Chapter 7: What Roderick Knew
My father was waiting on the dock in Charleston when the cutter came in at dawn.
He didn't say anything when I came down the gangway.
He just put both arms around me and held on.
I felt him exhale — a long, slow breath that had probably been held since two in the morning — and I understood that the fear I had been carrying alone on that yacht had been carried in parallel by him, on land, with nothing to do but wait and make phone calls and trust that a brass bolt above a door frame would hold.
It held.
Commander Reyes had arranged for a federal investigator to meet us at the dock.
His name was Ashworth.
He was tall, unhurried, and he had a recorder running before he finished introducing himself.
We sat in a harbormaster's office that smelled of old coffee and salt, and I told him everything.
The staircase.
The voices.
The soup.
The pills.
The messages on Lucas's phone.
Petra Voss.
The captain's name appearing in Celeste's messages in connection with something called the Marseille situation.
Ashworth wrote steadily and asked precise questions.
"The documents you signed before the wedding," he said.
"Do you have copies?"
"My father's attorneys have them.
They filed an emergency petition to void the transfer two days after the wedding."
Ashworth looked at my father.
"We'll need those filings."
"You'll have them within the hour," my father said.
"The trust itself — is it intact?"
"The transfer was never completed," my father said.
"The petition created a legal hold.
Lucas's attorneys would have hit that wall the moment they tried to act on the paperwork."
Ashworth nodded slowly.
"That may explain the accelerated timeline on the yacht.
If the legal route was blocked, the only remaining option was—"
"Yes," I said.
I didn't need him to finish it.
He didn't.
After two hours, Ashworth set his recorder on the table and looked at me directly.
"I want to tell you where we are.
Lucas Hargrove, Roderick Hargrove, and the woman traveling as Celeste Maurin are in federal custody.
The captain is being held separately pending maritime authority review.
The phone you recovered is with our digital forensics team.
The photographs Delia sent to her sister have already been received and logged." He paused.
"This is not a case that will be difficult to prosecute."
"What about Petra Voss?" I asked.
Ashworth's expression shifted slightly.
"We located her this morning.
She's alive.
She's been living under a different name in Vermont for two years." He looked at his notes.
"She's agreed to speak with investigators."
The room was quiet for a moment.
"She went through the same thing," I said.
It wasn't a question.
"We believe so.
Yes."
My father reached across the table and put his hand over mine.
I looked at him — at the lines around his eyes that hadn't been there five years ago, at the phone still in his jacket pocket, at the way he was watching me the way parents watch children who have just come back from somewhere dangerous.
"You installed the bolt," I said.
"I installed the bolt," he said.
"And the communicator."
"And the communicator."
"You knew something was wrong before I did."
He was quiet for a moment.
"I knew something felt wrong.
I didn't know what.
I should have said it out loud instead of just installing hardware and hoping."
"Say it out loud next time," I said.
He nodded once.
"Next time."
Ashworth closed his notebook.
Outside the harbormaster's window, the sun was fully up over the water.
The cutter that had brought me in was already heading back out.
Somewhere in a federal holding facility, Lucas was sitting in a room without a view, and Roderick was demanding an attorney, and Celeste was learning that the photographs Delia had sent onshore the night before had made every calculation they had run completely worthless.
I picked up the coffee Ashworth's assistant had brought me an hour ago.
May you like
It was cold.
I drank it anyway.
