Chapter 6 - The Price of Bringing Lydia Home
Nathan followed Rook through the tunnel.
Doyle ran behind him.
Prescott and Celeste remained at the boathouse while Doyle called the only two federal agents he trusted through his father’s old contacts.
Nathan did not wait for them.
He had waited six years.
That was enough.
They emerged beneath the greenhouse.
Nathan expected Daniel to be waiting.
Instead he found an envelope taped to the floor.
NATHAN VANCE.
Inside was a phone.
It rang.
Nathan answered.
Daniel’s voice.
“Send your men away.”
Nathan looked through the broken greenhouse windows.
His people still surrounded the property.
“No.”
“Then your sister dies.”
Nathan said nothing.
Daniel laughed.
“You have the same problem your father had.”
“You didn’t know my father.”
“I know he believed loyalty made him strong.”
Nathan’s eyes moved across the greenhouse.
“No. Loyalty makes people predictable.”
Daniel paused.
“Now you’re learning.”
“What do you want?”
“The ledger.”
“Come get it.”
“I intend to.”
“Then why Lydia?”
“Because I know what men like you pretend not to admit.”
Nathan waited.
Daniel continued.
“You don’t fear death. You fear failing the people who trusted you.”
Nathan’s jaw tightened.
“Send away the men.”
Nathan looked toward Doyle.
The detective shook his head.
Nathan raised one hand through the greenhouse window.
His security chief saw it.
Nathan gave the withdrawal signal.
Vehicles began moving away from the gates.
Doyle whispered, “You’re insane.”
“He’ll kill her.”
“He may kill her anyway.”
“Then I kill him afterward.”
Doyle studied Nathan.
For once he did not make a joke about organized crime.
The estate went quiet.
The phone rang again.
“Chapel.”
Nathan walked.
Rook stayed beside him.
“No dog,” Daniel said through the phone.
Nathan glanced down.
“Rook stays.”
“He bit one of my men in 2019.”
“Then he already has better judgment than most people I know.”
Daniel laughed.
“Fine.”
Nathan entered the chapel.
Candles burned along the altar.
Lydia sat in a wooden chair beneath the stained glass.
Alive.
Nathan stopped.
Everything inside him went silent.
Six years.
Thousands of photographs.
Private investigators.
Hospitals.
Morgues.
Anonymous tips.
Bodies he had been forced to identify because someone thought a woman found in Pennsylvania or Connecticut might be her.
And now Lydia sat thirty feet away.
Her dark hair had streaks of gray at the temples.
Her face was thinner.
A bruise darkened her cheek.
But her eyes were exactly the same.
She looked at him.
Then smiled.
“Your hairline got worse.”
Nathan almost broke.
He laughed once.
A sound somewhere between relief and pain.
“You look terrible.”
“So do you.”
Daniel stepped from behind the altar.
For one second Nathan understood how Lydia had mistaken him for Prescott.
The brothers were nearly identical.
Daniel was thinner.
Harder.
A pale scar cut through one eyebrow.
He held a pistol against Lydia’s shoulder.
Nathan’s hand remained visible.
“The ledger.”
“You release her first.”
Daniel smiled.
“No.”
Nathan removed the book from beneath his coat.
He had insisted on carrying the original.
Doyle nearly punched him when he realized.
Daniel’s eyes changed when he saw it.
Twenty-eight years of power.
Twenty-eight years of evidence.
Nathan held it by one corner.
“You want it?”
“Put it on the altar.”
Nathan did.
Daniel pulled Lydia to her feet.
She stumbled.
Nathan moved.
Daniel raised the pistol.
“Don’t.”
Nathan stopped.
Lydia looked at him.
“I’m sorry.”
Nathan shook his head.
“No.”
“I should’ve come home.”
“No.”
“I thought—”
“You survived.”
His voice broke.
“That’s all that matters.”
Daniel rolled his eyes.
“Touching.”
Doyle appeared near the chapel entrance.
Daniel aimed at him.
“Detective.”
Doyle lifted both hands.
“You killed my father.”
Daniel smiled.
“Your father killed himself by believing evidence mattered more than power.”
Doyle’s face remained calm.
But Nathan saw murder in his eyes.
Daniel gestured toward the ledger.
“Open it.”
Nathan did.
“Page eighty-seven.”
Nathan turned.
A list of offshore accounts.
Daniel nodded.
“Good.”
He pressed a remote control.
Metal shutters slammed over the chapel windows.
Doyle turned.
“What the hell?”
Daniel smiled.
“You think I came back after six years without improving the property?”
Nathan smelled it then.
Gasoline.
A line of fuel ran along the edges of the chapel.
Daniel had prepared the room.
“Ledger,” he said.
Nathan lifted it.
Daniel tossed Lydia toward him.
Nathan caught her.
At the same instant Daniel lunged for the book.
Nathan released Lydia and swung.
His fist struck Daniel’s jaw.
The pistol fired.
The bullet hit stone.
Doyle moved.
Daniel kicked the altar into his path.
Candles crashed.
Flames hit gasoline.
Fire raced across the floor.
Lydia shouted.
“Tunnel!”
Daniel grabbed the ledger.
Nathan tackled him.
They hit the stone together.
Daniel drove an elbow into Nathan’s ribs.
Nathan held on.
Six years of anger lived inside him.
But Daniel fought like a man who had survived by never expecting anyone to save him.
He slammed Nathan into a pew.
Doyle tried reaching them.
Fire separated him.
Lydia pulled at the iron ring beneath the rug.
“It’s locked!”
Daniel laughed.
“I changed the door.”
The chapel filled with smoke.
Rook moved toward Lydia.
She dropped to her knees.
“Hey, old man.”
Rook pressed his nose against her face.
For one second the burning chapel disappeared.
The dog remembered her.
Lydia wrapped her arms around his neck.
Nathan saw tears in her eyes.
Then the ceiling cracked.
A burning beam fell.
Doyle dragged Lydia backward.
Daniel ran toward the bell tower with the ledger.
Nathan followed.
They climbed.
Smoke filled the narrow staircase.
Daniel reached the bell platform.
The Atlantic spread beneath them.
Wind tore through the open arches.
“No exit,” Nathan said.
Daniel looked over the edge.
“There’s always an exit.”
He pulled the gun.
Nathan froze.
Daniel aimed.
Then Rook appeared at the top of the staircase.
Daniel stared at the dog.
“You.”
Rook lowered his head.
Daniel smiled.
“I should’ve finished you the first time.”
He aimed at Rook.
Nathan moved.
The gun fired.
Nathan struck Daniel’s arm.
The shot hit the bell.
The sound exploded through the tower.
Daniel stumbled backward.
The ledger fell.
Pages scattered into the rain.
Nathan grabbed his coat.
Daniel hung over the edge.
Below them the rocks waited.
Daniel looked up.
“Let go.”
Nathan tightened his grip.
“You’d like that.”
Daniel laughed.
“You think saving me makes you different?”
“No.”
Nathan pulled him upward.
“It makes you alive long enough to testify.”
With Doyle’s help they dragged Daniel onto the platform.
Federal agents arrived minutes later.
Mercer was arrested before sunrise.
Malcolm Voss was taken from his Newport home before breakfast.
Search warrants spread across Rhode Island and Massachusetts.
The evidence on Lydia’s drives confirmed everything.
Gideon Ostrander’s murder.
Thomas Doyle’s murder.
The corruption network.
The port operations.
Daniel’s shell companies.
The false reports.
The suppressed articles.
The men who had spent six years believing the truth would remain buried discovered that Lydia had copied nearly every document twice.
By nine that morning, the Ostrander estate was surrounded by police vehicles, federal agents, reporters, and people who had laughed at Nathan twenty-four hours earlier.
None were laughing now.
Nathan stood beside an ambulance.
Lydia sat wrapped in a blanket.
He had not moved more than ten feet away from her.
Neither knew exactly what to say.
Six years could not be repaired in ten minutes.
Rook lay between them.
Lydia rubbed the scar on his throat.
“They tried to kill him because he attacked Daniel.”
Nathan nodded.
“He never barked again.”
Lydia looked down.
“I know.”
“How?”
She hesitated.
“I watched you sometimes.”
Nathan stared at her.
“From where?”
“Far enough away.”
“You watched me believe you were dead?”
Pain crossed her face.
“I watched you stay alive.”
Nathan looked away.
“That isn’t the same thing.”
“No.”
She reached for his hand.
Nathan let her take it.
“I’m sorry.”
He closed his fingers around hers.
For six years Nathan had imagined what he would say if Lydia walked through a door.
He had prepared accusations.
Questions.
Anger.
Now none of them mattered.
“You’re coming home.”
Lydia gave a tired smile.
“I don’t have a home anymore.”
Nathan looked toward the enormous gray mansion above them.
Three million two hundred thousand dollars.
Twenty-two rooms.
Four acres.
A ruined greenhouse.
A burned chapel.
He almost laughed.
“I may have accidentally bought you one.”
Lydia laughed.
The sound stopped him.
He had forgotten it.
Then a federal agent approached Doyle.
His face was wrong.
Doyle listened.
Turned.
Walked directly toward Nathan.
“What?”
Doyle looked toward the burning chapel.
“They searched Daniel.”
Nathan waited.
“The ledger isn’t on him.”
Nathan frowned.
“It fell in the tower.”
“We found pages.”
“Then the rest is there.”
Doyle shook his head.
“No.”
Lydia slowly stood.
Doyle continued.
“Daniel wasn’t alone.”
Nathan looked toward the estate.
One of his own black security SUVs was missing.
Then his phone vibrated.
A message.
No number.
A photograph showed the original black ledger lying on the passenger seat of a moving vehicle.
Beneath it were five words.
YOU STILL TRUST TOO EASILY.
Nathan raised his eyes.
May you like
Someone inside his own organization had just driven away with the most dangerous evidence in Rhode Island.
And Warrick Hollis was nowhere to be found.
