Chapter 31
Thirty-One
RIOS
By the time Ford showed up, the dining room looked like it had been occupied by a small, determined militia.
Paper covered every surface. Painter’s tape marched up the walls in straight, stubborn lines.
Madden’s borrowed laptop sat open beside a legal pad full of tight handwriting, and my notebook had turned into a mess of arrows and circles and dates.
Somewhere in the middle of it all was a bowl of pretzels Willa had set down, but nobody had touched them.
The dog—Willa’s foster fail-in-waiting—lifted his heavy head when the door clicked, gave Ford a single assessing look, and dropped his chin back onto his paws like Ford hadn’t passed inspection.
Ford came in quietly, shoulders tense, a thumb drive held between two fingers like it might burn him. Bree followed close behind, face pale, eyes fixed on the floor until she looked up and found Madden.
Madden wasn’t in the dining room anymore.
Not exactly. She was there physically, perched at the edge of a chair with her knees drawn in and a mug of coffee braced between her hands.
But she’d pulled that mask I hadn’t realized she’d shed back on, and the woman who sat before me was quieter.
Too controlled. That kind of control wasn’t calm. It was bracing.
Gabi slid in behind Ford and Bree, eyes scanning the walls in a single sweep. She let out a low whistle, then caught herself when she saw Madden’s expression. Daniel came in last, hair damp, in civilian clothes instead of his Coast Guard uniform, but his face was that of a man never fully off duty.
Sawyer came down the hall from the kitchen, Willa right behind him with a bottle of water and a second pot of coffee like she’d anticipated we were about to do something that would drain the room of oxygen.
No one said hello. No one made small talk. Everyone’s eyes shifted to Madden.
She looked at Ford. “You have it?”
Ford nodded once. He held up the thumb drive.
Bree’s hand slid into his without ceremony. Ford squeezed back like he needed to anchor both of them in the same moment.
“How exactly is it that you have this?”
“My daughter found the flash drive. Miles came after it, held us at gunpoint trying to finally get his hands on the information that had been used to blackmail him for years.”
Madden’s face paled. “Oh, my God.”
One corner of Ford’s mouth twitched in reluctant pride.
“Peyton hit him with a stun gun long enough for me to take him down. After that, I made copies of the files before turning the original over to the police because, frankly, I don’t trust Carson further than I could throw him, and I figured someone should have backups. ”
“Sensible. I suspect evidence has a habit of disappearing on this island if it makes the wrong people nervous.” Madden’s eyes shifted to the drive. She stared at it like it was the last card in a game and she was afraid to see what was on the other side.
Willa cleared her throat. “We can go into the living room. Bigger TV.”
Madden’s eyes flicked to her, then to me, then away again. “Sure.”
We moved like the room was full of tripwires.
The living room at Sutter House was comfortable in a way that made no sense with the tension packed into it.
The couches were soft, the rugs comfortably worn, the throw blankets folded with Willa’s precise attention.
The windows looked out over a strip of dunes and the darkened water beyond.
Moonlight threw everything into silver and shadow like it wanted to soften the edges of what we were doing.
It didn’t help.
Willa hooked another laptop to the TV without speaking before gesturing for Ford to take over.
He didn’t look at Madden while he plugged the drive into the side.
Bree hovered close, her fingers still wrapped around his hand.
Daniel took the armchair nearest the door.
Sawyer and Willa sat together on one couch, shoulders squared.
Gabi sank onto the other couch, her knees bouncing once before she forced them still.
I ended up standing for a second because sitting felt too much like settling in, then I took the chair closest to Madden.
Madden sat on the edge of the couch like she might need to launch herself across the room at any moment. Her coffee mug was gone now. Empty now, her fingers kept flexing and closing as if she was holding something invisible and sharp.
Ford’s cursor hovered over two files. “Are you sure you’re ready for this?”
“She lived it,” Madden bit out. “I can survive watching it.”
Grainy cellphone footage filled the TV. Miles Busby, younger, face sharper, shoulders narrower, stood in front of the faded logo of his family’s marina. The camera shook like whoever was filming didn’t care about quality. Whoever was filming cared about the threat.
Madden’s body froze as an off-screen voice spoke conversationally about an offer.
Miles outright refused to launder dirty money through the family business.
When the fist shot into frame and hit Miles in the gut, Madden flinched hard enough her hand jerked against the couch cushion.
She caught herself immediately, like she was offended by her own reaction.
The attacker kept his tone easy. He made it sound like a business deal. Either Miles took the deal or someone he cared about paid the price.
Miles spat on the ground and snarled, “Fuck you.”
Madden’s breath came shallow. Her eyes didn’t blink. She looked like she was watching evidence she’d already known existed, but the reality of it was landing differently now that it was playing in front of her like this.
The video ended.
For a second, no one moved. The only sounds in the room were the ocean outside and the hum of the laptop fan.
Madden’s voice came out low. “That’s—”
“Yeah.” I didn’t know what else to offer her in that moment. Yes, that’s your cousin. Yes, that’s your family’s blood. Yes, someone decided they could put hands on him and call it leverage.
She swallowed once. “That was the one used in court for Miles’s trial.”
Ford nodded without looking at her. “Yeah.”
Her eyes shifted to the second file on the screen.
There was a weight to that movement that made my stomach tighten.
I knew what was coming. I’d known since Ford showed me last year.
Since Bree had gone white and silent and then angry.
Since we’d all sat in a room and let the reality settle, and none of us had been able to move for a long minute afterward.
Madden didn’t have that. She had only the name Gwen Busby that lived in every part of this island’s history and in every part of her own.
Ford’s hand hovered over the trackpad. He looked directly at Madden for the first time since we’d sat down. “You sure?”
Madden didn’t hesitate. “Play it.”
Ford clicked.
The second video was worse. Not in quality. It was actually less grainy than the first. Though the light was dimmer, it was still plenty bright to show metal walls behind a trembling body.
Gwen. Just fifteen years old. Duct tape across her mouth. Wrists bound behind her back. Dark hair tangled around her face, eyes huge and wet, darting like an animal trapped in a place it couldn’t understand.
Madden made a sound that wasn’t a word. It didn’t come from her throat so much as from somewhere deep in her chest, the kind of sound you made when your body reacted before your mind could shape it into language.
The camera panned across Gwen’s form with slow deliberation, like the person filming wanted the viewer to see every detail.
Then the off-screen voice spoke.
“You were warned, Busby. We own you now.”
Madden’s hand flew to her mouth. Her eyes didn’t leave the screen. Her whole body locked. She didn’t blink. She didn’t breathe. She sat like she’d been nailed to the couch.
The video cut to black. The TV screen went dark, reflecting all of us back in a distorted, dim mirror. Ford’s laptop cursor hovered. No one moved.
Madden lowered her hand. Her voice was quiet, which was worse than if she’d shouted. “You knew?”
No one answered fast enough.
She turned her head slowly, looking at each of us as if she couldn’t make sense of why the room was full of people who’d sat with this without her. “All this time you knew?” Her gaze landed on me and held. “You knew?”
My chest tightened. I opened my mouth. Nothing came out on the first try because there wasn’t a clean sentence that would fix it. “We didn’t know,” I said, because the words mattered and because the truth mattered even if it was messy. “We suspected.”
Her eyes narrowed. “You saw this.”
“Yes.” I didn’t look away. I didn’t let myself soften it with qualifiers. “We saw it.”
“And you didn’t tell me.”
My jaw clenched. “We thought you already had the context.”
“Why would you think that?” Her voice didn’t rise. That was the part that made my blood run colder. She wasn’t spiraling. She was cutting.
Because you’re family, I wanted to say. Because this island devoured your cousin and then fed you a story that everyone could live with, and I assumed the people who loved you would have told you everything they’d learned, even if it tore them apart.
Instead, I said the part that mattered. “We didn’t deliberately keep this from you.”
Madden stared at me like she didn’t believe I could use the word deliberately and mean it.
Gabi shifted, hands twisting in her lap. “Madden—”
Madden’s head snapped toward her. “You too?”
Gabi’s chin lifted, eyes shining. “Yes.”
“And no one thought I might want to know?”
Willa leaned forward, voice steady. “We weren’t aware you didn’t.”
Madden’s attention swung to her, the accusation sharp enough to draw blood. “How could you not know?”
Willa didn’t flinch. “Because you left. Because you built a whole life away from here. We thought you’d already made your choices about what you could handle. And we didn’t have any idea what the authorities might have told your family.”