Chapter 4 - The Unmasking
The color drained from Garrett’s face so fast he looked like a corpse. His jaw dropped, his hand trembling so violently that the expensive fountain pen slipped from his fingers, clattering onto the hardwood floor.
"R-Rosalind...?" he gasped, his voice barely a squeak. "You're... you're dead. The car... the river..."
Harold Jenkins dropped his scotch glass, the crystal shattering against the floor. Marcus Vance stumbled backward against the bookshelf, his eyes wide with unadulterated terror.
"You look like you've seen a ghost, Garrett," I said, stepping into the dim lamp light, rain dripping from my black tactical suit onto his expensive Persian rug. "Or did you think three years of thallium poison made me too soft to survive a thirty-foot drop into Savannah Creek?"
"Thallium...?" Jenkins gasped, looking at Garrett in sudden horror. "Garrett, what is she talking about?!"
"She's crazy!" Garrett yelled, his voice cracking with panic as he tried to back away behind the desk. "She's an imposter! Security! SECURITY!"
He reached for the panic button mounted beneath the desk frame.
Pfft.
A silenced bullet slammed into the wood an inch from his fingers, splinters flying into the air. Garrett shrieked, pulling his hand back as if he'd been burned.
"I wouldn't do that," I said calmly, taking another step forward. "Tobias just severed your main security grid and locked the ballroom doors from the outside. Nobody is coming to help you, Garrett."
"Tobias is dead!" Garrett screamed, sweat pouring down his forehead. "He was strapped into a wheelchair in the backseat! He couldn't move!"
"Tobias hasn't been paralyzed in ten years, you arrogant bastard," a deep voice boomed from the study doorway.
Tobias stepped into the room, holding a heavy tactical shotgun resting across his forearm. He looked tall, imposing, and entirely lethal standing on his own two feet.
Garrett’s eyes nearly bulged out of his head. He looked between me and Tobias as if his entire understanding of reality was crumbling into dust.
"You... both of you..." Garrett stammered, dropping to his knees behind the desk, his hands raised in surrender. "It was a mistake! Rosalind, please! I was forced into this! My father... Arthur made me do it! He threatened to destroy me if I didn't get control of the shipyard!"
"Save your sniveling for the grand jury," I spat, pulling the encrypted flash drive from my holster and tossing it onto the desk in front of Jenkins and Marcus. "On that drive is three years of bank transfers between Garrett’s offshore account and Arthur’s shell company in Panama. It also contains the toxicology reports showing the chemical composition of the milk Garrett fed me every night, and the audio files of Arthur planning our father's murder fifteen years ago."
Harold Jenkins stared at the drive, then looked at Garrett with disgust. "You poisoned Thomas Vance's daughter? You dragged us into a murder conspiracy?!"
"I didn't have a choice!" Garrett wept, cowering on the floor. "Rosalind, baby, please... remember three years! Remember our home! I loved you! I really did!"
"You loved my shipyard," I said, my voice as cold as ice. "And you loved Penelope."
Right on cue, the double doors leading to the hallway burst open. Penelope stood in the frame, holding her pregnant stomach, flanked by Arthur Vance in his wheelchair.
"Garrett! What is taking so long with the—" Penelope stopped dead in her tracks.
Her eyes met mine. Her mouth opened in a silent scream of terror.
Arthur Vance sat frozen in his chair, his old, withered hands gripping the armrests until his knuckles turned gray. He looked at Tobias standing upright, then at me holding the pistol.
"Impossible," Arthur whispered, his voice trembling with a mixture of rage and terror. "I killed Thomas... I destroyed his bloodline... how are you still standing?!"
"Because Vance blood doesn't drown so easily, Arthur," Tobias said, stepping toward the old man.
Tobias reached down, grabbed Arthur by the lapels of his velvet smoking jacket, and pulled the old man completely out of his wheelchair, standing him up on his fragile, shaking legs.
"Fifteen years," Tobias roared into Arthur's face, holding him suspended in mid-air. "Fifteen years you made me sit in a chair pretending to be a cripple! Look at me, Arthur! Look at Thomas Vance's son standing over you!"
"Tobias, don't kill him," I said quietly, keeping my gun trained on Garrett. "Dying tonight is too easy for them."
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At that exact moment, the loud, deafening wail of federal law enforcement sirens shattered the night outside the mansion. High-powered searchlights cut through the rain-slicked windows, illuminating the room in blinding blue and red flashes.
The FBI had arrived.
