Chapter 13: The Gate

Mason's POV

I watched the dinghy until it was a gray speck against the pines.

Then I went below and pulled the engine panel off its screws.

Behind the bilge pump sat a tobacco tin wrapped in electrical tape.

Inside it was the second card.

I had copied the footage the night of the push, before I put the original in the case.

I had never once taken the copy out.

Hallie had the first card and the camera.

She had a green dress that was ruined, a pair of torn hands and no phone.

She also had my sister's husband's house to get into, and she was going to row straight at it.

I knew the Langford place better than I knew my own.

It had three ways in.

The front gate had two guards and a camera.

The sea stairs had a launch parked at the bottom.

The kitchen road had a deputy who had a daughter.

She would take the kitchen road.

The deputy had told her about the stairs.

A man with a daughter does not tell a woman about a door he plans to lock.

So I had to empty the kitchen road, and there was only one way I knew how.

I put the tin in my pocket and ran the boat across the bay to the public landing a mile short of the estate.

I tied up in plain sight and walked the shore road in my last clean shirt, with my bandaged wrists out where anyone could see them.

Three cars passed me, and not one of them slowed down.

The Langford gate was black iron, twelve feet high.

Three years ago, two guards had stood in front of it and told me the funeral was family only.

I had stood on the same gravel and listened to my sister's service through a speaker on a pole.

I walked up to the same two men now, and the younger one went for his radio.

"Tell Mr. Langford's father that Tilda's brother is at the gate," I said. "Tell him I brought the other card."

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