why this particular man has one, or is...