For the first time, Jasper felt real panic.
Not for himself.
For Hattie.
The next morning, he went down the thirty-nine steps leaning on the banister while Hattie walked beside him, counting them out loud.
Odessa nearly dropped a tray when she saw him.
The guards thought Jasper could barely sit up, and yet he was standing.
The attorney was sent back.
Howard was held until the sheriff’s deputies arrived.
Then Jasper called in Travis.
His brother walked into the study with shaking hands.
Jasper laid the anonymous note used to accuse Renee on the desk.
“Who paid off your debts?”
Travis denied it.
Jasper repeated the question.
Finally his brother broke down.
A year earlier he had lost an enormous sum gambling.
He hadn’t dared tell Jasper.
Lyle had shown up one day and paid everything.
He asked for nothing.
He only said:
“Someday this house will be yours. Then you’ll remember who stood by you.”
Travis began to cry.
He also confessed that Lyle had planted his suspicions against Renee.
He had reminded him that Eddie Ames disappeared working for the Kincaids and that his widow might hold a grudge.
Jasper rose slowly.
Suddenly he remembered the bottle Lyle had left beside his bed.
He asked Odessa to bring it.
The housekeeper came back without it.
“It’s gone.”
“Where’s Lyle?”
Odessa looked confused.
“He left an hour ago.”
Then she added:
“He took Hattie to school.”
The silence that followed was unbearable.
Renee appeared in the doorway.
“What did you say?”
Odessa explained that Lyle had found the girl eating breakfast.
He told her Renee was busy and that he could drop her at school.
Hattie trusted him.
He always handed out candy to the workers.
Renee dropped the keys she was holding.
Jasper ran to get the old phone from the safe.
There was a message.
“Old pier at Dover Bluff. Come alone. If I see one of your men, the girl will meet the same end as her father.”
Renee read those words.
Her face changed.
“Bring her back to me.”
Nothing more.
Jasper then called the sheriff’s office.
For years his family had lived by avoiding any cooperation with them.
That morning, he told them exactly where he was going.
Then he drove alone to an old abandoned pier beside the marshes.
He found a small wooden boat.
Lyle was inside.
Hattie sat beside the helm, wrapped in a blanket.
She wasn’t crying.
She was counting the pilings of the dock under her breath.
Lyle looked tired.
He didn’t look like a monster.
That was precisely the worst part.
“Get in,” he ordered.
Jasper obeyed.
“Why?”
Lyle gave a sad smile.
“Because you want to destroy everything your father and I built.”
The new will didn’t hand the businesses to Travis.
Jasper had decided to sell most of his maritime companies, shut down the shady operations inherited from decades past, and create a fund for the families of workers who had lost their lives at sea.
Lyle considered that a betrayal.
For years he had been negotiating behind Jasper’s back with foreign groups that wanted to use his shipping routes again.
With Jasper gone and Travis in debt, he would control everything.
“Your brother would have signed any document I put in front of him.”
Jasper looked at Hattie.
“Let her go.”
Lyle shook his head.
“She already knows too much.”
Then he mentioned Eddie.
Renee had always believed her husband’s death was the result of a storm.
It wasn’t true.
Five years earlier, Eddie had stumbled on a secret meeting between Lyle and some middlemen Jasper had banned from his ports.
Eddie threatened to tell.
Days later there was a storm warning.
Lyle tampered with the orders so that Eddie would fill in for the captain of a boat with unresolved mechanical problems.
The boat went out.
It never came back.
Jasper felt the air leave him.
He had trusted Lyle more than anyone.
“Eddie wanted to tell me the truth.”
“Eddie was afraid of you,” Lyle answered. “That was always your problem, Jasper. Everyone obeyed you, but nobody dared talk to you.”
Those words hurt more than any betrayal.
Lyle started the engine.
He meant to head out into open water and make it look as if Jasper, weakened by his illness, had suffered another accident.
But Hattie was staring at a small red cord beside the controls.
Two nights earlier, Jasper had explained to her how the basic safety systems on boats worked.
He had told her that certain engines had an emergency kill switch.
Hattie waited.
Lyle turned toward Jasper.
The girl pulled.
The engine died.
Lyle lost his balance for an instant.
Jasper used that second to lunge at him.
They both crashed onto the wooden deck.
