The shipyard Captain activated the door of the cargo hold—which weighed two tons—causing it to come unglued from the body of the ship. The door began to lower slowly, a rhythmic beeping permeating the air as it moved, held by two wires on either side strong enough to support its massive weight. The moonlight gleamed against the door’s glossy white body, dancing across it as it lowered, revealing more of the cargo hold beyond it, bit by bit.
Linc nearly salivated at the thought of finally having David Blackwater right where he wanted him. David Blackwater, the man he’d always known, in his deepest heart of hearts, had been behind his wife’s disappearance. David Blackwater, the man who was about to be buried under his very own ship the moment the police caught sight of the royal blue crate and what his own son had found hidden inside it. David Blackwater, the man who—if Linc had anything to do with it—would soon be watching his entire world fall to pieces.
As the door to the cargo hold finished opening, however, coming to a shaky stop and locking in place at a ninety-degree angle to the ship, exposing the hold completely, Linc’s heart fell to his feet. The cargo hold was lined with several wooden crates, a red shipping container, and a yellow shipping container.
But no blue container.
Chavez was the first to shoot Linc a fiery look.
The shipyard Captain was right on her heels, shaking his head down at them. “There’s no blue container. What kind of sideshow you running here, lady?”
For a moment, Chavez was frozen, a long, tight silence falling in before she recovered with a jolt, snapping her finger at her subordinates and motioning to the ship.
“Get inside and check every container,” she cried, her voice wobbly.
Dozens of cops scattered without another word, heeding the order of their commanding officer and climbing into the cargo hold to search it.
Linc’s wide eyes drank in the scene before him, the yellow container, the red container, and the gaping hole. His fingers curled into fists at his sides, chest heaving. From the corner of his eye, he saw Chavez shake her head. He heard her curse him with her quick tongue. But he couldn’t bring himself to care about his former boss’s disgust as he fished his cell phone from his pocket and dialed Gage’s number.
The phone clicked as Gage picked up, and Linc didn’t even wait for him to speak. “There’s no blue can in the cargo hold.”
A long silence fell from Gage’s end of the line. “That’s not possible. It’s a royal blue container at the far end of the hold. There’s a yellow container, a red container, and then a royal blue.”
“There’s. No. Blue. Can,” Linc spat through clenched teeth, only able to repeat the words he’d already said through the white-hot frustration taking over his body.
An officer in the cargo hold poked his head out from behind the red container, calling down to Chavez. “All clear, except for this guy!” The officer yanked at the collar of a security guard who was battered and bloodied like he’d gone a few rounds with Mayweather. The security guard Gage had told Linc he’d been forced to go toe to toe with before he found the kids. The officer holding the security guard’s collar continued with a shake of his head. “But no blue crate and no kids, Lieutenant.”
Gage must’ve overheard the all clear. “Linc…” His voice lowered, just as forceful as Linc’s had been a moment earlier. “I know what I saw…”
Linc’s squinted eyes began to peruse the area around him, and Gage’s voice was reduced to a dull hum in his pulsating ears as his heated gaze landed on the shipyard Captain. The Captain watched Linc with unmoving, stoic eyes. Linc and the Captain shared a long scowl—shooting daggers through their eyes—before Linc’s gazed shifted farther down the dock, landing on three officers who’d broken away from the pack. Three officers who didn’t work for Shadow Rock PD, but for the Port Police, all three standing in a huddle with their arms crossed, all three glaring at Linc over their shoulders.
“They moved it,” he breathed, a chill racing down his spine. “They fucking moved it.”
5
Nearly three thousand miles away, sitting on the edge of a leather seat in an empty departure gate at John F. Kennedy Airport, David Blackwater sneered into the bustling terminal. His gray eyes, squinted into slits, shifted away from the terminal and became laser-focused on the airplanes traveling on the taxiway beyond the long glass window next to him. As he listened to the words floating into the cell phone clasped to his ear, the chords in his neck grew stiffer, and his blood pressure hastened its already rapid rise. His wrinkly white skin hummed redder by the moment as his heartbeat picked up and made his veins pulse, and his chunky Adam’s Apple bobbed in his throat with each new piece of information that wafted into his ear. Loosening the tie of his flawless navy suit, he drew in a sharp breath through his nostrils, as thin as a rattlesnake’s.
“You’re sure?” he asked, his voice calm and cool even as every inch of his body went crimson red.
“Yeah, boss,” the voice on the other line spoke hurriedly and in a tone that illustrated a man perpetually on edge. “She’s surrounded by cops. They just opened the door to the hold. There’s a leak.”
“The container?”
“Got it out just in time. But Detective Hill is here and, well, you know how he is…”
David Blackwater did know how Detective Lincoln Hill was, and it made his teeth itch and grind, to the point he worried they might shatter to dust. His eyes flew to the bathroom at the far end of the terminal, where Pierce Blackwater, his father-in-law and Chairman of the Board for Blackwater Cruises, had yet to hear the news.
“How did they find out?” David asked, lowering his voice as a random traveler joined him at the empty gate. His thin lips drew into an even tighter line when the traveler took an empty seat just a few rows in front of him, irritated that the gate he’d chosen specifically because it was abandoned was beginning to fill up. “How the hell did they find out?”
“An emergency call was placed about half an hour ago. We managed to pull the surveillance, so we know who was on the ship at that time—”
“Get rid of the leak,” David hissed through his gnawed teeth, still making sure to keep his voice down as he glared at the back of his fellow traveler’s head. “Pierce and I are on the first flight home. When I land, this had better be ancient history.” His eyes fell closed at the thought of all the important meetings he’d miss. Lucrative meetings he’d be forced to cancel at the last minute after receiving the phone call that had stopped his heart. “Call me when it’s done.”
Just as David went to hang up, the frantic voice on the other end of the line jumped in. “Boss…” There was a long pause. “It’s Gage.”
The color drained from David’s face. Every inch of redness that had been lighting his skin on fire vanished in a flash, and he was ashen white. His thin lips fell open, and his gray eyes expanded.
“He used Scarlett to lure Kevin Brady away from the door, and he went in. He has to be the one who called it in… There was no one else.” Another long pause. “We can still handle it. I mean—it can still be done. But I just thought you should know…”
Another heavy swallow raced down David’s throat, and slowly, the fire was back in his cheeks, the squint back in his eyes, and the hard line in his lips.
“Call me when it’s done,” he said.
And he hung up without another word.
6
Gage gripped the steering wheel of his Rolls Royce Phantom Coupe so tightly his knuckles paled.
He should’ve never left that boat.
He should’ve never left those kids.
After dropping Scarlett off and receiving the phone call from Linc informing him that the blue shipping container was gone—the blue container that had ripped his soul to pieces—he’d made the drive back to his mansion in a furious blur. Kevin Brady must’ve sensed something was off the moment he’d said goodbye to Scarlett and returned to his post at the door of the cargo hold. Perhaps he’d found the security guard
Gage had locked into one of the empty shipping containers. The guard must’ve alerted Kevin to the knock down drag out fight he and Gage had gotten into, prompting Kevin to get rid of the royal blue container as quickly as possible.
God only knew where those kids were now. If they disappeared without a trace, Gage would have no one to blame but himself. He couldn’t help but think of Veda and their unborn child. How he would feel if a grown man had found his child locked in a container at the bottom of a ship, only to leave that child behind. His heart exploded at the very thought.
The regret ate him slowly alive, so much so that he didn’t remember pulling into the driveway of his illustrious mansion, which sat at the edge of a sprawling, rocky black cliff. He didn’t remember opening the front door of his home and entering the foyer. Nor did he remember climbing the grand staircase—his eyes and mind a blur. As he made his way down the long hall that led to his master bedroom, the horrific sight of that container—coupled with the fact that it had somehow been removed—left him trapped in a dull haze, moving on sluggish feet.
As he came upon the double doors of his master bedroom, however, the haze dissipated and the world regained focus as he caught sight of his bedroom in complete disarray. Every dresser drawer hung open with clothes draped over the edges. The white duvet and pillows on his previously made king sized bed were rumpled. Clothes still attached to their hangers were scattered all over the floor.
Amid the chaos was his mother, Celeste Blackwater, wearing a silky, cream-colored nightgown. The same nightgown she’d been wearing earlier that evening, when she’d chased Gage’s car down the street in bare feet, begging him not to go looking for problems he didn’t want at the bottom of the Celeste. Her waist-length black hair blew behind her as she scurried all over his bedroom, stumbling over her own feet several times. Even in her urgency, she managed not to fall, grabbing clothes from his closet, his open dresser drawers, and even a few toiletries from his bathroom. Strewn all over the floor were items she’d either rejected or accidentally dropped in her haste.
The tears falling from her cheeks were jet-black from her ruined mascara, screaming out against her pale skin and rosy cheeks as they fell. At the far end of the room, the wall mounted TV was on mute with a newscast showing live footage of the Celeste surrounded by police cars.
She didn’t even look at Gage in the entryway, her eyes hard as she disappeared into his closet before reemerging with an armful of clothes.
“You have no idea what you’ve done,” she breathed, black tears still spilling from her frantic green eyes as she slammed his clothes into a large suitcase she’d laid open at the foot of the bed. “Your father probably already knows it was you.” She raced to his dresser drawers and fished out a handful of underwear before hurrying back over to the suitcase. “Which means you’re as good as dead. You have to get out of town.”
Gage entered the bedroom with exasperated eyes, approaching the bed and taking her arm just as she was putting his underwear inside the nearly full suitcase.
“Mother—”
“How dare you.” She snatched her arm from his grasp, making wisps of her hair fall across her tear-stained face as she bared her teeth up at him. “How dare you!”
“No, how dare you, Mother.” He seized both her arms and squeezed tight, forcing her to face him, shaking her. “How dare you protect him for all these years. How dare you keep quiet, knowing what was going on. Knowing he purchased you like a modern day slave. Knowing he had kids locked up at the bottom of that ship like animals!”
Her eyes remained as vacant as a blank canvas as she whispered through clenched teeth. “This is my life too. How am I supposed to carry on? How am I supposed to breathe if he takes you away from me?”
Their chests heaved as their breathing grew frenzied, hers so much that it caused wisps of her black hair to dance against the breath blazing from her lips.
“How long has this been going on?” The moment Gage asked, he realized it didn’t matter. “We have to fight. He got you pregnant when you were only twelve and has spent the last twenty-six years brainwashing you into thinking you have no power. Well, he hasn’t brainwashed me. He doesn’t have the power, Mother, we do. We can fight this. We can both testify against him. We can take him down together.”
Celeste trembled from head to toe, her bare lips drawing into a tight line.
“You need to tell me everything, Mother. You need to tell me how you ended up with a profile on Raw Moon when you were only twelve. You need to tell me how you and Dad really got together and why grandfather allowed it to happen.” Gage could hardly believe the demands spilling from his lips, directed at the person he’d once believed he knew everything about. “How could grandfather allow this to happen? You need to tell me where you really came from. Who you really are. You need to tell me everything. Right now.”
As if none of the words he’d just said had computed, Celeste’s mascara blackened eyes searched his face as she spoke in a hushed whisper. “There’s a small cottage just outside Connecticut that I purchased in secret, years ago. Your father has no idea it exists—”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
In a flash, moving faster than Gage even knew her capable, Celeste seized one of her arms from his hold, reared back, and screamed with all her might as she sent a hand soaring across his cheek.
His head flew at the blow, feeling the burn of the palm print she’d surely just left on his cheek, cutting his eyes at her.
“It’s become apparent you still haven’t fully grasped the incredible danger you’ve just put yourself in. His incredible disregard for human life. So allow me to clarify…” She drew in a breath. “Now that you’ve made such a spectacular, breathtaking mistake… now that you’ve laid eyes on a sight you can’t unsee, he won’t just kill you. He’ll kill her too.”
The color drained from Gage’s face, not needing Celeste to clarify who “her” was.
“He’ll kill her first,” Celeste continued. “Just to see the pain in your eyes as you watch her die. Just to drive it all the way home—what an extraordinary error in judgment you made the moment you decided to cross him.” She could see every inch of blood in his body slowly draining to his feet but continued as if she hadn’t just said the words that had left him as white as a ghost. “I have a cottage just outside Connecticut …”
This time, Gage didn’t interrupt, still tangled up in the heart churning words his mother had just said to him. Still tangled up in whether or not her words held any weight. Was his father really so callous that he would kill Veda just to punish him? Just to show him who was boss? Just so Gage could watch her die? As Gage flashed back on the blue container, he answered his own question. As those kids filled his mind for the millionth time, he knew there was nothing his father wasn’t capable of.
“I won’t leave Veda,” Gage said, his own voice low and breathless.
A lump moved down Celeste’s throat, and her voice lowered too. “He won’t hurt her if you’re not here to watch it happen. He’ll get no joy from it that way. If you leave town, he’ll have no reason to go after her. You’ll both be safe until the police call you to testify. If they even manage to take it to trial. With the Port Authority, the DA, the mayor, and every federal judge on the island sitting in your father’s back pocket, I’m not optimistic.”
Gage’s heartbeat sped up. “Why, mother? Why didn’t you say anything? All these years?”
She cupped his cheeks, taking in a deep breath that made her ample bosom heave. “The same way he’d hurt the person you love most… just so you could watch it happen? He wouldn’t hesitate to do the same to me.” Her hands slid from his cheeks to his chest, feeling his rapid heartbeat, her fingers trembling the whole time. “My sun, my moon, my stars… How could I have lived?”
As Gage studied his mother, he knew it was wrong to be angry with her. Looking into the depths of her watery green eyes, he realized she was just as much a slave as the kids he’d seen locked in that contai
ner. A slave in her own home since the day he’d been born. A slave to her own life for twenty-six years.
She sniffled, apparently thinking she’d swayed him, voice barely discernible as she looked down and fingered the toiletry bag she’d shoved into his suitcase. “I’ve hidden the key to the cottage with the toiletries. Inside the dental floss case. I’ve also written out the directions on a piece of paper. Don’t look it up on the Internet. We can’t risk him tracking it…” Her voice petered away, eyes narrowing over Gage’s shoulder and locking onto something behind him.
Then, her green orbs widened to twice their size. The hands she had on his chest curled into fists, taking handfuls of his shirt under her trembling fingers as her mouth fell slowly open.
Watching her face transform, Gage went to speak.
She puckered her lips before he could, shushing him without actually making the sound, big eyes still narrowed over his shoulder.
Frowning, Gage followed her gaze, his eyes flying over his shoulder and locking onto the object that had stolen her words and sent a flash of terror zooming across her face.
One look into the full-length mirror caddie cornered at the far end of his bedroom—a mirror that allotted them a perfect reflection of the long hallway outside of Gage’s bedroom door—and he immediately understood what had stolen his mother’s breath in mid-sentence.
In the mirror’s reflection was a man with his back turned, dressed in all black, tip-toeing down Gage’s hallway in the opposite direction of his bedroom. A silver pistol hung at the man’s side with a silencer screwed onto the barrel. He donned black leather gloves on both hands, and his pointer finger was primed on the trigger. With his back turned, he hadn’t yet caught sight of Celeste and Gage, both of whom were now gaping at him in the mirror, both holding their breath.
Rouse (Revenge Book 7) Page 4
