Chapter 8 - The Ghost of Savannah Creek
Garrett reached the edge of Dock Four, his chest heaving, his expensive Italian dress shoes ruined by grease and river water. He scrambled toward the mooring line of the thirty-foot diesel utility launch tethered to the timber pier, his bleeding hands fumbling frantically with the heavy nylon hawser. "Untie the line, Garrett," a voice said from the shadows of the crane tower behind him. Garrett froze, his breath catching in his throat in a ragged, whistling wheeze. He slowly turned around, his back pressed against the salt-encrusted pilings of the dock. Standing ten paces away on the wet concrete was Rosalind. She stood with her boots planted shoulder-width apart on the very ground her father had built, the cold spray of the river misting against her cheeks. She didn't look like a victim. She didn't look like the fragile, exhausted woman he had spent three years slowly poisoning with warm milk and lies. She looked like the storm itself. "Rose..." Garrett stammered, raising his bloody hands in a pathetic, placating gesture, taking a small, shuffling step toward her. "Rose, listen to me... it wasn't what you think. Penelope... she orchestrated it all. She threatened to tell the board about my debts! She forced me to rig the car! She told me she’d kill us both if I didn't get rid of Tobias!" "Save the lies for the jury, Garrett," Rosalind said, her voice dropping into an arctic register that stripped the remaining air from his lungs. "Penelope didn't buy the thallium in Atlanta eighteen months ago. Penelope didn't spend three years holding my hair back while I miscarried our children in the upstairs bathroom. You did that. With your own hands. With your gentle, loving smile." A manic, ugly rage twisted Garrett’s features, shattering the last remnants of his cowardly pleading. He reached inside his ruined suit jacket, withdrew a small, snub-nosed .38 revolver he had hidden in his waistband, and pointed it directly at her forehead. "You should have stayed at the bottom of the river, you stupid bitch!" he screamed, his finger tightening on the trigger. "If I'm going down, I'm taking the Sullivan bloodline with me!" A shadow detached itself from the crane superstructure above him. Tobias dropped from the low maintenance ladder like a falling oak, his boots hitting the concrete with a bone-jarring crash two feet from Garrett’s right flank. Before Garrett could shift his aim, Tobias’s left arm blurred through the mist, catching Garrett’s wrist in an iron vise that twisted the joint until the bones groaned. The revolver fired once, the round ricocheting harmlessly off the steel hull of the barge with a sharp spang, before the weapon was torn from Garrett’s fingers and kicked thirty feet into the murky waters of the drydock basin. Garrett screamed in agony as Tobias drove him face-first into the concrete apron, planting his heavy boot squarely between Garrett’s shoulder blades, pinning him to the ground like a slaughtered steer. "Fifteen years, Garrett," Tobias whispered, leaning down until his lips were an inch from his brother-in-law’s ear, his voice vibrating with the suppressed fury of five thousand days of forced helplessness. "Fifteen years I sat in that chair, watching you walk into my father's house, watching you touch my sister with your filthy hands, pretending I was a broken cripple so your father wouldn't put a bullet through her heart." Tobias reached down, grabbed Garrett by the collar of his bespoke coat, and hauled him off the concrete by his neck, holding him over the edge of the open drydock where the icy, black waters of the river swirled twenty feet below against the concrete sluice gates. "How does the water look, Garrett?" Tobias rasped, his arm trembling with the effort of holding the thrashing man over the abyss. "Is it cold enough for you? Is the current running fast enough toward the sound?" "Please!" Garrett shrieked, his legs flailing over the empty air, his hands clutching desperately at Tobias’s forearms. "Tobias, don't! Don't kill me! I beg you! God, please don't let me drown!" "Tobias," Rosalind’s voice sounded from behind them. Tobias didn't drop him, but his muscles tightened. "He left us to die in the dark, Rose. He watched us drown with a smile on his face." "And that's why we don't drop him," Rosalind said, stepping up to the edge of the pier, looking down into Garrett’s terrified, tear-streaked face with cold, absolute disgust. "A quick death in the river is a coward’s exit. Garrett Thorne is going to spend the next forty years waking up in a concrete cell at six in the morning, wearing an orange jumpsuit, knowing that every dollar of his father's empire was used to rebuild the Sullivan name." Tobias stared into Garrett’s bulging, bloodshot eyes for five endless seconds. Then, with a grunt of pure contempt, he hurled the shivering man backward onto the wet concrete of the pier, away from the water. At that exact moment, the heavy steel security doors of the drydock burst open. A dozen federal agents and state troopers swarmed onto the dock with assault rifles raised, their tactical flashlights cutting through the gray fog. "Federal agents! Nobody move! Hands where we can see them!" The lead agent—a sharp-featured woman with a gold badge pinned to her tactical vest—walked up to where Garrett lay groveling on the concrete, clutching his broken wrist and weeping uncontrollably. She looked at Rosalind, then at Tobias standing tall and unyielding beside her, and gave a slow, respectful nod. "Mrs. Sullivan," the agent said. "I'm Special Agent Carter, FBI Maritime Division. Arthur Thorne and Penelope Sullivan have just been placed under federal arrest in the administrative suite for attempted murder, corporate fraud, and conspiracy to commit murder. We have the transport van waiting for this one." Two troopers stepped forward, hoisted Garrett to his feet, twisted his arms behind his back, and slammed the steel handcuffs shut around his wrists with two deafening, metallic clicks. As they dragged him toward the tunnel, his ruined shoes scraping against the gravel, Garrett looked back over his shoulder one last time. Rosalind stood beside her brother beneath the towering gantry crane, their silhouettes sharp and unbreakable against the clearing morning sky. She didn't look away. She watched him until the darkness of the tunnel swallowed him whole, knowing that the ghost of Savannah Creek had finally claimed its true prey.
