Two days after my father-in-law died, my husband brought his mistress into our kitchen, / Chapter 63 / 80

Chapter 63 - The Lantern Room

The crash echoed up the shaft, followed by a chorus of shouts and the sudden chatter of automatic fire echoing through the flooded cavern below.

"Keep moving!" Thomas roared, his heavy hand catching my elbow and propelling me toward the final ladder run. "The ladder broke off behind them! They’ll have to haul their own gear up if they want to follow!"

We climbed the remaining forty feet in frantic silence. The shaft terminated not in a cellar, but beneath a heavy cast-iron trapdoor bolted from the underside. Thomas braced his broad shoulder against the iron plate, grunting in agony as he shoved upward. The seal of decades of rust and frost gave way with a violent screech, showering our hair with flakes of red oxide.

We tumbled out onto the pine plank floor of the Devil’s Island lightkeeper’s quarters.

The room smelled of dry rot, woodsmoke, and expensive kerosene. Through the arched windows, the blizzard raged across the lake, but inside, a cast-iron stove glowed cherry-red against the brick chimney. On a heavy oak table in the center of the room sat two ceramic coffee mugs, an open bottle of rye whiskey, and a radio transceiver humming softly on a high-frequency band.

Standing before the wide bay windows, looking out toward the dark silhouette of the grounded *Eleanor V*, stood a tall man with broad shoulders and a shock of iron-white hair. He wore a shearling-lined coat, identical in cut to the one Donald had worn to his grave.

He turned slowly as we spilled into the room.

His jaw was square, his nose had the same slight, aristocratic hook as my own, and his eyes—pale gray, framed by deep crow’s-feet—were the eyes that had looked at me in the yellowed photographs on my mother’s vanity table.

"You have your mother's stamina, Amanda," Arthur Vance said, his voice quiet, devoid of the brass echo of the loud-hailer. "I told Donald you would survive the crossing. He always underestimated the bloodline."

Marilyn leveled her snub-nosed revolver at his chest, her hand perfectly steady despite the freezing wind whistling through the cracked panes. "Step away from the table, Arthur. You aren't dealing with Donald's board of directors anymore."

Arthur didn't even flinch. He picked up one of the ceramic mugs, took a sip of black coffee, and looked past the barrel of the gun directly at the infant tucked against my chest.

"Put the gun down, Marilyn. If my men on the cutter don't hear my broadcast code within four minutes, they will shell this tower with the fifty-caliber mounted on the foredeck. You won't leave the island, and neither will Donald’s granddaughter."

"What did you do to Donald?" I demanded, stepping forward, every nerve in my body vibrating with cold fury. "He didn't have a stroke, did he?"

Arthur looked at me with an expression that was terrifying in its absolute lack of malice. It was the calm indifference of an engineer looking at a faulty gear.

"Donald was eighty-two years old, Amanda. He had the money, he had the land, and he had the unearned moral clarity of a man who never had to get his hands dirty during the strike of seventy-eight. When the timber leases expired last month, he intended to donate the entire northern parcel—sixty thousand acres of copper-rich shelf—to the Department of the Interior. A federal reserve." Arthur set the mug down with a sharp click. "He was going to turn forty billion dollars in strategic reserves into a bird sanctuary. I couldn't allow that. Neither could the people who financed my disappearance."

"So you poisoned him," I said.

"I accelerated his retirement," Arthur corrected smoothly. "And I sent Julian to collect the keys. But Julian was an idiot. He brought along his administrative pet," he glanced with open disgust at Chloe, who was huddled on the floor by the woodstove, "and he managed to alert the one person who could actually unlock the seventh and ninth vaults."

Arthur reached into his coat and pulled out an antique brass key, polished bright, stamped with the numeral eight.

"Donald had seven," Arthur said. "You have nine. I have eight. The triumvirate covenant requires all three to clear the trust in the Duluth land registry. Give me Donald's key, Amanda. Sign the deed of transfer, and I will put you, the child, and Marilyn on the cutter to Thunder Bay with ten million dollars in bearer bonds."

"And if I refuse?" I asked.