Two men stood behind the tinted glass console of the vessel, both wearing dark windbreakers, polarized sunglasses, and baseball caps pulled low over their faces. One of them held a pair of heavy marine binoculars, training the lenses directly onto the beach where Grandma Rose was sitting.
David Mitchell stood up from his cooler, his smile instantly vanishing. He shielded his eyes with his hand, staring out at the gray boat.
“That’s not a pleasure craft,” David said sharply, stepping down the sand to meet Victoria and me. “No fishing outriggers, no dive flags, no harbor registration decals. That hull is a custom interceptor—the kind the drug interdiction teams use, or the offshore smugglers buy at government auctions in Miami.”
The boat didn't accelerate toward the open ocean.
Instead, it turned into the mouth of the private mangrove canal that bordered the northern perimeter of the Sterling estate—the very canal that ran behind the carriage house and connected directly to Victoria’s private boat dock.
Victoria reached for her pocket, pulling out her smartphone. “I’m calling the Sheriff’s dispatch.”
She pressed the phone to her ear.
“All circuits are currently busy handling emergency maritime parade coordination. If this is an immediate life-threatening emergency, please hold...”
“Damn the Boat Show,” Victoria muttered, tapping the screen frantically. “The entire maritime patrol is concentrated three miles north in the main channel guiding superyachts through the drawbridges!”
Suddenly, the piercing screech of an electronic alarm cut through the salt air.
It was coming from the rear courtyard of the estate.
BEEP-BEEP-BEEP-BEEP!
“The perimeter motion sensors at the dock!” Victoria yelled.
David didn't hesitate. He reached down into the tool bag he had carried from his delivery van, pulling out a heavy, sixteen-inch steel tire iron. “Marcus! Get Mrs. Miller into the carriage house and lock the deadbolt! Now!”
Marcus leaped into action, gently helping Grandma Rose out of the Adirondack chair.
“Emily, what on earth is that awful whistling noise?” Grandma Rose asked, her spectacles slipping as she grabbed her cane.
“Grandma, go with Marcus inside right now!” I shouted, adrenaline flooding my veins. “Lock the door and stay down!”
Rose looked at my terrified face, then glanced toward the canal where the gray boat had disappeared into the mangroves. Her eyes narrowed with grim understanding. “Marcus, take my hand. Emily, don't you do anything foolish!”
Marcus hurried Rose up the wooden boardwalk toward the reinforced cedar cottage, his broad frame shielding her from view.
Victoria, David, and I sprinted across the sand toward the rear courtyard of the main house.
The estate’s private boat basin was hidden behind a thick, dense wall of towering red mangroves and weeping sea grapes. A narrow wooden pier extended thirty feet into the deep, dark tidal channel.
Tied to the end of the pier was Victoria’s thirty-two-foot restored vintage mahogany runabout.
And standing on the pier, violently prying open the teak hatch of the boat’s forward cabin with a steel wrecking bar, was a tall, heavily muscled man in a faded gray tactical hoodie. A thick, jagged scar ran down his left jawline, and a heavy black Glock handgun was holstered in a quick-draw kydex rig against his hip.
On the deck of the powerboat idling alongside the pier stood the second man, holding a three-gallon plastic canister of red industrial fuel.
They weren't here to steal blueprints. They were here to torch the vintage mahogany runabout, let the fire jump to the wooden pier, and sweep through the dry sea-grape canopy directly into the cedar-shingled historic structures on the dunes. A coastal fire during a thirty-knot ocean wind would reduce the entire estate—and every historical document inside—to cinders in under fifteen minutes.
“Gregory Vance!” Victoria yelled, skidding to a halt on the shell path twenty feet from the dock.
The scarred man on the pier stopped. He slowly turned his head, lowering the pry bar.
His eyes were cold, dead, and entirely devoid of human empathy. Looking at him, you could see the family resemblance to Julian Vance, but where Julian was soft, pampered, and arrogant, Gregory Vance was raw, feral, and lethal.
“Victoria Sterling,” Gregory said, his voice a low, raspy growl that sounded like crushed stone. “You should have stayed on that airplane in Philadelphia. You cost my family forty million dollars today.”
“Julian is in county custody, Gregory!” Victoria shouted, her voice trembling slightly but refusing to break. “The Sheriff knows about the bribes! The state attorney has his phone! If you do this, you’re looking at federal arson and life in prison!”
Gregory gave a dry, humorless chuckle that sent a shiver down my spine.
“Julian is a weak, posturing fool who thought he could play high-stakes poker with municipal bureaucrats,” Gregory spat, gesturing with the steel bar toward the channel. “The second he was arrested, I liquidated our offshore holding accounts. There is a twin-engine Cessna waiting for me on a private airstrip in the Everglades with three million dollars in bearer bonds and a flight plan filed for Colombia. I don't care about Julian. And I don't care about Florida.”
He stepped forward, reaching out with one booted foot to kick open the cabin hatch of Victoria’s runabout.
The second man unscrewed the cap of the fuel canister, preparing to douse the interior with gasoline.
“What I care about,” Gregory snarled, locking his dead eyes onto Victoria, “is leaving nothing behind for you to celebrate. You destroyed our project. So I’m going to burn this historic heap into ash, and if anyone gets in my way, you won't live long enough to smell the smoke.”
He reached his hand down toward the holstered Glock on his hip.