Chapter 2 - THE MAN IN THE FIRE
Mave didn't believe him.
That was the sensible response.
She had been kidnapped, tied to a chair and informed by a criminal that her father might have lied about the worst night of her life.
Believing Declan would have been madness.
So she tried to escape.
Twenty-three minutes later, Finn found her halfway over a rusted fence behind the warehouse.
“Are you serious?”
“Completely.”
“You've got no shoes.”
“I noticed.”
“There’s broken glass everywhere.”
“Also noticed.”
Finn sighed.
“You Collins women are exhausting.”
“Then let me leave.”
“I like being alive.”
He pointed back toward the warehouse.
“Get down.”
“No.”
“Mave.”
“No.”
A black SUV rolled around the corner.
Declan stepped out.
He looked at Mave.
Then the fence.
Then her bare feet.
“Don't say it,” she warned.
“I wasn't going to.”
“Yes, you were.”
He removed his coat and threw it over a section of wire.
“Climb down on that side.”
She stared.
“You're helping me escape?”
“No. I'm preventing tetanus.”
Mave almost laughed.
She hated that.
She climbed down.
“I want a phone.”
Declan handed her his.
She blinked.
“Call your father.”
Suspicion tightened her chest.
“Why?”
“Ask him where you were on November seventeenth.”
“I know where I was.”
“Ask who else was there.”
Mave dialed.
Her father answered immediately.
“Mave?”
She closed her eyes.
“Dad.”
“Where are you?”
“I'm okay.”
“Did Hayes hurt you?”
She looked at Declan.
“No.”
Her father exhaled.
“We're getting you back.”
“Dad, who was at the lake house the night of the fire?”
Silence.
Tiny.
But there.
“Why are you asking?”
“Who was there?”
“You were confused after the fire.”
“That isn't an answer.”
“Mave, listen to me. Declan Hayes is dangerous.”
“So is Gideon?”
Another silence.
“What has he told you?”
Mave's stomach tightened.
“Dad.”
“Mave, don't believe anything Hayes says.”
“Was Sean Hayes at the lake house?”
The line went silent.
Then disconnected.
Mave stared at the phone.
Declan didn't look pleased.
That somehow made it worse.
She called again.
No answer.
A minute later, a message arrived from her father.
DO NOT TELL DECLAN WHAT YOU REMEMBER.
Mave read it twice.
Declan didn't ask to see it.
She handed him the phone anyway.
His jaw tightened.
“Still want to go home?”
“Yes.”
He looked surprised.
“My father lying doesn't give you ownership of me.”
“I never said it did.”
“You said you wouldn't let me leave.”
“Until I know who's trying to kill whom.”
“That's imprisonment.”
“Yes.”
At least he didn't decorate it.
Mave folded her arms.
“Why did you kidnap Chloe?”
Declan's expression changed.
Finally.
The original crime.
“Gideon Blake killed one of my men.”
“So you kidnap his bride?”
“Gideon stole something.”
“What?”
“A ledger.”
“And Chloe has it?”
“No.”
“Then why take her?”
“To stop the wedding.”
Mave stared.
“That's your brilliant plan?”
“It had advantages.”
“Your men kidnapped a woman based on a bathrobe.”
Declan glanced toward Finn.
“We're reviewing procedures.”
Finn looked offended.
Mave nearly smiled again.
Then Declan became serious.
“Gideon needs the marriage.”
“Why?”
“Your father's shipping terminals.”
That made sense.
Arthur Collins owned three struggling freight terminals along the river.
Mave had heard him complain about debt for years.
“The Blakes need those terminals to move something,” Declan continued.
“What?”
“Containers that don't exist on customs records.”
Weapons?
Drugs?
Mave didn't ask.
She didn't want the answer.
“Sean discovered it eleven years ago.”
Her eyes lifted.
“Sean?”
“He was twenty-four. He worked inside Blake Maritime under another name.”
“Why?”
“Because our father was murdered by Patrick Blake.”
Gideon's father.
Declan said it without drama.
“Sean wanted proof.”
“And the lake house?”
“He followed Patrick there.”
Mave remembered shouting.
Men downstairs.
A silver lighter.
A door slamming.
Then fire.
“I was supposed to be at a school concert that night.”
Declan went still.
“What?”
“My father told me to go to the lake house.”
“Why?”
“He said Chloe had left her grandmother's necklace there.”
“How old was Chloe?”
“Twenty.”
“And she didn't go herself?”
“No.”
The answer sounded different now.
Wrong.
Mave stared at the concrete.
“I drove there alone.”
Declan's expression darkened.
“Your father sent his seventeen-year-old daughter to an empty house where Patrick Blake was meeting criminals?”
“I didn't know.”
“No.”
His voice softened.
“But he did.”
That hurt more than it should have.
Mave had spent years defending Arthur Collins.
He was distant because he worked.
He was impatient because he carried the family.
He preferred Chloe because Chloe understood business.
Mave was too sensitive.
Too difficult.
Too damaged after the fire.
There was always an explanation.
Declan knew the look on her face.
“Don't.”
“What?”
“Start defending him before you know what he did.”
“You don't know my father.”
“No.”
He looked toward the docks.
“But I know what men sound like when they use family as an excuse.”
There was history in that sentence.
Before Mave could ask, Finn entered.
“Boss.”
He carried a laptop.
“We got the lake house fire report.”
Declan opened it.
Mave stood beside him.
The report listed one injured victim.
Mave Collins.
No fatalities.
No missing persons.
No Sean Hayes.
Then Finn opened a scanned photograph taken after the fire.
Mave's bedroom window was shattered.
Beneath it, investigators had photographed blood on the snow.
Not hers.
Her blood type was O positive.
The report identified the sample as AB negative.
Declan stared at it.
Sean had been AB negative.
“Why wasn't this investigated?”
Finn scrolled.
“It was.”
He turned the screen.
The supplemental report had been closed two days later.
Authorized by Detective Harold Cross.
Mave knew the name.
Harold Cross had been Gideon Blake's godfather.
And the officer who visited Mave in the hospital and told her:
You were alone in that house.
Sometimes trauma creates people who weren't really there.
Mave sat down.
For eleven years, she had believed her own memory was broken.
May you like
Now she knew someone had broken it for her.
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