Tucker Fleming stood at the end of the private dock and watched the small boat cruise cautiously toward him. It was close to midnight. He was wearing a heavy jacket, but the cold wind coming off the night-darkened waters of Lake Washington was as sharp as a knife.
The vessel was running without lights, but the night was clear and the moon cast a swath of silver across the water. Tucker used a flashlight to give the person at the wheel the all clear.
Several hours had passed since the disaster at the Wallerton house, but he was still shaky, still edgy. The least little noise caused him to start violently. He could not believe that everything had gone so wrong. He had been the master of the game, but now he was on the run, his grand project in smoking ruins.
Looking back he realized things had begun to come apart the night Hannah Brewster jumped to her death. That was the turning point. It had been one bad outcome after another. Today he’d been tracked by a teen with a phone and a low-rent private investigator.
For a time this afternoon he’d allowed himself to hope that Sutter and the kid had not made it out of the burning house. But it wasn’t long before he realized he hadn’t caught a lucky break. He’d ditched the car as soon as possible and used his fake ID to rent an anonymous Ford, just as he had when he’d made the trips to Lost Island. Seemed like a lifetime ago.
He’d considered heading for Canada – the border was less than three hours away and there were places he could cross without having to risk dealing with the authorities. In the end he’d pulled into the vast parking lot of a busy shopping mall where the Ford was just one more car in a sea of vehicles.
He’d gone into the mall, bought some coffee at a Starbucks and sat down at a table. He’d spent an hour trying to come up with a plan of action, some brilliant new move that would allow him to regain control of the game. But he could not seem to think clearly. Bizarre schemes – each more implausible than the last – danced erratically through his head.
At last he had forced himself to face the truth. He had only one viable option. Sending the emergency code was the last thing he wanted to do, but he had no choice. When you needed help, you turned to the only people you could really trust – family.
He had sent the emergency code.
The answer did not come immediately. The wait had been excruciating. He hadn’t been able to catch his breath, and his pulse beat so fast he wondered if he might do something really crazy like faint right there in front of Nordstrom. That would have been the end. He would have awakened in an emergency room and there would have been a cop waiting to take him into custody.
Just when he had begun to wonder if Quinton Zane was going to turn his back on his son, the message came through. He had been given the address of a house on the shores of Lake Washington and told to wait on the private dock at a quarter to midnight. A boat would pick him up and take him to the one person who could help him – his father.
The house was located on a secluded stretch of waterfront property. There were no lights in the windows. A discreet For Sale sign had been planted in the front yard. Dad thought of everything.
This wasn’t how he had wanted to meet Zane. He had wanted to show up with the money that the old man had lost all those years ago, wanted to prove that he had inherited Zane’s ambition, talent and raw nerve. More than that, he had been determined to succeed where Zane had failed. That dream had gone up in the flames of the Wallerton house.
But it wasn’t as if Zane had been any more successful, he reminded himself. Zane had allowed himself to be conned by a few members of his own organization – a bunch of women, no less. They would have gotten away with it, too, if they hadn’t been betrayed. Zane had taken his revenge, but by then the money was long gone.
I’m as good as you ever were back in the day, Zane. Hell, I picked up the trail of the money that you lost, didn’t I? It’s still out there. Doesn’t look like Virginia Troy and Sutter have found it yet. You and I might be able to get to it first if we work together. We’d make a hell of a team.
A father-and-son team.
He liked the sound of that. All he needed was a new identity and a fresh start. Working together, he and Zane would be unstoppable. They would set the whole damned world on fire.
The boat glided to a stop at the end of the dock. The pilot was a dark silhouette behind the wheel. Tucker clambered aboard. He had been instructed not to ask any questions. He was to get into the boat and keep silent until the craft reached its destination.
The boat took off, slowly at first, and then at speed. The chill of the wind got a thousand times worse. Not much longer now, he thought. He wondered which of the expensive houses on the lake belonged to Quinton Zane.
The boat eventually came to a halt at the end of another dock in a secluded cove. The pilot cut the engines.
“About time,” Tucker said. “It’s damn cold out here on the water.”
The pilot emerged from the small wheelhouse. The moonlight glinted on the gun in his hand.
Only then did Tucker realize that he had made a terrible mistake.
“No,” he yelped.
He struggled frantically to scramble out of the boat and managed to get one foot on the dock.
The first shot caught him squarely in the back with such force that he was flung facedown on the wooden boards. He was vaguely aware of the pilot stepping up out of the boat.
His last conscious thought was that, like his father, he had been conned.
He never felt the second shot, the one to the head.