Chapter 16 - The Storm at Nahant
"You didn't take them from the house, Evelyn," I said into the phone, my voice dropping into an icy, steady calm that surprised even David.
A pause on the other end. A sharp intake of breath.
"What did you say?" Evelyn’s tone lost a fraction of its arrogance.
"You went to Sycamore Manor. You opened the cedar safe behind grandmother’s portrait," I said, stepping closer to David, my hand resting firmly over his wet sleeve. "You took the velvet-lined mahogany box with the gold crest. You took the vellum folders and the amber glass vials."
"I have them in my hands right now," Evelyn snapped, the sound of howling coastal winds and roaring diesel engines audible behind her voice. "By midnight, Julian’s contacts in Rotterdam will have the full chemical sequence for your precious fiber. You'll be selling cheap wool scarves at flea markets by next winter!"
"Look inside the amber vials, Evelyn," I whispered.
Silence stretched across the line for five agonizing seconds. Then, the sound of glass clicking against wood. The rustle of paper.
A muffled curse.
"What is this?!" Evelyn shrieked, her voice cracking into high-pitched fury. "This is sawdust! Dried clover and sawdust!"
"My grandmother knew who you were from the day you turned twelve," I told her, the tears of anger finally evaporating from my eyes, replaced by an immovable stone resolve. "She knew you had our mother’s vanity and our grandfather’s treacherous heart. She never put the master strains in the house. She put them where no one like you would ever think to look."
"Where?!" Evelyn screamed over the roar of the ocean gale. "WHERE DID YOU PUT THEM?!"
"Inside the hem of the baby blanket," I said quietly. "The blanket you called worthless rags. The blanket you dropped into the bathroom wastebasket with a smirk on your face. Every single master seed, woven microscopically into the interior silk border. Chloe has been wearing the future of our family against her heart every single night for eight years."
A strangled, animal scream of absolute fury erupted from the speaker, followed by the violent crash of the marine radio handset being hurled against a bulkhead.
The line went dead.
David looked at me, a slow, predatory smile touching the corners of his lips despite the soot and water covering us both. "Marcus!"
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"Sir!" the security chief stepped forward.
"Call the Coast Guard cutter *Tahoma* out of Gloucester. Notify Admiral Miller that Ironwood’s 80-foot private yacht, *The Sovereign Lady*, is attempting to evade a federal maritime warrant in forty-knot gale conditions off the Nahant rocks." David took my hand, lifting it to his lips, kissing my cold, scraped knuckles. "And Clara? Get Chloe and Molly. We’re going to the lighthouse."
