Page 88 of Carry on Wayward Son

I sat with the laptop for a moment and let the cold thing in my chest settle into something usable. Then I pulled up my texts.

My father’s message was still sitting there from this morning, unanswered, the way I’d been leaving his messages for two years, since he’d tried to have Willa declared incompetent in order to get his hands on her inheritance from our grandparents.

John:

Last night on the island tonight. Would be good to see you again before I go. Your father.

He signed his texts. He’d always signed his texts, as if a man needed to identify himself to his own son, like the relationship were a piece of correspondence to be filed. I’d read it this morning and felt the familiar weight of not wanting to deal with him, set the phone down, and gone back to the records.

Now it was an opening.

It was his last night on the island. If I wanted to look my father in the eye about this—and I did, with an intensity that had arrived the moment Dax said not buried, not incidental—it was tonight or it was never, Because once he was back on the mainland, behind his assistants and his schedule, getting to him would become a project. Tonight he was reachable, and he wanted to see me, and that wanting was a door I could walk through.

I typed back.

Jace:

Yeah. Meet you at the Bistro. 6:30?

The reply came fast enough that he’d clearly been waiting on it.

John:

Perfect. Glad you reconsidered.

I set the phone down and went to find the others.

They were scattered through the house in the various postures of people who’d been doing tedious work too long. Madden at the dining table with her reading glasses on, Gabi and Layla on the living room floor with documents fanned out between them, Willa in the kitchen doing something with her hands because Willa processed stress by staying in motion. Sawyer had gone to deal with a ferry thing. Rios was at the station. Ford had run to get Peyton from a friend’s. Daniel was back up at Nags Head meeting with his command. The group had thinned the way it did when normal life made its demands.

“I’m going to run down a lead,” I said. “I’ll be back later.” I held up my phone. “Dax sent more. The deeper Ashmore financials. I put it in the shared folder. Start combing through it. There’s a connection to Teller worth chasing.”

Madden looked up over her glasses. “What’s the lead?”

“Let me confirm it first.” I kept my voice easy. “Don’t want to send anyone down a hole if it’s nothing.”

She held my eyes for a second longer than was comfortable, the prosecutor in her noting that I hadn’t actually answered, and then she let it go and looked back at her stack. Willa called something from the kitchen about whether I’d be back for dinner, and I told her not to wait on me.

Layla followed me to the door.

She’d clocked it. Of course she had. She read me the way I read everyone else, and she’d seen something in my face that the others hadn’t. She came to the door with me and waited until we were out of earshot of the living room before she spoke.

“What’s the lead?”

I looked at her. There was no version of this where I lied to her. “Dax found my father connected. Funding Teller’s ventures, and others that run back to Ashmore money.” I watched it land. “He’s leaving the island tonight. I’m going to have dinner with him and feel him out before he goes.”

Her eyes moved over my face, reading the rest of it, the part I hadn’t said. “You haven’t told Willa.”

“I’m not putting it in front of her until I know what it is. It’s connections on paper. It might be nothing. Might be exactly what Dax says, a man who funds things and doesn’t ask questions. She already thinks he’s enough of a monster for what he did to her. I won’t add to that over a maybe.” I paused. “If it turns out to be more, I’ll tell her. But I want to see him first.”

Layla nodded slowly. She understood the impulse to look someone in the eye, to read the truth off them in person rather than off a page. It was what she’d built a career on.

“Be careful,” she said. “Not because I think your dad’s going to do anything. But these aren’t small people, and you’re about to start asking questions in a room you don’t control.”

“I’ll be careful.” I briefly touched her face, the kind of contact I was still getting used to being allowed. “I’ve got my phone. I’ll text you when I’m headed back.”

Koa had gotten up from his spot near the records and come to press against her leg, reading the shift in her the way he read everything. She put her hand on his head.

“Go,” she said. “Find out what he is.”