Chapter 24 - The Serpent Eats Its Tail
The 454 engine screamed, the bronze propeller biting into the black water with savage torque.
The boat surged forward like a missile, the bow lifting violently. Sheriff Miller fired three rounds in rapid succession. The heavy slugs spider-webbed the thick safety glass of the windshield and ricocheted off the mahogany transom, whining off into the darkness.
The Century shot out through the open boathouse gate, cleaving through the five-foot swells of Lake Blackwood. Cold spray erupted over the bow, drenching me in freezing lake water, but the heavy deep-V hull smashed through the waves with relentless stability.
Looking back over the foaming wake, I saw the lights of the lake house shrinking into the storm. Through the blinding rain, I could see Miller standing on the dock, screaming into his shoulder radio, while Evelyn stood at the edge of the bluff, her cashmere coat whipping in the gale, looking like a vulture robbed of its carcass.
They couldn't follow me. The Crawford County Sheriff's Department only had one aluminum patrol skiff, and it was docked five miles north at the public marina, completely unmanned in this weather.
I cut the boat's running lights, running blind through the pitch-black water by pure muscle memory. I had navigated every inch of this shoreline since I was a child. I knew where the submerged sandbars lurked, where the jagged granite boulders jutted out from the eastern cliffs, and where the narrow, overgrown inlet led into the forgotten logging canals of Blackwood Marsh.
Twenty minutes later, after dodging the storm-tossed open water, I guided the boat into a secluded cove hidden beneath a canopy of weeping willows and tangled cypress trees. The engine purred down to an idle before I killed the ignition, plunging the cockpit into profound, ringing silence broken only by the steady patter of rain on the canvas top.
My hands were shaking violently as the adrenaline began to bleed out of my system. My neck throbbed where Robert's iron fingers had crushed my throat, and my chest ached with every breath.
I pulled Grandma Helen’s cosmoline-coated lockbox onto my lap.
Using a marine screwdriver from the boat’s emergency kit, I pried at the rusted brass latch until the old lock popped with a metallic snap.
I lifted the lid.
Inside lay an old leather-bound accounting ledger, several legal folios stamped with the seal of the Crawford County Probate Court, a stack of certified cashier’s checks dating back eleven years, and a military-grade, encrypted USB thumb drive tucked into a velvet pouch.
Pinned to the top of the ledger was a handwritten letter in my grandmother’s immaculate, razor-sharp cursive:
*“Riley, my darling,*
*If you are reading this, it means Robert has crawled out from the grave he bought for himself, and Evelyn has chosen greed over her own child. Do not despair. A mother who feeds on her offspring is no mother at all—she is merely a parasite dressed in Sunday silk.*
*Inside this box is every wire transfer, every offshore account number in Grand Cayman, and every forged signature Robert and Kenneth used to bleed this town dry before Robert faked his demise. But more importantly, there is the original, unamended deed to the entirety of the Blackwood Estate, signed before a federal judge, beyond the reach of County Sheriff Miller’s crooked pen.*
*Take this to Marcus Cole. He is waiting in the high country. End them, Riley. Burn their kingdom of lies to the ash it was born from.*
*With all my love and all my strength,*
*Helen.”*
A tear slipped down my cold cheek, cutting through the grime and salt on my face. Grandma Helen hadn't just protected her house; she had built an arsenal.
I took out my phone. The screen was cracked, but the battery held at thirty percent. I had one bar of cellular service bouncing off the distant ridge tower.
Suddenly, the screen lit up with an incoming call from an unknown, blocked number.
My thumb hovered over the red decline button, but an instinct urged me to swipe green. I held the speaker to my ear, remaining silent.
A ragged, wheezing breath filled the line.
"Riley..."
It wasn't Evelyn. It was Robert.
"Listen to me, you little bitch," Robert rasped, his voice strained with excruciating pain. The sound of rain beating against a car roof echoed in the background; he was on the move. "Miller told me you took the box. You think Helen was an angel? You think she gave you that land out of the goodness of her saintly heart? Look at the dates on those transfers, Riley! Helen didn't discover my operation—she funded it! She was the architect! She cut me out because I wanted to cash out, and she wanted to keep laundering church money until the day she died!"
"You're a liar, Robert," I said, my voice steady, ice-cold, devoid of any daughterly sentiment. "You're a cornered dog bleeding out from a puncture wound to your femoral artery. How much longer can you drive before you pass out from shock?"
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"You don't know who you're dealing with," Robert snarled, his breath coming in shallow gasps. "Evelyn found out about Cabo two years ago. She hasn't been trying to take that house for herself—she’s been trying to take it for the cartel we owe sixteen million dollars to! If that land isn't liquidated by tomorrow noon, they aren't just coming for me. They’re coming for everyone who shares the Vance name. You just signed your own death warrant, Riley."
The line went dead.
