Page 48 of Her Dark Lies
He plays the flashlight over the main room fondly. Eventually, his children will take over this old space of his. It is still relatively unchanged from his childhood. The twin beds pushed against the walls on either side of the window with their soft hand-loomed quilts, the cracked leather club chair, the bookcase with its multihued spines, calms him. He chooses a book at random and takes it to the chair, opens it, unseeing, listens to the raindrops patter on the courtyard below. When he glances at the title, he realizes he’s chosen his well-thumbed copy ofWhere the Red Fern Grows, and has to fight back the wave of emotion that courses through him. Those damn dogs. Old Dan and Little Ann.
Will used to read him stories before bed, and this was Jack’s favorite. Every summer, when the family came to stay, Will would read it to him. This is one of Jack’s dearest memories, being snuggled under the covers, in thrall to the great man. That Will wanted to spend time with him, with a kid, instead of the famous people mingling downstairs, was intoxicating. He’d bring the dogs—there were always Italian wolf dogs around the Villa when he was growing up—and allow them to sleep in Jack’s room overnight.
Will’s savage declaration earlier:You know what’s going to happen. It happens every time.
It doesn’t happen every time, but it happens too often for comfort.
Compton men lose their wives too soon. William, Will, and Jack, all three lost their wives to early death. Elliot is losing his to divorce. Brice is the exception, but Ana is an anomaly in so many ways. Her strength, her courage, her innate sense of familial preservation, is impossible to conquer. She is kept safe, safer than the others.
With everything that’s happened, Jack hasn’t allowed himself to think about the incident with Will. He touches his cheek gingerly. Nothing broken, but it’s still sore. By God, the old man still has some strength in him.
Seeing his grandfather so confused, so violent, was a shock. Will Compton had always been so much fun. He’d lived a great life here at the Villa, with movie stars and artists and writers flocking to the island to spend time at the colony. They’d create during the day, and in the evenings, would be invited to the Villa for parties. Legendary parties. There was nary a biography of any major name in the arts that didn’t mention at least one wild weekend on Isle Isola, with Will Compton at the center of the gaiety.
It was only in the past ten years that the parties had started slowing down, when Will started seeing old friends as strangers, and the artists’ colony had begun its decline. Heartbreaking.
Jack shoves away the ghosts of his grandfather’s issues and focuses back on the present. What is he missing? Who is trying to derail his life?
He’s done everything in his power to shelter Claire from his own violence. He wanted her to get used to the idea of the family business before she was forced to participate in it firsthand.
And then they’d surprised this creep in Nashville, and she’d managed to pick up the gun and shoot the fucker.
No. Malcolm shot the intruder.
God, she’s going to be so pissed he hasn’t told her everything. About himself. About the family. About their history.
His mother is right, Claire is safe now. Here, on the island, no one can touch her. She has all the protections he can give her and will bear his name soon enough. There is nothing else he can do but hold her in his arms and shield her with his body.
And he will. If anyone comes for his family, he will protect Claire first.
He stretches out his long legs, crossing them at the ankle, wincing at the tinypopthe right one makes as it settles over the left. Thirty-eight and falling apart at the seams. That’s what happens when you lived rough half the time. Lap of luxury or a field tent in the bush—his two extremes.
He flips through the pages of the book, but the words swim. He is exhausted. He can’t read, can’t focus. He puts the book back on the shelf in its proper spot and starts for the door. He will slip into their room quietly, get into the bed, and hold her. It will make him feel better to have her soft breath on his collarbone, her body solid and safe in his arms. She has saved him, and she didn’t even know it. Before he met her, he feared he was becoming numb to emotion, numb to the world. An automaton with a gun, controlled by Ana and Brice and their vision for the company, the world.
With Claire by his side, he can finally live again.
His phone chirps from his pocket with a new secure text. Elliot or Karmen with news, he expects. He opens his family-designed app, end-to-end encrypted and utterly unbreakable, developed by his father in the early days of the SMS that now lives on hundreds of thousands of security professionals’ phones.
He doesn’t recognize the number. There is a video attached, with an encryption key. He taps on it, and the video opens and auto plays.
The video quality isn’t remarkable, but it’s clear enough. A small snippet of the events from Monday night, it shows the body of the intruder, the man the police tentatively identified as Francis Wold, bleeding out on the landing. There is no audio, but there’s no need for it to sink them all... Claire is holding the man’s gun. God, her eyes, her eyes, wide and frightened and shocked.
A plain text message comes in.
I know what she did. Soon, the whole world will, too. Repent, Jackson. Repent.
“Son of a bitch!”
He needs Elliot to trace the encryption key. Karmen needs to find out where the planted cameras broadcast to. A wireless signal, hell, who knows if it was secure or not. The neighbor across the street could have hacked the Wi-Fi.
Who the hell is threatening them? It’s not just Francis Wold, not anymore. He hadn’t acted alone. Who is he working with? Who is close enough to the family to peer inside their lives this way?
His mind offers him a solution.
Morgan.
Good grief, Jack. That’s impossible. Ghosts can’t send texts. No, Morgan is dead and gone—this he knows in his heart. And he can prove it to himself now.
He clatters down the main stairs, down yet another flight to the kitchens, straight back into the darkness by the wine cellar. He knows the way through the maze of halls and storage rooms, but uses the flashlight so he can move quickly. Claire must be wondering where he is. Once he’s satisfied himself here, he will go to her.
