NIGHTFALL: THE BROKEN SON-IN-LAW'S LAST WAR

Chapter 7: The Yacht Club

"I told Dr. Weiss the word meant nothing," I said. "She didn't believe me."

Natalie looked up from her coffee. It was seven in the morning on Tuesday, and we were standing in the cottage kitchen, the neutral ground, both of us pretending last night's talk hadn't happened.

"Who's Caleb Brooks?" she asked.

"A friend from the army. He got hurt. Badly." I set my cup down. "He's in Hollowbrook."

"Are you going to see him?"

"Soon. Not while those men are still out there and your family is sitting in a house with a cut camera line."

She studied me for a long moment. "You're really worried they'll come back."

"I'm sure they will."

She didn't argue. That told me she was starting to believe me, at least a little.

An hour later, I found Vivian in the front hall, pulling on white gloves while her driver waited outside. She wore a pale pink suit and her pearls, and her ash-blonde hair was perfect, as if nothing had happened in this house two nights ago.

"Where are you going?" I asked.

She didn't even turn her head. "The Bayridge Yacht Club. The Children's Heart Fund luncheon. I'm the chairwoman."

"Cancel it."

Now she turned. "I beg your pardon?"

"Six men tried to kill your whole family on Sunday night. Two of them are still out there, and they know your face. Please, Vivian, stay home today."

"Stay home?" Her laugh was cold and bright. "Do you know what people would say? 'Poor Vivian, hiding behind her curtains, too frightened to show her face.' The whole city has read about our family in the papers. If I don't walk into that club today with my head high, we'll never recover."

"Your pride isn't worth your life."

"How dare you!" Her blue eyes flashed. "You, of all people, lecturing me about pride? A man who crawls under tables when a party popper goes off?"

"Then let me drive you."

"I'd rather walk into the sea." She picked up her handbag. "The club has its own security, Adam. Real security. Not a cook."

She walked out, and the car door slammed, and the long black sedan rolled down the hill.

I didn't wait. I took the old estate pickup truck, the one I used to haul garden waste, and followed at a distance.

The Bayridge Yacht Club sat on a private point at the edge of the harbor, all white stone and blue awnings and flags snapping in the wind. A guard in a navy blazer stopped my truck at the gate.

"Members only, sir."

"I'm with Vivian Prescott. I'm family."

He looked at my old work jacket, the dirt on the truck, the dent in the door. Then he looked at a list on his clipboard.

"Mrs. Prescott didn't list any guests," he said. "And she certainly didn't mention... you."

"Please, call her. Ask her."

He smiled the polite, tight smile of a man who'd been told to keep out people like me. "I'm sorry, sir. You'll have to wait outside the gate."

So I waited outside the gate, parked under a tree, watching the club through the windshield. I watched the cars come and go. I watched rich women in hats walk up the stone steps. I watched the boats bobbing at the club's private dock.

At twelve forty, a sleek white speedboat pulled into the dock. Two men in white jackets climbed out carrying a long box of flowers.

Delivery men.

But delivery men don't walk like that, shoulders square, eyes moving, hands never far from their belts. And delivery men don't come by sea.

I was out of the truck before I'd finished the thought.

"Hey!" the gate guard shouted. "Sir, you can't..."

I vaulted the gate and ran.

I was halfway across the lawn when I heard the first scream from inside the dining hall. Then a single gunshot, flat and loud, and the screams multiplied, high and terrified, and people burst out of the glass doors onto the terrace, women in hats, waiters with trays, everyone running in every direction.

A woman in a feathered hat grabbed my arm, begging me to help her find her daughter; I pointed her toward the parking lot and kept going. I fought my way through the crowd toward the dock.

A man in a navy blazer lay face down on the wooden boards, a dark stain spreading under him. Another guard. He wasn't moving.

At the end of the dock, the white speedboat was already pulling away. The two men in white jackets were in the back, and between them, struggling, with tape over her mouth and her pink suit torn at the shoulder, was Vivian.

Her eyes found me across the water.

For a single second, she stopped fighting.

Then the engine roared, and the boat shot out into the harbor, spraying white foam, and I stood at the end of the dock with nothing in my hands while it shrank to a dot and vanished behind the breakwater.

I knelt beside the guard and pressed two fingers to his neck.

Nothing.

He was maybe fifty, grey at the temples, with a wedding ring on his finger. He had a family somewhere who'd be waiting for him to come home tonight. I closed his eyes. I knew how; I'd done it too many times.

The police came twenty minutes later, sirens screaming across the point. Then Okafor came, his grey coat flapping, and he took one look at me standing on the bloody dock and closed his eyes like a man counting to ten.

"Mr. Kessler," he said. "You're becoming a very unlucky man."

"I followed her," I said. "I asked her to stay home, and she wouldn't listen."

"Why did you think she was in danger?"

"Because six men walked into her house two nights ago with rifles, Detective. I didn't think they'd given up."

He studied me for a long time, and this time he didn't smile.

"The gate guard says you jumped a six-foot fence like it was a curb," he said. "Funny skill for a cook."

"I was scared," I said.

"You keep saying that."

That evening, the whole family sat in the Prescott living room with the curtains drawn. Police officers stood at the doors. Okafor sat in a corner, making calls in a low voice. Harold hadn't spoken in two hours. Once, when I brought him a glass of water, he caught my wrist with his old, spotted hand.

"Did she see you?" he asked hoarsely. "At the dock. Did Vivian see you?"

"Yes."

He let go and stared at the floor, and I couldn't tell if that made him feel better or worse. Tyler paced back and forth, chewing his thumbnail, his phone for once forgotten in his pocket.

Natalie sat beside me on the sofa, close enough that our shoulders almost touched, and she was shaking.

At eight fifteen, my phone buzzed.

Not Natalie's phone. Not Harold's. Not Okafor's.

Mine.

A message from a number I didn't recognize. No words at first, just a photo.

Vivian, tied to a metal chair in a dark room, rust on the walls behind her, tape over her mouth, her eyes wide and wet above it.

Under it, one line of text appeared.

Come alone to the old Saltmarsh shipyard. Midnight tomorrow. Bring police, Nightfall, and she dies.

They knew my name.

Not the cook. Not Adam Kessler.

Nightfall.