Chapter 15 - The Subpoena
The drive from Sag Harbor to our home near Peconic Bay was a blur of driving rain, blinding lightning, and the hysterical whimpering of Natalie curled up in the passenger seat of my SUV.
I didn't care about Natalie’s tears. I didn't care about her repentance. I cared about one thing only: preserving the sanctuary I had promised my daughter.
When we pulled up to our private lane, the black Escalade was gone, but the heavy wrought-iron security gate stood wide open. One of the stone support pillars had been struck; chunks of granite lay scattered across the wet asphalt.
"David!" I screamed, slamming the SUV into park and running through the downpour toward the house.
The front doors were unlocked. Inside, the lights were blazing.
Maya was sitting on the living room rug, clutching her favorite stuffed rabbit, completely oblivious to the chaos around her. Martha, our nanny, was kneeling beside her, reading an oversized picture book with a voice that quivered like a dry leaf in a gale.
"Where is he?" I demanded, water streaming from my coat onto the foyer floor.
Martha looked up, her face white. "Mr. Ward went down to the boathouse, Mrs. Ward. He saw someone running along the seawall after the car rammed the gate. He told me to lock the interior doors and stay with the baby."
"Keep her in the master suite upstairs," I instructed, my voice hard as diamonds. "Lock the deadbolt from the inside. Do not open it for anyone except David or me. Do you understand?"
"Yes, ma'am," Martha whispered, scooping Maya up and hurrying toward the back stairs.
I turned to Natalie, who stood dripping in the doorway. "Sit on that bench. Don't touch anything. Don't look at my daughter. If you move, I’ll throw you back out into the lane."
I didn't wait for her reply. I grabbed a heavy industrial flashlight from the utility closet and sprinted out the back French doors into the tempest.
The rain was deafening, turning the grassy lawn into a slick, treacherous bog. The wind was whipping off Peconic Bay at sixty miles an hour, hurling salt spray across the terrace. Down at the bluff, the beam of another flashlight was cutting wildly through the darkness near the boathouse.
"David!" I screamed against the howling gale.
I slid down the muddy embankment, my boots losing traction twice before I caught myself against the cedar railing.
Near the entrance of the boathouse, David had someone pinned against the weathered shingles.
The intruder wasn't Grant. It was a man in his late twenties, dressed in dark tactical waterproofs, clutching a high-end digital camera with a shattered lens. David’s left forearm was pressed violently against the man’s throat, his right hand gripping the collar of the man's jacket, lifting him nearly six inches off the ground.
"David, stop!" I yelled, throwing myself between them, grabbing David’s soaked arm. "David, let him breathe! Look at me!"
David’s face was unrecognizable. The gentle, patient craftsman who carved wooden toys for Maya and held my hand on the beach had vanished. In his place was a man pushed beyond the outer limits of human endurance, his eyes wide, feral, and dark with bloodlust.
"He was outside Maya’s bedroom window, Claire," David snarled, his voice breaking with fury. "He had a ladder from the shed. He was trying to plant an audio transmitter on the sill!"
"I have his camera! I have his badge!" David shook the man violently against the wall. The photographer gasped for air, his eyes rolling back in terror. "Who hired you? Was it Grant Sterling? Was it Marcus?"
"I... I'm private contractor..." the man choked out, blood trickling from his nose where David had clearly struck him. "Vance Legal... retainers... I was just setting up surveillance... please, man, don't kill me!"
"David, let him drop," I pleaded, digging my fingernails into David’s wrists. "If you kill him, Grant wins. Do you hear me? If you kill him, Grant takes Maya tomorrow morning through Child Protective Services! That is the trap! They want you in handcuffs!"
Those words broke through the red haze.
David froze. His chest heaved in ragged, violent gasps. Slowly, agonizingly, his fingers uncoiled from the man's jacket.
The investigator collapsed into the mud, coughing and retching.
"Get up," David said, his voice dropping into a terrifying, flat whisper. "Get off my property. Leave your camera, leave your gear, and tell Grant Sterling that the next time he sends a surrogate to my home, I won't call the police. I will hunt him down in Newport myself."
The man didn't hesitate. He scrambled to his feet on all fours, scrambling through the mud like a crab, before sprinting up the path toward the broken gate, disappearing into the black rain.
David stood alone in the storm, staring down at his bruised, bleeding knuckles.
I stepped into his space, wrapping my arms tightly around his waist, pressing my wet face against his soaked woolen sweater. He was trembling violently—not from the freezing rain, but from the terrifying realization of how close he had just come to crossing an irreversible line.
"I won't let them take her, Claire," he choked out into my hair, his voice cracking into a sob. "I will burn this entire island to the ground before I let that monster touch our daughter."
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"I know," I whispered, holding him with every ounce of strength I had. "I know, David. But we aren't burning anything down. We're going to use their own fire to consume them."
***
