Chapter 10 · Grandfather’s Key (Reed)

When Reed saw Megan come out of the library, something was wrong.

She was clutching something, knuckles white. When she got in the car, she handed him the key.

“Your grandfather’s?” Reed asked.

“Samantha left it for my grandfather.” Megan said. “My grandfather never had dinner with a Blackwood in his life. He wasn’t eccentric. He was waiting for this key.”

Reed took the key. It was an old brass key, and the handle was engraved with a number: 7.

“Warehouse seven.” He immediately made the connection. “The Blackwoods’ private pier has a row of warehouses, numbered one through twelve.”

“How do you know?”

“I looked into it in 2008.” Reed said. “We wanted to get in back then. The sheriff blocked us.”

On the drive back to the cabin, Megan read Samantha’s note again. Then she suddenly said: “Reed, when my grandfather died three years ago, he left me a will.”

“What did it say?”

“An antique shop, a pile of old furniture, and one sentence.” Megan looked out the window at the rain. “He said: ‘Megan, when the sea brings what it’s supposed to bring, you’ll know what to do.’ I always thought he was talking nonsense.”

“He was talking about this crate.”

“He was talking about this key.”

Back at the cabin, Reed made a decision.

“We can’t wait for them to come to us.” He scanned the anonymous note, the sheaf of letters, and Samantha’s note all into PDFs—one copy to his encrypted cloud, one to the private email of a prosecutor friend in Portland named David. “The digital evidence leaves this town today.”

“And the originals?”

“The originals are what they’ll absolutely come for.” Reed said. “They’ll come after the originals again.”

“Then what do we do?”

Reed looked at her.

“We give them a chance to grab something.”

Megan stared. “You’re setting a trap?”

“I want them chasing me.” Reed said. “Tonight, I’ll put the fake letters on the living room table, lights all on. The moment they come in, they’ll see me—then I run, lead them up the mountain road. You take the real letters out the back into the woods, run north three miles to the fire station, call David from there. State police get here at seven tomorrow morning—we just have to hold out until then.”

“But what if they realize the letters are fake?”

“They will realize.” Reed said. “That’s why they’ll chase me like crazy.”

Megan was quiet a long time.

“Reed,” she finally said, “have you considered that maybe they didn’t come for the letters?”

“What do you mean?”

“What if they came to kill us?”

Reed didn’t answer right away.

The fire popped. He looked at this woman—three days ago she’d been quietly fixing old mantel clocks in her antique shop—and now she sat across from him, no tears in her eyes, only something he knew well: the look he’d seen in his own mirror, the look of someone who’d been cornered by life and gone cold instead.

“I know,” he said. “That’s why from tonight on, we don’t split up.”