Page 142 of In the Pursuit of Haven
I stepped closer. Jessie kept a wary eye out for Robert.
My fingers touched the silver handle. I needed enough light to see what was written on the sides. Taking out my phone, I put it on flashlight mode.
“What are you doing here?” a loud voice thundered. A bright neon light flickered on, sputtering and buzzing, and revealing exactly what I was doing.
I swung around, seeing Robert advance on us with the speed he’d used to stalk me downtown.
“Sorry!” I shouted out the first thing I could think of. “We came to see you and…”
“Did you really?” Robert’s reddened eyes were on Jessie like he was the one behind my rude trespassing. “You weren’t too keen on looking in on me before, as I recall. What changed, I wonder? I have something you want?” He swiped the cane from my grip.
Jessie immediately came between us. “Don’t touch her!”
“Her?” Robert looked surprised then let out a bark of rough laughter. “Oh, I wouldn’t think of it. It’s your head I’ll crack!”
I cried out in horror, springing in front of Jessie this time.
Jessie wasn’t having it, but he couldn’t budge me either. His eyes didn’t leave Robert. “Mine, huh? And throw all your work down the drain? You’re behind all of this. It was you! You’re the reason we’re here.”
Robert stilled as Jessie blurted all my mounting suspicions since I’d clapped eyes on the old man—Roberthadto be the mastermind behind Hunter’s every move. Was he the reason that Jessie had joined this treasure hunt in the first place? Our blackmailer? Finally, I’d get my answers.
“Killing Walt was an accident,” Robert sputtered. The stink of vodka on his breath made my nose wrinkle.Some mastermind.“Pete knew that, but he didn’t care. He put the blame on me for his brothers’ deaths. He—he wanted me to pay… one way or another.”
Heput the blame? Was my grandfather actually claiming to be innocent of those murders? “You killed Matthew,” I said. Even if Jessie said his uncle had been blinded by his passion, it had to be Robert who’d caught him unaware. “You were the last one to see him alive.”
Robert let out a frustrated scoff. “I don’t know what happened to Matthew! Leon was the last to see him.”
Not according to Haven’s letters.“Matthew sent Leon home ahead of you guys,” I said. “He wasn’t in the Caribbean when Matthew died.”
Robert laughed at that. “Yeah? You think so? Why don’t you go ahead and ask him then!”
How? Walt Leon was dead, and Robert had done it. Jessie made a sound of disdain next to my ear that echoed my disbelief.
“Drake knew what happened, too.” Robert nodded firmly, like we could start bringing out all the dead to verify his story. The man was drunk…I can get some information out of him.
“What happened to Drake?” I asked. Scrooby’s mother had seen Robert helping to load The Lady onto their boat seconds before the man had died.
Well… she saw a man, and I put the rest together with my imagination. That isn’t quite the same, is it?
Jessie had even hinted that his uncle deserved to die somehow. What did they all know that I didn’t?
Robert’s mouth firmed. His hand tightened on the cane and I stepped back, not trusting that dangerous glint in his eye, especially in his state. “That’s not for your ears,” he whispered. He exhaled loudly and thrust the cane into my hands. “Take it. I wish I’d never set eyes on this. Five decades I rotted in prison; I lost everything. My life could’ve been different if not for this stupid treasure. It means nothing to me, but what I lost?Thatwas everything. I don’t want anything to do with this.”
“Then why did you come after all of us after you got out of prison?” Jessie accused.
Robert’s jaw tightened. His wild eyes fixed on me. “You look just like Felicity, you know that?” I stilled as his fingers went to my face. “Ah yes, your mother, she took after my family with all that red hair, but you? If I didn’t know better, I’d say you’d stepped intoherskin, that the time and distance between us never happened, and all that tore us apart was a nightmare…”
Jessie growled and swatted his hand from my face.
Robert glared at him, but his unbearably steady gaze found mine. “And then I hear that you went and married a Crabb? Made yourself a part of that dirty, miserable clan after what they did to me? Pete sent me to prison to rot! Yeah, I put a target on your back. And I’d do it again! The Crabbs deserve to go down with their filthy treasure.”
I was a Crabb now. And yes, he meant me too. Haven had tried everything to keep Jessie and me apart; was this why? She’d put Jessie’s picture on her mystery board and soberly predicted he was next to die.
My fear chilled me to the bone. I was the one who’d dragged Jessie onto Robert’s houseboat, and no way would I have done it had I known I was fulfilling some kind of twisted prophecy!
Robert sneered. “So hate me all you want. The second I walked out of that prison, I sent you word on how to find The Lady… and you all did the rest, like trained monkeys.”
That tip was the beginning of that wedge driven between me and my husband. I’d gotten lost in that project and then this treasure. Was that on purpose too? We’d been his pawns in this hunt.
