Chương 4 - The Web of the Holloway Bloodline
The sun came up through the live oaks like dirty brass, yellow and sulfurous.
By eight in the morning, the humidity was ninety percent. The marsh smelled of low tide—sulfur, rotting fiddler crabs, and the ancient, brackish stink of decomposing peat. A gray skiff with an outboard motor drifted slowly past the mouth of the private canal, its wake sending little brown ripples against the limestone riprap. Two men were in it, wearing yellow oilskin bibs and ball caps pulled low. They had fishing rods propped against the gunwale, but their lines weren't in the water; they were looking at the roofline of the house through binoculars.
Trent stood at the corner window of Grant’s study on the second floor, a digital rangefinder pressed to his eye.
"Julian Langford’s boys," Trent said. "The ones from the Brunswick fertilizer terminal. They aren't local."
Grant was sitting at the oak table, stripping a .45 down to its firing pin with an oily rag. The parts lay in neat, parallel lines on a green felt mat: slide, barrel, recoil spring, guide rod, frame.
"Desmond doesn't use local boys for this," Grant said without looking up. "Local boys have uncles who work for me. He’s using Julian’s private security. Off-duty deputies from Glynn County who don't know who I am until the coroner tells them."
"They know who you are, Grant," Trent murmured, lowering the glass. "They just know Desmond told them the board voted last night."
Grant stopped his thumb on the barrel lug. "What board?"
Trent turned around. He looked older this morning; the blue shadows under his eyes were the color of bruised plums.
"Julian Langford called an extraordinary meeting of the terminal syndicate at seven this morning. At the DeSoto Hotel. Desmond held your proxy."
"I didn't give him my proxy."
"He had the power of attorney you signed in 2021," Trent said, pulling a folded legal sheet from his back pocket. "The one for the London acquisitions. It had a twenty-four-month renewal clause unless revoked in writing before a notary. You never revoked it, Grant. You were in the marsh burying an empty box when the renewal date passed."
Grant picked up the barrel. He held it up to the morning light, squinting through the bore. The rifling was clean, sharp, spiraling into the dark chamber like an iron drill.
"So Desmond signed the merger," Grant said.
"He signed the merger," Trent agreed. "Monica Langford’s father gets forty-nine percent of the deep-water berths. Desmond gets twenty percent of the Langford shipping fleet. And your marriage to Monica is set for Saturday afternoon at the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist. It was on the front page of the *Morning News* forty minutes ago."
Grant lowered the barrel.
He clicked it into the slide. Slid the recoil spring into place. Pushed the slide onto the frame until the steel rails engaged with a sharp, dry *snick*.
"Where’s Jolene?"
"Downstairs. Mrs. Gable has her in the kitchen. She’s trying to get her to drink tea with ginger. The Beaufort doctor was right, Grant—she’s running a low fever. The infection in her lungs from that swamp water in January never cleared out completely. She’s whistling when she breathes."
Grant stood up. He shoved the magazine into the grip, racked it once, and let the hammer down with his thumb.
"Get the doctor," he said.
"Grant, Vance is gone. The other doctors in the county belong to the hospital board, and Julian Langford’s cousin is the chairman—"
"I didn't say get a hospital doctor," Grant said. He looked at Trent, his eyes small, cold, flat as slate coins. "Call Sarah Ramos. The one who patched up the boys from the river run three years ago. Tell her to bring an ultrasound unit and two units of O-negative. If she asks who it’s for, tell her it’s for the Holloway heir."
Trent blinked once behind his spectacles. His mouth opened slightly, then closed.
"She’ll want cash," Trent said.
"Open the floor safe in the pantry," Grant said, walking toward the study door. "Take three bundles. If she wants more, tell her she gets the exclusive contract for the dock clinics for the next ten years. Move."
***
In the kitchen, the air was cooler, kept down by an old window unit that rattled like a tractor.
Jolene sat at the long pine table. She had her hands wrapped around a white ceramic mug, her head bowed over the steam. She was wearing a heavy wool sweater of Grant’s that swallowed her hands, the collar pulled up under her ears. Her face had the waxy, bloodless look of lard, but her cheeks were spotted with two round, unnatural circles of red.
Grant came in and pulled out the bench beside her.
He didn't touch her immediately. He sat with his forearms on the wood, looking at her profile—the pale, stubborn slope of her nose, the way her dry lips parted slightly as she fought for air.
"You have a fever," he said.
"It's just the heat," she whispered, not looking at him. "Savannah in June. You know how it is."
"It's not the heat."
He reached out. His fingers were cool from the air conditioning; he laid the back of two fingers against the side of her neck, just beneath the jaw. Her pulse was fast, shallow, like a bird caught in a chimney.
"The doctor will be here in an hour," he said.
"I don't want a doctor," she said, her voice rising, brittle with panic. "Grant, no. If a doctor comes, they write things down. They have to file the certificates with the county. Desmond will see the name—"
"Desmond already knows," Grant said softly.
She froze. The mug tilted in her hand; a brown splash of ginger tea hit the pine table.
"He knows?"
"He knows Vance didn't catch the five o'clock boat," Grant said. "He knows Vance talked before he got into the car. By now, Julian Langford has four cars on the river road and two boats in the creek."
Jolene looked at him then, her gray-blue eyes wide, the pupils dilated with fever and terror.
"Then why are we sitting here?" she choked out. She tried to stand, her hands slipping on the pine wood, her knees shaking under the weight of her belly. "We have to go north. We can get to Charleston before they watch the trains—"
Grant caught her by the elbows. He lifted her back onto the bench, firmly, not letting her fight him.
"We aren't running, Jolene."
"He has the police, Grant! He has the mayor’s office! He has the Langfords!"
"He has paper," Grant said.
His voice was so low it barely carried over the rattle of the window unit, but it had the weight of an iron anchor falling into forty fathoms of mud.
"Desmond has paper," he repeated. "He has signatures. He has lawyers in linen suits who eat lunch at the Oglethorpe Club and talk about maritime law. But he doesn't have the docks."
He leaned in until his forehead was three inches from hers.
"He thinks forty men with Glynn County badges can take the river away from me," Grant murmured. "He thinks because he raised me, he knows where the iron ends and the tallow begins. He forgot who built the sea wall. My daddy didn't build it with contracts, Jolene. He built it with three hundred men who had thirty-year mortgages and children in the parish school, and whose fathers took their pay in silver coin when the banks failed in thirty-two."
He touched her belly through the wool sweater.
This time, the child didn't kick. It shifted, slow, heavy, pressing against his palm with a quiet, stubborn insistence.
"You stayed five months in that cellar because you thought I was a monster," Grant said. His thumb stroked the curve of her side, slow, steady, rhythmic. "You were right. I am. But I’m your monster, Jolene. I was yours the day you sat on the crate behind the third warehouse and told me my fuel dockets were short sixty dollars."
A small, wet sound came from her throat—half a sob, half a dry laugh.
"It was eighty dollars," she whispered.
"It was eighty," he agreed, the ghost of a smile touching his scarred mouth before it disappeared back into the gray stone of his face. "And you wouldn't take the five-dollar tip I gave you to forget the difference."
"Because you were stealing it from yourself," she said.
"That’s right," he said. "And now Desmond is trying to steal it from me. From us."
The back door opened.
Mrs. Gable stepped in, carrying a black leather bag and followed by a woman in her late thirties with short, curly black hair, wearing green surgical scrubs and carrying an aluminum equipment case.
Sarah Ramos didn't look at the house. She didn't look at the silver on the sideboard. She set the case on the kitchen table, popped the latches with two sharp clicks, and looked directly at Jolene.
May you like
"Get her on the table," Ramos said to Grant. "And get those wet clothes off her. If that’s a pulmonary edema, we have about forty minutes before the baby runs out of oxygen."
***
