Chapter 47 #2
“Ah, seven percent think the houseboat won’t sink.” He chuckles. “See, that’s why it’s important to know your sidebets. Anyone familiar with Harold’s love for Francine knows that shrine is in peak working order.”
Harry’s eyes widen, then pure rage floods over his face. I press mute on the microphone before he can blow his cover.
“What does that monster know about my Fancy?”
“No clue. Sounds like he’s fucking with me, Lucy, and now you too.”
“That’s how I figured out who you were so quickly, by the way.
You mentioned her name at Blackjack. Harold’s unrequited yearning for his old lover is legendary around here.
I had to figure out if you were one of the Fury children.
Imagine my surprise when I discovered how easily you and the McKennon girl landed in my lap. So fortuitous.”
I unmute my end.
“Castle.” My voice comes out low and steady, a minor miracle. “Tell me where she is.”
“Oh, you misunderstand. I’m not the one who took her.” He sounds almost offended.
“Okay the Wildes, then,” I growl. “Where did they take her and why the hell would you work with them?”
A dry laugh rumbles over the line.
“Working with the Wildes.” He repeats. “Hatton, I don’t work with anyone. I work the odds, and my motivations always center around what can and can’t be leveraged. The Wildes have someone I want. This was a good opportunity to open new avenues to old problems.”
The amusement vanishes from his voice as quickly as it arrived. “I never miss an opportunity, Hatton. Surely you’ve gathered that by now.”
“Fine. But what do the Wildes want with Lucy? Where did they take her?”
“Those are two questions with very high information premiums.” He takes a sip. I can hear him swallow. “But I’ll give you a freebie. Check your phone. I’m sending you my ticker on DarkBoard. Act fast. The world is watching, Hatter.”
My phone vibrates with an incoming message.
“Tick tock, Hatter,” he chuckles. “Tick tock.”
Then he hangs up.
I pull the phone from my ear. The screen shows a text from a blocked number with a link. I tap it, loading a website with a black background, a graph pulsing with several colored lines, each one carrying a percentage with a green or red arrow pointing up or down. Odds.
And the words swim like they always fucking do.
Every letter I’ve ever looked at in my entire life sits still for roughly half a second before sliding sideways, rearranging itself, swapping places with its neighbor like an irritating game I never signed up for.
Momma taught me how to pin them down—finger tracking, sounding them out in my head.
But the more I hate something the more I’d rather murder it than deal with it, and I can’t murder letters when they’re always running away from me.
Frustration burns in my chest as I try, furious that I never could get the hang of it.
What’s worse is now, the letters are tiny and the website itself has a dark background while it’s also getting increasingly dark outside, with the sun teasing the edges of the horizon and the rest of the sky dimming.
I squint at the screen and force my eyes to drag left to right while the words themselves scroll from right to left, attempting to catch them as they race across the bottom.
H-a-t—Hatter… g-o-e-s… to The… R-a-b—
A point on the graph shoots up to the edge suddenly, skyrocketing my heartbeat.
“Shit, I don’t have time for this.” I shove the phone toward Harry. “Read this for me, will—Harry, what the fuck are you doing? Quit fucking around.”
He lowers the rifle scope he’s randomly pointing at the horizon and glares at me.
“If I find the boat, I find Lucy, dummy.”
But he yanks the phone from my hand and squints at the tiny lettering. After a second, he grunts and stretches to hold the phone at arm’s length and looks at the screen through the scope.
“The DarkBoard username is DarkReignMan. One guess who that is,” he snorts dryly.
But then he reads, “Hatter goes to The Rabbit Hole to kill Castle… Ten percent.” He rolls the magnifier with his forefinger and shifts slightly.
“Hatter saves Alice at port. Twenty-two percent. Hatter saves Alice at Sweet Tea Bakery. Fifteen.” He pauses.
“Alice is moved off-island by nightfall. Forty-five percent.”
I look to the landside, where the sun’s nearly dipped below the mainland.
“Keep going,” I whisper.
“Hatter goes to Old Stone Church Island. Five percent. Hatter calls Kian McKennon for backup. Eighty-seven percent.” Harry’s mouth tightens. “Ninety-eight percent chance Kian McKennon refuses aid.”
Ninety-eight percent.
The numbers hits me like a March wave. Castle didn’t just send Kian that footage to hurt us.
He sent it because he already ran the numbers.
Eighty-seven percent chance I’d ask my should-be-father-in-law for help, and Castle made goddamn sure that call had a ninety-eight percent chance of him telling me to fuck off.
He poisoned the well first, then bet on me crawling to it anyway.
The footage to Kian, the phone call to me, the ticker.
He might not be behind it all, but he’s already moved pieces before I even knew the board existed.
“What else?”
But Harry lowers the scope and looks past me. Over my shoulder. Toward the water.
“Give me a second.”
He lifts the scope again—not at the phone this time, but at the horizon. The marshland stretches out on the right side, the barrier islands are dark humps against the last of the daylight, and Harry pans slowly, left to right, his breath going shallow as he concentrates, until he freezes.
“I know where she is,” Harry says quietly.
He hands me the scope and points south-southeast, past the channel markers and shrimp boats rocking at anchor, toward the smallest island visible from the dock.
The one with the steeple. The one Lucy and I sat and looked at while eating cherry tart just the other night.
I put the scope to my eye. It takes me a moment of adjusting before finding it in the failing light. But there, tucked against the Old Stone pier, listing slightly in the shallows where it shouldn’t be, is Fancy’s Haven.
Harry’s houseboat. My Lucy. On an island with a church and a graveyard and no one around for miles.