Chương 2
Ethan recovered enough to begin making calls.
His first went unanswered.
His second did not.
He turned away and spoke quietly, but the deck had become so silent that everyone could hear pieces.
“Martin, there’s some kind of—no. No, listen to me. I need you to call Peter.”
A pause.
“I don’t care what time it is.”
Another pause.
“No. She’s here.”
He glanced down at Claire.
“Yes.”
Vanessa had stopped touching the sapphire. Her hands hung at her sides now.
“Who’s Martin?” she asked.
Ethan ignored her.
“Ethan.”
He covered the phone.
“Not now.”
“You told me the accounts were separate.”
“Vanessa.”
“You told me nothing could touch my account.”
Claire watched that exchange carefully.
It was the first thing Vanessa said that did not sound rehearsed.
The patrol vessel came alongside with its blue lights washing over the hull. A loudspeaker ordered the yacht’s occupants to remain where they were while federal personnel boarded.
One of the caterers muttered, “Jesus.”
Claire looked toward him without thinking.
He was young enough to be one of her interns.
“Sorry,” he said.
“For what?”
“I don’t know.”
That was the first normal thing anyone had said to her in twenty minutes.
Two Coast Guard officers came aboard first, followed by three people in dark jackets. One of the jackets had FBI printed across the front. Claire recognized Special Agent Daniel Mercer from the conference room at a law firm in Manhattan three days earlier. He looked different on a yacht at midnight. Smaller, somehow. More tired.
Mercer approached her without smiling.
“Mrs. Bennett.”
“Claire.”
“Are you safe?”
“Yes.”
“Is anyone armed?”
She looked at Ethan.
He stared back.
“No.”
Mercer nodded to another agent, who moved toward the staircase.
Ethan lifted both hands.
“This is insane.”
“Mr. Bennett, please stay where you are.”
“You’re boarding a privately owned vessel without—”
“We have the documentation.”
“What documentation?”
Mercer did not answer him.
That silence frightened Ethan more effectively than any accusation could have.
Vanessa began removing the sapphire.
Mercer saw her.
“Ma’am, please leave that where it is.”
Her fingers froze at the clasp.
“This?”
“Yes.”
“It belongs to me.”
Claire said nothing.
Vanessa looked down at her.
“He gave it to me.”
“I heard you.”
“I didn’t steal it.”
Mercer stepped between their lines of sight.
“Ms. Cole, nobody is asking you to make a statement right now.”
“I am making a statement.”
“Then I’m advising you to stop.”
That finally shut her up.
An agent photographed the necklace where it rested against her gown. Another asked Vanessa not to touch it until they had documented its condition. She looked offended by the request, then frightened by her own offense, as though she had suddenly remembered that indignation was no longer the most useful emotion available to her.
Ethan tried to move down the staircase.
The agent at the bottom raised a hand.
“Stay there, sir.”
“My wife is standing down there.”
Claire almost corrected him.
She did not.
Ethan looked at her again.
There were more words in his face than she had heard from him in months.
Help me.
Don’t do this.
You don’t understand.
You owe me.
We built this together.
She understood all of them.
That was part of the problem.
Mercer asked Claire for the keycard.
She looked down.
The black card remained on the console where she had slammed it. The engraved silver B had a small scratch across the lower curve, damage caused three years earlier when Ethan dropped it on a stone dock in Saint-Tropez and blamed the captain for leaving a towel in his path.
Claire picked it up by the edges.
For a strange second she did not want to hand it over.
The card had opened the yacht for five years. It had started the engines. It had controlled guest access. It had been inside Ethan’s wallet on family trips and inside Claire’s clutch at fundraisers. Her nephew had once asked why rich people needed a key that looked like a hotel card.
Because everything expensive comes with an access system, she had told him.
At the time she had thought she was joking.
Mercer held out an evidence sleeve.
Claire placed the card inside.
“You understand,” he said quietly, “this may take a while.”
She nodded.
He did not mean the keycard.
By three in the morning, Claire was sitting in the rear seat of an SUV wearing an ivory satin gown under a gray FBI windbreaker someone had given her because the temperature had dropped.
Her feet hurt.
Her left shoe was missing.
She had no idea when she had lost it.
Rachel sat beside her, still in the navy pantsuit she had worn to the office that morning. At forty-two, Rachel had a face that gave away almost nothing unless she wanted it to. She handed Claire a bottle of water.
“Drink.”
Claire took it.
“I hate when you order me around.”
“I know.”
“I’m technically your boss.”
“Currently debatable.”
Claire looked at her.
Rachel’s mouth twitched.
It was the closest either of them came to laughing.
Across the marina, agents were still moving on and off the yacht. Ethan had been escorted to a separate vehicle, not in handcuffs. Vanessa had left with an attorney Claire recognized from television, a white-haired woman who represented musicians, athletes, and people who posted statements using the phrase inaccurate media narrative.
Claire unscrewed the water bottle.
“Did he call Peter?”
“Yes.”
“Did Peter answer?”
“Eventually.”
Peter Lang was Bennett Marine Holdings’ board chairman and had been Ethan’s mentor before Claire married him. Seventy-one, twice divorced, allergic to email, a believer in handwritten thank-you notes and hostile acquisitions, Peter had a talent for treating catastrophe as an accounting problem.
“What did he say?”
“He wants an emergency board meeting at eight.”
Claire checked the time.
3:14 a.m.
“Of course he does.”
May you like
“He also told me to make sure no one from the company speaks to the press.”
“Anyone speaking to the press?”
