Chapter 19 - The End of North Pier
I didn't go to the pier alone. Brooks made that decision for me. She put a tactical team in position and told me exactly where to stand, what to say, and how to get clear if Blake approached. I hated taking orders. I followed every one.
Blake waited beside a warehouse gate, his car idling under a security lamp. He held an old leather folder in one hand. I recognized it: my father's working file, with the corners worn from years of meetings.
"You always trusted me," he called. "Right up until a child told you not to."
"Ellie told me the truth. You spent a year making sure nobody else could."
He snorted. "Your father was going to destroy everything we'd built. He thought reporting me would save the Vale name. Then he got stubborn."
"Did you kill him?"
"I didn't touch him," Blake said. "Ask Cole who arranged his medication."
Brooks's officers, listening nearby, had heard every word.
"And Aaron?" I asked.
Blake took a step backward. "He should have stayed in his lane."
I thought about Nora holding her daughter in the hospital. The exhausted nurse in Rockford. Dad's voice telling me not to protect the family name at the cost of a human life.
"You put people in danger for money you didn't even need," I said.
"Don't pretend you're better than me. You signed what I put in front of you for years."
That part stung because it was true. I had made trust a substitute for oversight. But being careless wasn't the same as ordering violence, and I refused to let Blake use my mistakes to erase his choices.
"You're right about one thing," I said. "I should have looked closer. I will now."
Blake hurled the folder into a metal barrel and reached into his coat. Officers shouted for him to show his hands. He dropped what turned out to be a car key and tried to run between the containers. They caught him before he reached the fence.
A detective pulled Dad's folder from the unlit barrel. Blake hadn't even had time to light it.
Inside was a handwritten letter to the bank revoking Cole's access to the family trust, a copy of a complaint Dad had prepared for federal authorities, and one final note addressed to me.
I unfolded it with shaking hands.
SON, IF TELLING THE TRUTH COSTS US EVERYTHING, TELL IT ANYWAY.
May you like
As dawn turned the water silver, Brooks came back from her patrol car.
"Daniel," she said, "we have the evidence from Cole's devices. We can finally explain how your father died."
