Arranged to the Don, Freed from the Lie novel · Chapter 17 of 24

Chapter 17: Harrison's Last Move

At twenty to one on Sunday morning, the bank's fraud desk called me in Edmund's study.

"Mrs. Carraro, I'm sorry for the hour. Someone tried to wire three million, one hundred thousand dollars out of the Crowninshield reserve account."

I sat up so fast the chair spun.

"To where?"

"A numbered account in the Cayman Islands. The transfer was declined because of the freeze you placed this evening. The request came from a phone pinging inside your own property."

"Inside Harrow House?"

"The boathouse, ma'am."

I thanked her and hung up.

Phoebe was asleep on the leather sofa with her braid over her face.

I woke her by dropping a cushion on her.

"He's in the boathouse," I said.

She sat up, blinking.

"Harrison? I'll get a shovel."

"We aren't going down there."

"Why not?"

"Because he is going to try to leave in the morning," I said, "and I want the whole family standing on that lawn when he does."

She stared at me.

Then she grinned, slowly, and it was the first full grin I had seen on her in two days.

"You're scary," Phoebe said. "Marry him forever."

I laughed, and my eyes stung.

By three o'clock the cousin in the tweed jacket had made forty phone calls.

He turned out to be a retired prosecutor, and he did not need anything explained.

By four, the lawn held folding chairs and quilts and a thermos of coffee, and the cousins sat in them in the dark with their arms folded.

The three women from Arizona, Montreal and Hartford sat in the front row together.

Santino found me on the porch a little after four.

He sat behind me on the top step, with his knees on either side of mine, and put his thumbs into the knot at the base of my neck.

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