Chapter 5 - The Reckoning at Midnight
When the twin headlights of my truck illuminated the driveway of Sullivan Manor, the scene looked like an armed standoff. Three of Boyd’s security guards stood shoulder-to-shoulder on the front steps, their shotguns held at low ready. Through the tall Palladian windows of the library, I could see Walter Briggs pacing furiously, while Tiffany sat on the leather chesterfield sofa, smoking nervously and shouting into an uncharged mobile phone.
The moment the engine cut out, the front door of the main house opened, and the pediatric nurse stepped onto the veranda, holding Hazel securely against her shoulder.
Megan let out a raw, wordless cry that tore the silence of the night in two. She threw open the truck door, stumbled on her bruised feet, and caught herself on the front fender before breaking into a desperate, limping run across the white gravel.
“Hazel! My baby! Hazel!”
The nurse, tears streaming down her own cheeks, stepped forward and placed the fragile, oxygen-tubed infant directly into Megan’s trembling arms.
I stood by the truck bed, holding Mason and Bryce against my chest, watching as Megan dropped to the grass under the warm yellow lights of the mansion. She buried her face in the baby girl’s blanket, inhaling the sweet, powdery scent of her flesh, kissing her forehead, her eyelids, her tiny button nose. Hazel’s small gray eyes fluttered open, and for the first time that night, the baby let out a tiny, soft coo, her hand curling around the dirty strap of Megan’s tank top. The twins woke up and began to babble, their little hands reaching out instinctively toward their sister. For the first time in thirteen months, my three children were together in the same space.
Behind me, the heavy wooden doors of the library rattled. Boyd unlocked the exterior deadbolt and dragged Walter Briggs out onto the veranda by his collar. Tiffany followed closely behind, her ivory designer gown covered in ash from her cigarettes, her face twisted in sneering, desperate contempt.
“Garrett, this is absurd!” Tiffany shouted, pointing an accusatory finger at Megan on the lawn. “Look at her! She’s an unstable vagrant! She abandoned those children in the woods! Walter was only protecting your family legacy by keeping that child under medical observation! You can’t take the word of a tramp over mine!”
I walked slowly up the stone steps, my boots clicking with rhythmic finality against the limestone. I stopped two feet from Tiffany, looking down into the face of the woman I had almost married.
“You paid Russell Cole eighty thousand dollars from your family’s shell holding firm,” I said, my voice dead and devoid of any warmth. “You paid a digital graphics designer on West End Avenue three thousand dollars to paste Megan’s face onto a photograph taken at the Gatlinburg River Inn. And you gave Walter the key to my grandmother’s jewelry vault.”
Tiffany took a step back, her lower lip trembling. “You don’t have proof of that.”
“The Metro District Attorney is pulling into the driveway right now, Tiffany,” I said, gesturing toward the line of blue and red flashing lights sweeping through the wrought-iron gates. Five Metro patrol units and an unmarked state investigator sedan came gliding up the gravel in perfect formation, siren chirps echoing off the stone walls.
“Walter,” I said, turning to the man who had worked for my father for a quarter of a century. “You told me my father wanted you to have the Chattanooga logistics hub. But you forgot one thing. My father kept handwritten journals in the vault behind the study bookshelf. I read them when I was eighteen. He wrote that you were a thief who couldn't be trusted with an empty envelope, but he kept you on payroll out of pity for your late mother.”
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Walter’s jaw worked soundlessly. The cold, calculated arrogance vanished from his eyes, replaced by the hollow, grey realization of total ruin.
Two uniformed detectives bounded up the steps with sets of high-tensile steel handcuffs. Within thirty seconds, Walter Briggs and Tiffany Vance were read their constitutional rights on the front porch of Sullivan Manor, their hands cuffed behind their backs as the blue strobe lights painted their pale faces.
