PART 3: THE OLD PIER
The silence that followed was unbearable.
Renee appeared in the doorway.
“What did you say?”
Odessa explained that Lyle had found the girl eating breakfast.
He told her Renee was busy and offered to drop her at school.
Hattie trusted him.
He always handed out candy to the workers.
Renee let the keys she was holding fall.
Jasper ran to take the old phone from the safe.
There was a message.
“Old pier at Dover Bluff. Come alone. If I see one of your men, the girl will meet the same end as her father.”
Renee read those words.
Her face changed.
“Bring her back to me.”
Nothing more.
Jasper then phoned the sheriff’s office.
For years his family had lived by avoiding any cooperation with them.
That morning, he told them exactly where he was going.
Then he drove alone to an abandoned pier beside the marshes.
He found a small wooden boat.
Lyle was inside.
Hattie sat near the helm, wrapped in a blanket.
She wasn’t crying.
She was counting the pilings of the dock under her breath.
Lyle looked tired.
He didn’t look like a monster.
That was precisely the worst part.
“Get in,” he ordered.
Jasper obeyed.
“Why?”
Lyle gave a sad smile.
“Because you want to destroy everything your father and I built.”
The new will didn’t hand the businesses to Travis.
Jasper had decided to sell most of his maritime companies, shut down the shady operations inherited from decades past, and set up a fund for the families of workers who had lost their lives at sea.
Lyle saw that as a betrayal.
For years he had been negotiating behind Jasper’s back with foreign groups that wanted to use his shipping routes again.
With Jasper gone and Travis in debt, he would control everything.
“Your brother would have signed any document I put in front of him.”
Jasper looked at Hattie.
“Let her go.”
Lyle shook his head.
“She already knows too much.”
Then he brought up Eddie.
Renee had always believed her husband’s death was the result of a storm.
It wasn’t true.
Five years earlier, Eddie had stumbled upon a secret meeting between Lyle and some middlemen Jasper had banned from his ports.
Eddie threatened to tell.
Days later, a storm warning came.
Lyle tampered with the orders so that Eddie would fill in for the captain of a boat with unresolved mechanical problems.
The boat went out.
It never came back.
Jasper felt the air leave his lungs.
He had trusted Lyle more than anyone.
“Eddie wanted to tell me the truth.”
“Eddie was afraid of you,” Lyle answered. “That was always your problem, Jasper. Everyone obeyed you, but nobody dared talk to you.”
Those words cut deeper than any betrayal.
Lyle started the engine.
He intended to steer into open water and make it look as if Jasper, weakened by his illness, had suffered another accident.
But Hattie was staring at a small red cord beside the controls.
Two nights earlier, Jasper had explained to her how the basic safety systems on boats worked.
He had told her that certain engines had an emergency kill switch.
Hattie waited.
Lyle turned toward Jasper.
The girl pulled.
The engine died.
Lyle lost his balance for an instant.
Jasper used that second to lunge at him.
They both crashed onto the wooden deck.
Jasper was weak.
Lyle was older but still strong.
They fought until Jasper managed to drag him away from Hattie.
Then engines roared.
Three boats from the sheriff’s marine unit emerged from behind one of the marsh channels.
Lyle understood it was over.
He didn’t resist.
When the deputies boarded the boat, Hattie ran to the first vessel.
Renee was there.
Mother and daughter embraced.
Hattie held out for only a few seconds before she began to cry like the seven-year-old girl who should never have had to be so brave.
Jasper watched them.
Then everything went dark.
