Chapter 3 - THE DEAD MAN
I nearly screamed.
Tobias covered my mouth.
Victor Hale stood in the boat like a ghost that had learned how to breathe.
Older.
Thinner.
But alive.
Garrett slowed the boat near the wreck.
Penelope hugged herself.
“What if they got out?” she asked.
“They didn’t,” Garrett said.
Victor looked at him.
“You checked?”
“The SUV went under.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
Garrett’s face tightened.
Victor stared at the river.
“Rosalind is harder to kill than her mother was.”
My stomach twisted.
Tobias’s fingers dug into my shoulder.
Garrett said, “She was wired in.”
“And the cripple?”
Penelope laughed nervously.
“Tobias can’t even get out of a bathtub by himself.”
Tobias’s expression didn’t change.
Victor looked toward our pier.
For one terrifying second, I thought he saw us.
Then his phone rang.
He answered.
“Yes?”
His expression shifted.
“When?”
He listened.
Then cursed.
Garrett turned.
“What happened?”
Victor lowered the phone.
“The trust transfer didn’t go through.”
Penelope went pale.
“What does that mean?”
“It means Rosalind’s shares don’t automatically transfer to her husband unless her death is legally confirmed.”
Garrett slammed his fist against the wheel.
“So we wait.”
Victor’s eyes hardened.
“No. We find the bodies.”
The boat moved on.
We stayed hidden until the engine faded.
Then I turned to Tobias.
“Tell me everything.”
He looked exhausted.
“I don’t know everything.”
“Start with what you know.”
“Our family controls fifty-one percent of Mercer Shipworks.”
“I know.”
“You own thirty-one. I own twenty.”
“Yes.”
“If you die, Garrett gets most of your estate.”
“Not immediately.”
“That’s why they need a body.”
I stared downstream.
“And Penelope?”
“She owns nothing.”
“She’s still family.”
“Not legally.”
I frowned.
Tobias hesitated.
“Dad never put her in the trust.”
My chest tightened.
Penelope’s mother had married our father after my mother died.
We had grown up under the same roof for six years.
She had always hated hearing that the shipyard belonged to “the Mercer children.”
“She knew?”
“She found out three years ago.”
Three years.
The exact year Garrett met me.
I looked at Tobias.
“No.”
“Yes.”
“They planned the marriage?”
“I think so.”
I remembered warm dinners.
Flowers.
Garrett waiting outside my office with coffee.
The proposal on the harbor.
Every memory suddenly felt contaminated.
Tobias touched my arm.
“There’s something else.”
“What?”
He looked at me carefully.
“Have you been sick lately?”
My pulse stumbled.
“Why?”
“Headaches?”
I said nothing.
“Memory problems?”
My mouth went dry.
“How do you know that?”
May you like
“Because Garrett has been drugging you.”
And suddenly I remembered the warm milk he brought me every single night.
