I walked into my boyfriend’s family barbecue twenty-seven weeks pregnant / Chapter 47 / 63

Chapter 47 - The South Shoals

The emergency helicopter hovered over the jagged rocks of the South Shoals, its twenty-million-candlepower searchlight piercing through the white foam of the churning surf. Tyler and I sat in the command vehicle parked on the coastal bluff road, wrapped in emergency blankets as the tactical medics finished wrapping my shoulder and treating Tyler’s abrasions. Maeve slept peacefully in a portable travel bassinet between us, entirely oblivious to the machinery of justice grinding her predators to dust.

Through the high-resolution tactical monitor on Agent Vance’s dash, the scene at the shoals played out with brutal clarity.

The speedboat was lodged between two granite pillars, its fiberglass hull split down the keel, waves washing over the stern with every breaker. Denise was already on her knees in the ankle-deep surf, her hands high in the air as tactical officers from the maritime unit moved in with shields and non-lethal shotguns. Her designer trench coat was torn, her blonde hair plastered to her skull like wet seaweed, sobbing uncontrollably into the wind.

Thomas, however, was not on his knees.

He stood atop the slippery granite outcropping, clutching an aluminum lockbox to his chest. The waves crashed over his lower legs, threatening to sweep him into the deep channel below. Even from five hundred yards away via the thermal zoom lens, the sheer, unhinged defiance in his posture was unmistakable.

"Thomas Vanderberg!" the helicopter’s loudspeaker boomed across the water, echoing off the cliffs. "Drop the case and step down onto the sand! You have no escape route!"

Thomas looked up at the circling aircraft, then turned his gaze toward the bluff road where the emergency strobe lights painted the trees in crimson and blue. He knew Tyler and I were watching. He knew that the empire he had spent four decades manipulating from the shadows had unraveled in less than forty-eight hours.

Tyler reached out, his hand covering mine over our sleeping daughter’s blanket. His palm was warm, solid, anchoring me to reality.

"He won't surrender," Tyler said quietly.

"He has nothing left to negotiate with," I replied. "The documents in that satchel give the federal prosecutors every bank account, every bribe, every wire transfer. His name is already being stripped from the board."

On the monitor, Thomas raised the lockbox above his head and threw it with all his remaining strength into the churning, rocky undertow of the reef. Then, instead of stepping toward the waiting tactical officers, he took a deliberate step backward, toward the dark, boiling abyss where the ocean met the open sound.

A massive swell—a six-foot wall of black, freezing water—rose out of the gloom and crashed over the outcropping. When the foam receded, the granite slab was empty.

"Man overboard!" the radio blared. "Coast Guard swimmer deploying! Diver in the water!"

Denise’s wail cut through the ambient radio static as officers pinned her to the sand, snapping heavy titanium zip-ties around her wrists. She didn't look back at the water. She looked toward the flashing lights on the bluff, screaming Tyler’s name, cursing the mother who had given birth to him, cursing the day I had walked into the Oakridge family barbecue with an ultrasound printout in my purse.