However unnerving the unexpected sight of Linc in that doorway was, Pierce recovered, smoothing a hand down the black tie of his business suit and allowing an easy smile to make the deep lines in his wrinkled, sagging skin ebb even deeper.
“Detective Hill.” Pierce’s voice was deep, smooth, and sure. So unwavering in its confidence, few would dare to question a single word that laced it. Lincoln Hill, however, was one of the few that would. One of the few people on the island who wasn’t afraid to question him. Who’d been questioning him, and his son-in-law, for over five years. “I assume news of my acquittal has thrown you into a tailspin, and you’ve managed to get yourself all worked up, but I really do hope you have a warrant, young man.” Pierce’s eyebrows pulled. “As a matter of fact, how in God’s name did you get in this house without me being alerted in the first place?”
Linc stepped into the study, keeping one arm behind his back while using the other to close both doors behind him.
Pierce’s eyes shifted again, but even as a barely discernible wave of anxiety washed over his turquoise eyes, he still managed to rein it in.
“This is inexcusable.” Pierce placed a hand on his desk phone but didn’t lift it from the cradle, letting it linger on top like a silent threat, his eyes still trained on Linc. “I’ll ask you one last time, Detective, how in God’s name did you get in this house?”
Linc didn’t bore Pierce with how he’d gotten inside the Blackwater estate that evening. How he’d picked the lock on the back door. How he’d moved quietly through the expansive halls. He didn’t bore Pierce with how he’d dodged maids and butlers left and right, managing to make it to the study completely unseen.
When Pierce snatched up the desk phone and pressed it to his ear, the color draining from his face when he was met with a dead line, Linc didn’t bore him with how he’d deactivated the landline on his way inside, killing every line in the house.
He didn’t bore Pierce with the thoughts blazing through his mind right then. The faces—the voices—of the people he loved most.
He didn’t bore him with Veda. “I want Gage safe. I want my baby safe. I want Coco safe. I want you safe. I just want this all to end.”
He didn’t bore him with Grace. “They’ll never be stopped. Even with the evidence right in everyone’s faces. To hell with a bunch of trafficked kids, right?”
He didn’t even bore him with Lisa. “Find her. Save her. No police. Just you.”
Linc approached the desk on a slow foot, both arms still locked behind his back as the voices and faces of the women he breathed for infiltrated his pounding heart, igniting and warming it all at once.
He didn’t bore Pierce with thoughts of his partner, Sam Gellar, who his wife had been forced to kill, to save their only daughter. He didn’t bore Pierce with thoughts of Zena Jones, the underage girl who’d he’d promised to protect but who’d ended up dead anyway. Who’d probably lived the same nightmare—in the same royal blue can—as the kids that Gage had found at the bottom of the Celeste. Kids whose brutalization Pierce would never pay the price for causing.
Linc didn’t bore Pierce with his thoughts of Gage, the only person alive who could take the acquittal he and David had just received and turn it on its ass. The brother he’d never known. The brother whose life was still in danger at the hands of the monster before him.
Linc’s lips curled as he came to a stop within a foot of Pierce’s desk, and he didn’t bore him with his plans to bring an end to it all. To save Veda. Save Gage. Avenge his mom—and Lisa too. To avenge every kid who’d ever known the inside of a shipping can. To bring a stop to the trafficking ring that had been poisoning that island for decades.
Pierce chuckled softly, hanging up the dead phone and leaning forward on the desk. “Listen. Detective.” He laughed again, his eyes shining up at Linc almost as much as his bald head under the flicker of the candle chandelier overhead. “You’ve spent the last five years trying to destroy my company, and you’ve failed every time. When are you going to give it up?” His titter bloomed into a gleaming smile, even as his gray eyebrows pinched.
Linc let him get in a good laugh, even as his own face remained stoic, before he spoke for the first time since entering that office. For the first time since charging out of his mother’s home, seconds after she’d whispered Pierce Blackwater’s name with tears spilling from her pained brown eyes.
“I don’t want your company.” Linc pictured his mother’s tear-stained face, his voice falling to a growl as he shook his head, eyes devoid of feeling. “I want your head.”
Linc lifted the arm hidden behind his back, revealing the pistol in his hand with a silencer screwed onto the barrel.
The smile that vanished from Pierce’s face didn’t even have a chance to finish falling before Linc pulled the trigger and put a bullet between his eyes.
——
Veda’s eyes flew open, a sharp gasp parting her sleep-swollen lips. The hazy world between sleep and wakefulness moved by in a flash, and she shot up in the bed. She didn’t know when she’d fallen asleep, but her heart was hammering at her ribcage as if she’d been up all night. As if she just finished sprinting alongside Usain Bolt. She covered the thrashing muscle in her chest with a shaky hand as her eyes flew all over Linc’s bedroom, struggling to focus in the darkness.
“Linc?” she called softly, her voice echoing through the room.
No answer.
She drew in another sharp breath that filled her nostrils with the scent of pepper garlic pork, her favorite dish from the Thai restaurant down the street. She kicked her legs over the edge of the bed. Her clothes were glued to her skin, which had grown slick with sweat during her sleep. Her knees nearly buckled under her when she stood.
And that’s when it hit her.
Jake.
Just the thought of his name—the vision of his face—made her want to fall back into that bed and never get up again, but something moved her to make a different choice. Something moved her out of that room and into the living area.
“Linc?” she called, her voice hopeful as her gaze landed on the unopened cartons of Thai food sitting on the kitchen island. Her eyes flew to the brown leather sofa in his living room, hoping to find his long legs hanging over the edge, his big feet twitching in his sleep.
But the living room went empty.
So did the balcony and both bathrooms.
A frown had taken over Veda’s face once she finished checking the whole apartment. She hadn’t even realized she still had her hand over her heart until she left the guest bathroom, looked back into the living room, and caught sight of something that made her dig her fingers into her chest, trapping the cotton of her black t-shirt in a fist. It wasn’t what she saw that made her heart fall to her feet as she moved into the living room, but in fact, what she didn’t see.
Her breathing became labored as she came to a stop at the wall next to Linc’s TV stand. The wall where, just a day earlier, a black suitcase had sat.
A wall that now went empty—nothing but blank space.
Veda jammed a hand into her back pocket—lips sealed tight as she retrieved her cell phone and dialed Linc’s number.
“Yo, it’s Linc, leave a message, I’ll call you back.”
She hung up with a huff and dialed his work cell instead, a number she’d also memorized.
“This is Detective Lincoln Hill, I can’t come to the phone. If this is an emergency, hang up and dial 911. If not, leave me a message, and I’ll call you.”
Veda stopped breathing.
In the entire time she’d known Linc, he’d never once ignored a call to his work phone. It was a fact she’d once abused at her leisure. Always calling his work line, for the most mundane reasons, when he wouldn’t answer his private one. That moment marked the first time she’d ever heard the voicemail greeting for his work phone. She’d seen him wake up in the dead of night just to answer that phone. She’d seen him race out of the bathroom in nothing but a towel, with a fro
thing toothbrush hanging from his mouth, just to answer that phone.
Most importantly of all, whenever she called that line, Linc always answered.
Period.
She couldn’t help but flashback to the night before. The night when she’d watched Jake put a bullet in his head, a sight so devastating she hadn’t been able to move, speak, or even look Linc in the eye later that evening. She thought of the promise he’d made her. The promise she’d heard loud and clear, but hadn’t had the strength to respond to.
“I’m gonna fix it,” he promised.
A cold chill went through her body, and she found herself leaving a message before she could think it through. “Linc, please call me back. I’m really, really worried,” was all she could say, hearing the hitch to her voice. “And I really, really, really… hope you’re not doing anything stupid.”
25
Only on Shadow Rock Island could a wealthy man throw a dinner party in his backyard—hours after being acquitted on sex trafficking charges—and have every guest show up with a gleaming smile on their face.
Celeste Blackwater worked hard to keep her green orbs calm as they danced across the long dinner table. The Blackwater staff had done an excellent job throwing together a last minute dinner party for David, Pierce, and all of their colleagues at Blackwater Cruises. They’d pushed two rectangular tables together in a grassy area of the expansive backyard and surrounded them with enough chairs to seat forty people.
All forty had shown up. All friends of the family. Most, employees at Blackwater Cruises.
White tablecloths had been laid to pull the two tables together, and square bowls filled with clipped white roses served as a runner, lining the middle of the tables from one end to the other. Dinner had already been served, with most of the plates half empty, silver utensils cradled on their edges. Strings of white lights were strewn overhead, shining against glasses of pink champagne, bestowing upon the table an ethereal glow that gave the stars winking down from the night sky a run for their money. Not even the Celeste—screaming out from the dark ocean waters on the docks in the far distance—could compete with the exquisite twinkle of lights above that dinner table.
The lights weren’t the only things twinkling, but also the eyes of every soul at that dinner. The eyes of Eugene Masterson, Chief of Security at Blackwater Cruises, nicknamed Kong because he was larger than a gorilla. Brock Nailer, shareholder, with brown hair and brown eyes that made him look much more innocent than Celeste knew him to be. Liam O’Dair, shareholder, a blonde man with elfish features who’d just been acquitted of his own troublesome charges, thanks to his money and influence. Matthew Russo, the youngest mayor Shadow Rock had ever seen, who’d put his re-election on the line to get David and Pierce acquitted. Dozens of other smiling faces and shining eyes surrounded that table—most of whom had played an important role in the success of the cruise line that had kept Shadow Rock afloat for years. Smiling faces that made up the bulk of the island’s most wealthy, elite residents. Smiling faces, finally free from the stress and worry the ongoing FBI investigation had caused them. The stress and worry but a distant memory now that David and Pierce—who’d retired to the study before the main course—had been acquitted.
Celeste’s heart set ablaze as she recalled David entering their master bedroom earlier that evening, the master bedroom she’d been locked in for days, informing her that they were having a dinner party tonight. Her stomach went sick as she recalled the soft kiss he’d placed on her cheek. The apology he’d whispered in her ear for locking her in that bedroom the way he used to when she was twelve. The admonishment that had come right on that apology’s heels—that if she’d just do as he said, he wouldn’t have to treat her this way. Her stomach heaved in the gold cocktail dress he’d given her, a dress he’d once seen her eyeing at Saks Fifth Avenue, telling her it would look amazing on her for dinner tonight.
Her heart pounded so hard she worried it might tear through the bust line of that glimmering dress, her nostrils flaring as her eyes danced over the dozens of laughing guests, disgusted that they were actually celebrating.
Celebrating that they could continue the criminal operation of their abhorrent, abominable cruise line.
Celebrating that they could continue making millions on the backs of modern day slaves.
Continue taking over the world, one innocent victim at a time.
The shaky breath she’d managed to take stopped halfway when she realized, covering her rumbling stomach, that this was a celebration of the end of her son’s life. Her only son. Her moon. Her stars. The only thing that had gotten her out of bed for twenty-six long years. The only shining light in a life that had once seemed so dark. So empty. So hopeless.
Tears filled her eyes for the son she’d never see again, even as she fought to keep a smile on her face. She had to keep smiling. Had to keep up appearances.
Smiling, she cut a look at David, who sat next to her with a champagne glass cradled in his hand, laughing uproariously at something Brock Nailer had said across the table.
Laughing uproariously even as he had a contract out on his own son’s life.
Had he succeeded in taking their son’s life?
She barely had the chance to entertain that silent question—to entertain the terrifying answer—too busy clutching her steak knife in her hand, tightening her fingers around the handle until she had it in a fist. The steak knife she planned to send straight into the thick vein pulsing in his neck. The vein that got thicker the louder his laughter grew.
She watched that vein ebb and pulse while clenching her teeth, counting down the seconds until she had the pleasure of seeing it bleed, but just as she lifted the knife, a blast of hot air zoomed past her nose—so close to the tip she felt like it had been lit on fire.
In the next instant, David’s laughter came to a standstill. The smile vanished from his face, the champagne glass tumbled from his fingers, and blood began gushing from a hole in his temple. A hole where a bullet, moving at the speed of light, had just ended its blazing journey in his skull.
Celeste’s chest rose in a gasp as David’s body fell forward, his cheek plopping into the mashed potatoes in the middle of his plate. A moment of silence gripped the table, all laughter and conversation zooming to an immediate halt, every soul in the yard apparently in denial as they gaped at David, waiting for him to pick his head up and declare it all a joke. But David’s gray eyes, wide open and staring into nothingness, told the real story. The blood spurting from the bullet wound in his temple certified it.
Seconds later, with every eye at the table still locked to David in disbelief, Brock Nailer’s head flew backward—so violently it was a wonder his neck didn’t snap—before ricocheting and falling forward, revealing the bullet he’d caught right between the eyes, white smoke fluttering out as if his cranium was smoking a cigarette. Blood joined in with the billow of smoke, dripping out of the hole in his head like crimson red streams, down the bridge of his nose, along his cheeks, and even into his eyes.
And the first scream rang out.
Eugene Masterson’s blonde fiancé was the first to jump out of her seat, her face filled with horror. Several others followed her lead, a spine-chilling realization rolling over everyone like a seismic wave. Each person not just comprehending—but finally believing—what was actually happening. That realization came fast, and in seconds, pandemonium set in. Dinners and drinks were overturned, champagne flutes and utensils flying, bodies leaping out of chairs left and right, a new scream rising and filling the yard until they were all mixing to create an earsplitting, incoherent jumble of roars in the previously calm, serene night air. Chairs, glasses, and plates were capsized at random as everyone began to scatter, some even jumping over the table in their haste to get away.
Celeste, however, remained in her seat, steak knife still locked in her fist, green eyes flying in every direction as chaos ensued, barely able to keep up with the bullets still flying.
Liam O’Da
ir, one of the first guests to stand from the table and run, caught a shot in the back just second’s after leaping over the table and racing away. He crumpled to a heap in the grass, and his date fell to her knees next to him, throwing her sobbing body on top of his. But it was too late to serve as his force field. Too late to save him.
Another scream broke out, and Celeste’s chest heaved as her eyes flew away from Liam’s body to follow the sound, catching sight of Matthew Russo, who’d just hit the ground after taking a bullet that Celeste couldn’t see. The shrieking woman who’d been running for her life just a few feet behind him, apparently no friend of Russo’s, jumped over his mangled body and continued sprinting away without looking back.
In a flash, the table was empty.
Still glued to her chair, watching the party guests scatter, Celeste watched one man after another, all running for their lives, take a bullet. To the chest. To the back. Between the eyes. All falling to the grass before they had a chance to get away. She hadn’t even realized she’d started counting the bodies hitting the grass until she’d gotten to the number eight.
David Blackwater, Eugene Masterson, Brock Nailer, Liam O’Dair, Matthew Russo, Clint Payton, Ezra Underwood, Jesus Vega.
Eight men down—and only after those eight men were down, did the bullets stop flying. Only then did the blood stop shedding. The last of the dinner guests, guests who would’ve been taken down by natural selection alone had the shooter decided he was still hungry for blood, were allowed to finish dashing away. Their screams still sounded from a distance in their haste, their cries spine-chilling in the way only someone who’d just witnessed eight murders could manage.
But Celeste didn’t scream. She didn’t cry. She remained. Long after the eighth body had hit the grass. She stood from her chair, knees shaking, clutching the back of it as her eyes flew all over the yard.
Was she next?
If she was, would she even care?
She knew, in that instant, she wouldn’t. She didn’t fear death. Her eyes zoomed over her shoulder, back to the table, and fell to David, whose lifeless face was still buried in his mashed potatoes, the blood dripping down his forehead staining the white starch red. She would happily bring him back to life just to kill him again. Just to punish him for killing their son.
Rouse (Revenge Book 7) Page 18
