Chapter 19 - The Mask Tears Away
Arthur’s face didn't pale. It hardened.
The velvet mask of the benevolent, grieving patriarch slipped away, revealing the cold, predatory machine beneath. His jaw clenched, the muscles along his temples pulsing.
"I don't know what you're talking about," he said.
I raised the paper in my left hand. "Roy Callow survived the swamp. He gave me the intake logs. He gave me the fingerprint."
Eleanor let out a sharp, bird-like shriek from the mezzanine. "Arthur! You told me Callow was handled! You said he was in South Carolina!"
"Shut up, Eleanor!" Arthur roared, without turning his head.
The silence that followed was suffocating. Melissa looked between her father and mother, her eyes wide with sudden, sickening realization.
"Daddy?" Melissa whispered, her voice trembling. "What is she talking about? What does Ethan have to do with this? Ethan's dead... we... we went to his memorial..."
"We went to a birthday party, Melissa," I said, stepping closer, until the barrel of the pistol was pointed directly at the silk lapel of Arthur’s smoking jacket. "You drank vintage champagne at the yacht club while your brother-in-law was being held in an underground medical bay with a tube down his throat so your father could steal his software."
"It was a business necessity!" Arthur hissed, stepping toward me instead of backing away, his eyes blazing with a monstrous, unrepentant arrogance. "Ethan was a fool! He wanted to burn down a forty-million-dollar logistics enterprise over a technicality! Over a few irregular shipping manifests! Do you have any idea what would have happened to this family if those federal indictments came down?! Everything we built—this house, your sister's future, my standing—it all would have evaporated!"
"So you paid a truck driver to ram our station wagon on the bridge," I said, every syllable like a drop of liquid nitrogen.
"No!" Arthur barked. "The crash was an accident! An absolute, tragic accident! But when Callow called me from the bridge and told me the children were gone and Ethan was still clinging to life... I made a decision. A command decision! The children couldn't be saved, Claire! But the company could! If Ethan woke up, he would have testified. He would have ruined us all!"
"You kept him alive to steal from him," I said.
"I kept him alive because he was my son-in-law!" Arthur sneered, his face contorting into an ugly, venomous sneer. "And now you’ve ruined it! You locked the foundation accounts! You froze the digital escrow! At six o'clock this morning, the feds will seize the facility. Do you think they’ll rescue him, Claire? Do you think the contractor will leave a living witness to a nine-month illegal detention?! By the time anyone gets to Telfair, the power will have failed, the oxygen will be cut, and Ethan will be just another tragic complication of an old highway accident!"
"Where is the bypass code for the security doors?" I asked, my finger tightening on the trigger until the slack was entirely gone.
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Arthur smiled—a cold, sickening, arrogant smirk.
"Shoot me, Claire," he mocked, spreading his arms wide. "Pull the trigger. Put a bullet in your father's chest. Then you can spend the rest of your life in a state penitentiary while Ethan suffocates in the dark, sixty miles away. You don't have the time to find the bypass code, you don't have the keycard, and you certainly don't have the stomach to kill me."
