My brother screamed when Dad collapsed beside the Thanksgiving turkey, but his next words revealed a shocking secret about Grandpa's mysterious death three years earlier…

The flashing lights were still three hundred yards down the winding, ice-slicked driveway, crawling through the blizzard behind the yellow headlights of a town plow, when Reid Tolland lost the last shred of his sanity.

He didn't make a sound.

He didn't scream or curse.

He simply rolled to his feet with a sudden, feral agility that I didn't expect from a man who had just taken a liver punch. Before I could cross the room to stop him, Reid darted through the double pocket doors and into the dark expanse of the central gallery.

"Reid!" June screamed from the floor.

"Let him go," I said, reaching for my phone. "There's nowhere for him to run. The ocean is at his back and the police are at the front gate."

"Miles, you don't understand," my mother wept, her voice trembling with a fresh, sharp terror. "The gun cabinet in the library. Conrad keeps the keys in his desk."

My stomach dropped.

August Tolland had been an avid duck hunter in the salt marshes of Scarborough. When he died, Conrad had moved August’s collection of vintage firearms into the walnut-paneled library at the far end of the west wing—including a pair of Belgian Browning semi-automatic twelve-gauge shotguns and a customized Winchester Model 70 bolt-action rifle chambered in .30-06.

"Marshall," I ordered, turning toward the cowering attorney. "Stay with Conrad. If his breathing stops, you push down on his chest until your hands break. If he dies, I swear to God I'll testify that you poisoned the wine yourself."

Marshall scrambled to Conrad’s side like an obedient hound, his hands shaking as he placed them on my father’s sternum.

I turned and sprinted out of the dining room into the dark gallery.

The west wing of the estate was pitch-black. The emergency generator only powered the essential circuits—the dining room, the kitchen refrigerators, and the heating plant. The long, vaulted hallway, lined with portraits of grim-faced Tolland ancestors who had made their fortunes in timber, rum, and clipper ships, smelled of freezing sea spray and old floor wax.

The wind outside was a continuous roar, vibrating the heavy timber frames of the house.

At the far end of the corridor, eighty feet away, a door stood ajar. A faint sliver of yellow light spilled across the hardwood—the beam of a flashlight.

Then came the sharp, unmistakable metallic *clack-clack* of a bolt cycling a high-caliber round into a rifle chamber.

I flattened my back against the wall, stepping into the deep shadow of an antique walnut grandfather clock. My boots made no sound on the runner rug.

"Reid," I called out, my voice measured, steady, echoing down the high hallway. "Put it down."

From inside the library, Reid’s voice came back—shrill, breathless, bouncing off the books and the paneling like a trapped bird.

"You think you're going to walk out of here with eight million dollars, Miles? You think you're going to take the shipyards?"

"I don't give a damn about the eight million dollars, Reid," I said, taking two slow, silent steps forward through the dark. "I never asked for August's money. I didn't even know it existed until Clara Vance sent me the ledger."

"LIAR!" Reid screamed.

A shadow moved across the sliver of light in the doorway.

"You always looked down on us! You and your little wooden boats! You thought you were so pure because you didn't work in the corporate office! But you're a Tolland, Miles! Your blood is just as dirty as mine! Grandpa loved you because you were stubborn, not because you were good!"

"Grandpa loved me because I didn't steal from him, Reid," I said, closing the distance. Forty feet now. "And because I didn't lock him in a heated box to suffocate on his own blood."

A dry, rattling sob came from the library.

"Dad told me August had cancer," Reid whimpered. The rifle barrel clinked against something metallic—probably the brass desk lamp. "He told me the old man had six months to live anyway. He said the audit would destroy the family name before August died. He said we were putting him out of his misery. He lied to me, Miles! He lied to me about everything!"

"Then help me put him away," I said, now twenty feet from the door. I could see the reflection of the snowstorm outside the library’s bay windows, flashing blue and red through the driving sleet. "The police are in the driveway, Reid. You walk out with your hands up. You tell them Conrad orchestrated the whole thing. You cooperate with the Attorney General. You might get twenty years, but you won't die on a gurney in the state prison."

"Twenty years?" Reid laughed—a sound so cracked, so utterly broken, that it raised the hair on my arms. "In a cage? You think Reid Tolland can survive twenty years in Thomaston with the men our father put away? I wouldn't last a week."

The door swung fully open.

Reid stepped into the hallway.

He had the Winchester .30-06 resting against his hip, his finger hooked inside the trigger guard. In his left hand, he held a tactical flashlight, its high-powered LED beam blinding me instantly as he snapped it toward my eyes.

"Turn around, Miles," Reid whispered.

The white light burned against my retinas. I raised my hand slightly to shield my vision, keeping my weight balanced on the balls of my feet.

"Reid, think about what you're doing."

"I am thinking," Reid said. The barrel of the heavy hunting rifle came up, leveling directly at my chest. Through the glare of the flashlight, I could see his face—covered in snot and tears, his hair matted with sweat, his eyes completely hollow. "If you die, the insurance pays out. Dad’s going to prison. Mom’s useless. That means the Delaware money belongs to me. Twenty million dollars. I can hire the best defense team in the country. I can beat the murder rap. Marshall will keep his mouth shut if I pay him two million."

"You're not going to pull that trigger, Reid."

"Watch me."

His knuckle whitened against the steel trigger.

A loud, shattering *CRACK* echoed through the hallway.

It wasn't a gunshot.

It was the heavy, brass-bound base of an antique ship’s barometer slamming into the side of Reid’s temple.

Reid’s head snapped violently to the right. The rifle discharged with a deafening, concussive roar that blew out the nearest window pane and tore a four-inch hole through the plaster ceiling, showering us both in white dust and shattered glass.

Reid crumpled to the floorboards like an empty sack of grain, the heavy Winchester slipping from his fingers.

Standing behind him in the dark hallway, holding the blood-stained brass barometer in her shaking, arthritic hands, was June Tolland.

Her hair was completely undone now, falling across her face like a gray shroud. Her chest heaved. She looked down at her eldest son lying unconscious at her feet, then looked up at me through the drifting plaster dust.

"I didn't stop them three years ago, Miles," she whispered, her voice barely audible over the roaring wind rushing through the shattered window.

The brass barometer slipped from her fingers, landing on Reid’s back with a dull, hollow thud.