Chapter 15: The Twins

"Not now," I said.

"Ris, listen to me. If you get on this boat, I can have you somewhere they can't reach you by noon."

"And the twins?"

"Hesketh has them," I said. "Zip-tied in his boathouse. One of them's bleeding."

He closed his eyes.

"Whoever you are," I said, "right now you're my driver. Pull out of the line."

"Tell me after. When they're home. Pull out of the line, Zeke."

Zeke sat there one more second with his hands on the wheel.

Then he backed out of the lane and drove me to the diner.

Mavis sat with me in the back room while I spread the eight notebooks across the cot.

"What are you looking for?"

"Something Hesketh wants more than he wants me dead."

On the second night I found it.

The fuel contract. Four point one million a year from the mainland supplier.

I'd gotten it eleven cents a gallon under market. I'd been proud of that.

Orson had told the Table I got it at market.

The eleven cents had gone somewhere else.

Every quarter, on his orders, I'd moved it to a Boston bank.

The account belonged to a boat repair company that had never repaired a boat.

"A reserve," he'd called it. "For bad years."

Seven hundred and four thousand dollars, over four years.

He hadn't been saving for bad years.

He'd been saving for Boston.

On the third afternoon I walked into the back room of the yacht club.

Hesketh was at the head of the table. The three old men were in their seats.

The grandson stood behind his grandfather's chair with his arms folded.

I put the envelope down in front of Hesketh and stepped back.

"Orson's statement says the Table is a gang of thieves," I said. "It leaves out that he was robbing you."

Hesketh opened the envelope.

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