Chapter 6 - THE VOICE IN THE FOG
Ren dropped the notebook onto the desk.
The paper hit the wood with a dull thud.
The voice coming from the megaphone outside was impossible.
Her father was Arthur Sterling.
He was a quiet, unassuming man who tended his tomato plants in South End and wore faded cardigans with patches on the elbows.
The man who had walked her down the church aisle two hours ago.
The voice on the megaphone didn't sound like a high school chemistry teacher.
It sounded like authority.
It sounded like the men who ran the river docks.
"Ren," the voice repeated, closer now.
"Don't let Julian Thorne lie to you."
"He didn't come to your wedding to save you."
"He came to find what your mother hid before she disappeared."
Julian took the black notebook from the desk.
He slid it into his inner breast pocket.
He looked at Ren.
His face was an unreadable mask of hard angles.
"Is that your father?" Julian asked softly.
Ren’s chest tightened so hard she couldn't pull air.
"My father was at the church," she whispered.
"He got into a police escort with my mother."
"Did he?" Julian asked.
Julian pulled out his phone.
He checked an encrypted tactical map.
The green tracker for the family escort was blinking red.
Stationary.
Three miles south, on the industrial access road near the salt marshes.
Julian showed her the screen.
Beside the red dot was a status code: SIGNAL LOST.
"He didn't go to Cambridge," Julian said.
"He went to his own safe house."
Ren stepped toward the window.
She pushed back a corner of the warped plywood.
Standing on the wooden pier, illuminated by the floodlights of the lead speedboat, stood her father.
He wasn't wearing his church suit.
He wore a dark oilskin jacket and heavy work boots.
In his hand, he held a stainless-steel revolver.
Beside him stood four heavily armed men from the Vance river crew.
The timid, stooped posture he had held for twenty years was gone.
His back was straight.
His chin was up.
He looked like a general surveying a conquered field.
"Dad?" Ren whispered against the glass.
Julian stood behind her, his hand resting on the wooden sill.
"Arthur Sterling was never a chemistry teacher, Ren," Julian said quietly.
"He was the primary broker for the northern shipping corridor."
"He worked for the Vance family for twenty-five years."
"When my father took over the south terminals, your father stole forty million dollars in bearer bonds from the syndicate vault."
"Then he disappeared into the suburbs."
"He changed his name."
"He raised you as a librarian's daughter."
Ren shook her head, tears of pure disbelief stinging her eyes.
"No."
"That's a lie."
"He helped me with my homework."
"He drove me to soccer practice in a station wagon."
"He was hiding, Ren," Julian said.
His voice was gentle, an eerie contrast to the violence outside.
"He used Derek to test the waters."
"He introduced Derek to the Vance syndicate six months ago."
"He used your wedding as the cover to move the remainder of the bonds out of the country."
From the floor behind them, Derek let out a weak, bloody laugh.
"You're finally catching on, Renny," Derek choked out through his swollen lips.
"Your old man... he set the whole thing up."
"He promised me two million... if I kept you quiet until the ceremony was over."
"The four hundred and eighty thousand from Thorne?"
"That was your father's idea."
"He wanted Julian looking at me... while he cleared the harbor."
Ren turned around.
She looked at Derek.
Then she looked through the crack in the plywood at the man who had raised her.
Her entire life—the modest house, the secondhand clothes, the lessons on humility and patience—had been a fortress built on stolen blood money.
She felt something break inside her chest.
Not her heart.
Her innocence.
She looked down at the compact pistol resting in her right hand.
"What do we do?" she asked Julian.
Julian looked down at her.
The steel in his gray eyes was brighter now, burning with cold fury.
May you like
"We don't surrender to Arthur Sterling," Julian said.
"We take his docks."
