“You ruined the wedding,” Cahill announced, eyes on me, glaring, flushed and sweating, looking like he was about to have a heart attack.
“I did,” I conceded with a shrug. “And I get why you’d be pissed about that,” I said to Cahill. “But I figured you’d be thrilled,” I said to Reed.
“Why would he be happy?”
“Because he’s in love with your daughter,” I said matter-of-factly, answering Cahill.
He shook his head. “David wants to be rich, as does Allen”—he nodded toward Duvall—“as do I.”
I focused on Reed. “So that was all crap you told me?”
“No,” he said, squinting, looking uncomfortable as he tugged on the collar of his shirt. “It’s just… even not marrying Emery, she’s not going to look at me. It’ll be another of those rich entitled assholes who jets off to Paris or Rome.”
“Okay, so you need Emery’s land,” I said, turning my attention back to Cahill. “And you know about that because of the geologist.”
“There’s nothing on my land,” Cahill explained to me. “It’s all on Emery’s.”
“You mean on the grazing land.”
“No, I mean on Andrea’s private land, on the land where Emery wants to put the resort.”
“There’s no way that Emery Dodd knows that his wife’s family had any private land. He thinks it all belongs to Darrow.”
“I know that,” Cahill snarled at me. “But he’s wrong. I had Duvall remove all those records that show the exact property lines between what belongs to Darrow and what belonged specifically to Andrea’s family the night she died.”
“You cheating son of a bitch,” I rebuked him. “It’s Emery who will actually take care of the town when the resort goes in, not you, and not Darrow.”
He was fuming, utterly enraged over the turn of fortune.
“And when Emery called Anne to talk about the deal, as any good builder would, she went to City Hall to look at the deeds and see where the property lines were.”
“Yes,” Mr. Duvall answered me, lifting the gun. “So now, unfortunately, we have no choice but to eliminate both you and Ms. Stratton.”
“And what about Peter Bannon? Why kill him?”
“Because even though we hired him,” Duvall explained, “he wasn’t comfortable with not providing Emery with the same information he gave us.”
“Poor guy, killed for being ethical,” I quipped, hearing my phone ring again, hoping Emery would find it odd I wasn’t picking up and not annoying enough to just get me a club sandwich and a strawberry shake. “So who did the honors there?”
“That was me,” Duvall said, shrugging, making a face. “Why does it matter? You and Ms. Stratton will have a similar accident, and then everything can go back to the way it was.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning that Emery will marry Lydia, and once that’s done and he signs over the company to the third-party just as Mr. Cahill will sign over the lumberyard, once it’s one big conglomerate, the mining can begin.”
“Because the third-party joint company is actually one of yours.”
“You’re smarter than you look, Mr. Calder,” Duvall told me.
“Yeah, I get that a lot,” I said, exhaling, starting to worry about how I would keep Anne safe while moving as fast as I’d need to. Reed would be first, of course, and I was concerned at that point about Duvall killing Anne. “But tell me, Mr. Cahill, was your daughter in on any of this? Does she know about the land or Darrow or the dead geologist?”
His disgust for my suggestion was evident in his glare. “Don’t be absurd.”
“So you had Lydia ready to throw away her whole future, her shot at finding love, to marry Emery, and all you actually needed was his land.”
“I—”
“What kind of a father are you?”
“Oh, please, Calder. I would have had Lydia divorce Emery before their first anniversary.”
“So the prenup they signed, that protects Lydia’s money from the mill, and Emery’s kids, but the land, that’s all joint property?”
“Exactly.”
“But not Emery’s land; that’s not part of the pot.”
“Of course it is,” Reed snapped at me.
“No. That land doesn’t belong to him. He’s only the trustee. The land belongs to April and Olivia.”
“That’s the holding company,” Duvall argued.
“No,” Anne said, leaning sideways from behind me. “The way the land is zoned, just as you said, it’s separate and owned exclusively by him. But Brann’s correct, even Emery isn’t the actual owner; the land belongs to the girls.”
“And the girls are his alone,” I explained to the men in the living room of my home. “The prenup states that Lydia can never adopt them.”
“Which means that anything we find on their land, is theirs,” Duvall said, staring at me blankly before turning to Cahill.
“You should know,” I said to Duvall. “You’re the one who told me about it the very first day I hit town.”
“Fucking, Calder,” Reed swore, lifting the Glock, levelling it at me. “Now you’re going to make us kill Emery’s kids!”