Chapter 108 - Caleb's Broken Confession
"They’re in the bedroom, asleep," Caleb wept, his breath coming in jagged, shallow gasps. "The hotel is the Hilton at Logan. Right on the airport grounds. Tori told me... she told me we were waiting for an escort to take us to a private charter for Zurich. But then two men in suits came up to the suite an hour ago. They didn't talk to me. They talked to her. They took the boys' birth certificates and my passport."
"And Arthur?" I asked, keeping my tone steady. "What did she say about your father?"
"She said Dad was waiting for us," Caleb choked out. "She said he never died, Mom. She told me you were insane, that you stole the family trust files and ran off to Europe because you had dementia! She said the men in Lisbon were private medical escorts trying to bring you home before you destroyed the family!"
I leaned my forehead against the cold steering wheel of the Subaru, letting out a single, bitter laugh.
"And you believed her, Caleb? After everything?"
"I didn't know what to believe!" he yelled, his voice breaking into that familiar, juvenile whine that used to make me want to shake him until his teeth rattled. "Dad was the one who controlled everything! The trusts, the house, the college funds! When he died, the debts started piling up... the bank sent notices saying the mortgage hadn't been paid in two years! Then Tori said she had a way out... she said Dad had left an emergency protocol in Japan..."
"Tori is a bagman, Caleb," I said cold and clear. "She was paid two hundred thousand dollars through a shell company in the Cayman Islands to ensure I stayed locked in that farmhouse until the Belize deed cleared. When I bought that ticket to Lisbon, she botched the timeline. Your father is sitting in Zurich watching his paper empire burn, and the men outside your hotel room are not there to take you to a private jet."
The line went dead silent. Only Caleb's ragged breathing came through the speaker.
May you like
"What do you mean?" he whispered.
"I mean dead men don't leave witnesses," I told him. "Gather the children. Do not pack bags. Do not put on their coats. Put them in the service elevator at five-fifteen. If you aren't down at the ground-level loading dock when I pull in, I am going to Switzerland without you, and you can explain to your father why his grandchildren are orphans."
