Chapter 27 - The Sister's Gambit
We jumped from the slowing freight cars at the rail switchyard south of Tacoma, the salt smell of the Puget Sound air sharp and clean after the frozen diesel smoke of the mountain pass.
Waiting for us beneath the rusting crane tower of an abandoned shipping warehouse was a dented, rain-streaked blue station wagon. The hazard lights were blinking twice every ten seconds—the Vance emergency signal.
The driver’s side door opened.
Vivian stepped out into the mist.
She wasn't wearing the immaculate designer trench coat or the pearl earrings from two weeks ago. Her left arm was suspended in a crude sling made from a silk scarf, her platinum-blonde hair was pulled back in a tangled knot, and a deep, purple bruise shadowed her right cheekbone. But when she saw us, her chin went up with that same infuriating, unyielding Sterling defiance.
"You're late," she said, her voice shaking violently despite her best efforts to sound casual.
I didn't answer. I crossed the wet asphalt in three running strides and collided with her, throwing my arms around her neck, ignoring her bruised shoulder, ignoring the dirt and the rain, burying my face against her throat.
Vivian froze for half a heartbeat. Then, with a choked, sobbing gasp that sounded like a child breaking down after an eternity of fear, her good arm came around my back, holding me so tightly her fingernails dug into the canvas of my coat.
"I’m sorry," she wept into my hair, her tears hot against my cold neck. "Claire, I’m so sorry. I had to let him think I hated you. I had to make him believe I would sell you out for twenty million dollars. If he had suspected for a single second that I loved you... he would have put you in the ground three weeks ago."
"I know," I cried, pulling back to look at her battered face. "I know everything, Viv. Dad told me. David told me."
Arthur walked up behind us, leaning heavily on his walking stick. Vivian looked at our father, her breath catching in her throat. She hadn't seen him since the staged ambulance transfer in Spokane.
"Dad," she whispered, her voice trembling.
"You drove the station wagon," Arthur said, his voice deceptively stern, though the mist gathering in his grey eyes betrayed him completely. "I told your mother sixty times that the carburetor on that nineteen-eighty Volvo was a death trap."
Vivian laughed through her tears, wiping her nose with the back of her sleeve. "It was the only car Croft’s men didn't have registered in their tracking database. It was parked in Mom’s storage unit behind the Tacoma ferry slip."
She turned to David, her expression solemn, humble, stripped entirely of her former theatrical arrogance. "Thank you, David. For keeping her alive."
David nodded, his hand resting gently on my shoulder. "We finish this together. What’s Croft’s play in Olympia?"
Vivian reached into the front seat of the Volvo and pulled out a leather briefcase.
"Croft arrived at the Temple of Justice twenty minutes ago in his private helicopter," she said, her voice turning sharp and tactical. "He has sixteen armed private security guards holding the perimeter of the third-floor probate courtroom. The presiding judge is Judge Harrison—Croft financed his last three retention campaigns. Harrison is prepared to declare Eleanor Vance Sterling officially dead, dismiss all prior familial trusts due to lack of personal appearance, and award full ownership of the ninety thousand acres to Croft’s holding company at exactly ten AM."
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"It's eight-forty-five," I said, looking down at the master deed in my hands. "Can we breach the building?"
"We don't have to breach the courtroom," Vivian smiled—a cold, terrifying, beautiful Sterling smile that was pure vengeance. "Croft thinks this is a county hearing. He doesn't know Arthur has the 1962 Federal Injunction. And he doesn't know that Mom gave me something before she passed."
