Chapter 84 - The Ridge Road to Tangier
The old Peugeot climbed the winding switchbacks of the Rif mountains, engine groaning under the strain of the steep ascent. Scent of burning clutch and scrub cedar filled the cabin. Lind kept checking the rearview mirror every three seconds, his jaw clenched so tight the tendons stood out against his neck.
"He won't let us reach the port," Lind said, shifting hard into third gear as we negotiated a hairpin turn overlooking a thousand-foot drop. "Roland’s money doesn't just run paper in New York. He’s had smuggling routes through Tangier since the late eighties. The harbor police will have our faces by the time we hit the coastal highway."
I opened my shoulder bag and pulled out the worn, cloth-bound notebook. Arthur’s handwriting covered the yellowed leaves—columns of dates, registry numbers of merchant vessels, and nine-digit account codes matching banks that hadn't existed since the fall of the Berlin Wall.
"Arthur knew," I said quietly, tracing the faded ink of my late husband’s handwriting. "He wasn't an innocent bookkeeper who stumbled into Roland's web. He built the foundation for them. That’s why Roland hates me so much. Because Arthur left the kill switch with me, not with the Vance trust."
"Your husband knew Roland was a predator," Lind replied, swerving sharply to avoid a stray goat herd on the gravel shoulder. "Arthur stayed long enough to build the paper trail that could take Roland down without bankrupting Caleb. But Roland found out Arthur was dying and moved the assets first."
"And Caleb?" I asked, a bitter taste rising in my mouth. "Did my son know what he was signing when he put my farmhouse up as collateral?"
"Caleb didn't care to know," Lind said bluntly, not sparing my feelings. "Caleb wanted the luxury apartment in Boston, the private school tuition for the kids, and the illusion that he was a self-made player. Tori was just the enforcer of that vanity. Roland fed their greed just enough to make them compliant decoys."
A sudden crunch of gravel shattered the silence. In the mirror, two black Land Cruisers crested the ridge behind us, moving at breakneck speed, their bull bars glinting under the afternoon sun.
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"Hold on," Lind muttered, dropping his foot to the floorboard. "Tangier is twenty miles out, and the road doesn't have guardrails."
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