Chapter 2 - BLOOD ON THE TROPICAL LEAVES"That’s insane!" Eleanor shrieked, her voice cracking as she took a step backward, nearly tripping over Penelope’s yellow rain boots. "Jane, you are grieving, you are hysterical! You are making wild, delusional accusations because you can't accept that your husband was a reckless driver!"
"Am I?" I asked, pulling out a printout of an email chain. "This is an automated service record from a garage in Columbus, timestamped four hours before Samuel and Penelope left for their trip. The garage's security footage shows a man wearing a dark hoodie unscrewing the brake fluid cap and severing the main line in the parking lot while Samuel was inside buying Penelope an ice cream."
I held up a high-resolution, zoomed-in frame from the security video.
The man in the dark hoodie had a very distinct, dragon-tail tattoo wrapping around his right wrist and thumb.
I slowly lowered the paper and looked directly at Marcus’s right hand. He wore a heavy gold watch, but beneath the metal strap, the dark green tail of an inked dragon peeked out against his skin.
"Marcus," I whispered, my heart breaking into a thousand smaller pieces. "You sat at my Thanksgiving table. You bought Penelope a giant teddy bear for her eighth birthday. You held her on your shoulders at the zoo."
Marcus swallowed hard, his throat moving violently. "Jane... you don't understand the pressure I was under. They were going to murder me. Dad said... Dad said if Samuel went to the DA, the whole family would fall apart!"
"Marcus, shut your mouth!" Richard roared, springing up from the couch with a sudden, terrifying surge of energy. "She’s fishing! She doesn't have enough to take to the cops!"
"I don't need to take it to the cops yet," I said, sliding the papers back into the folder and hugging it tightly against my chest. "Because the cops are corrupt enough in this town that your friends on the city council might slow things down. No, I sent a duplicate folder to someone else."
Eleanor’s face contorted in rage. "To who?!"
"To the men Marcus owes forty thousand dollars to," I said with a terrifyingly calm smile. "You see, Mother... Samuel figured out who Marcus was paying. A man named Victor Vance. I called Mr. Vance yesterday. I told him that the reason Marcus hadn't paid his remaining balance was that you used his money to fund a last-minute luxury trip to Hawaii. I sent Mr. Vance your flight itineraries, your hotel address, and the exact balance of your offshore bank accounts."
Right on cue, Marcus’s phone began to ring in his pocket.
The ringtone bounced off the quiet walls of my living room—a loud, jarring chime that sounded like a death knell.
Marcus pulled out his phone with a shaking hand. The caller ID read simply: UNKNOWN CELL.
"Don't answer it," Eleanor warned, her voice trembling with genuine terror now. "Marcus, give me the phone!"
Marcus didn't answer it. Instead, the phone chimed with an incoming text message. He looked down at the screen, and his face turned the color of chalk.
"What is it?" Richard demanded, grabbing his son by the shoulder. "Marcus, what does it say?!"
Marcus slowly lifted the screen so my parents could see it.
It was a photo taken less than thirty seconds ago from outside my house. It showed the rear license plate of Marcus’s rental SUV, framed by the dark interior of a blacked-out sedan parked across the street.
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Beneath the photo was a short text message:
We know you’re inside. We want the forty grand, plus fifty percent interest for making us wait while you were in Maui. You have ten minutes, or we come through the front door.
