Chapter 7 - THE GHOST IN THE MACHINE"Where are we going?" Nora shouted over the deafening whine of the engines and the rhythmic slamming of the hull against the whitecaps. Her green coat was soaked through, and her auburn hair stuck to her pale cheeks.
"Not to the police," I said, wiping the saltwater from my face and pulling my phone out to check the signal. "The DOJ has an active warrant out for my arrest. Victor Thorne played his hand faster than I expected—he used my father's internal security clearance to upload a forged confession to the federal server twenty minutes ago."
Marcus kept his eyes locked on the horizon, his hands gripping the steering wheel of the Zodiac with white-knuckled intensity. "Thorne thinks he holds all the cards. He thinks that with Vincent dead and you labeled a parricide, the syndicate capos will fall in line behind him."
"They will," I said grimly, "unless we prove who actually killed my father."
"Who did kill him?" Nora asked, her voice trembling slightly as she wrapped a thermal blanket around Lily, who was shivering quietly in the bow. "The autopsy report said heart failure. Pancreatic cancer."
"The cancer was real," I said, leaning forward over the console. "My father was dying. But the digital signature on the medical chart was altered twelve hours before he died. Someone injected a massive dose of potassium chloride into his IV drip while he was in the hospice suite."
Marcus glanced sideways at me. "Thorne?"
"Thorne," I confirmed. "He couldn't wait for the cancer to finish the job because my father had scheduled a meeting with the federal prosecutor to hand over the complete ledger of the East Coast drug routes in exchange for absolute immunity for Lily and the trust fund."
The silence in the boat was deafening, save for the roar of the engines.
"So," Marcus muttered, a slow, dangerous grin spreading across his scarred face. "The old man played us all. He knew Thorne was going to move on him, so he used his own death as the trigger to blow up the entire organization—and left you to pick up the pieces."
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"And if we don't stop Thorne within twenty-four hours," I added, looking back at Lily, who had fallen asleep with her head resting on Nora’s lap, clutching the wooden toy horse, "he's going to liquidate the Harbor House trust, burn the shelter to the ground, and erase every trace of my family name from the earth."
"Then we need an armory," Marcus said, turning the Zodiac hard to port, heading toward a desolate stretch of rocky coastline known as Devil’s Tooth. "And I happen to know a smuggler who owes your father a very large favor."
