Chapter 69
Ben followed the Coast Guard team off the cutter and onto the Havana. It gave him a start to see Lainie so bloody—but her eyes were sparkling and alive. There was victory in that gaze, so fear fled.
“Ben, I didn’t expect to see you.”
“I hitched a ride—are you okay?” He pointed to her wrists.
“Dirty, sore, and tired but okay.” She pointed and stepped aside for the Coast Guard medic. “These guys snatched me from my home.”
“Vine and who is the other guy?”
“Bodyguard, I guess. Maybe I didn’t get Vine for Daphne’s murder, but he won’t skate on this.”
With the rise and fall of the stopped vessel, Lainie stumbled and Ben stepped up to steady her. He put an arm around her waist as a medic approached to treat her wounds.
She looked up at him. “I’m a mess; you’ll get dirty.”
“I have good cleaners. Besides, I have a surprise for you.”
“What?”
“I met Avery West. He was baring his soul to Shea when I left them at the dock. I heard quite a story.”
While her bleeding wrists were bandaged, Ben recounted for Lainie what he’d heard Avery West tell Shea.
“He witnessed the murder of Daphne. It happened at the Barn like you thought, Lainie. And it happened because Sparks had discovered Vine was embezzling. She’d threatened to go to the police, and he shot her.”
“West saw that?”
“Yeah. Vine used West’s hatred of cops and money to keep him quiet.
At the time, West had just been evicted from his apartment.
He was living at the Barn. Vine let him move to the Havana, later giving it to him outright.
And over the years, he provided a lot of support to the family.
Even putting Avery’s favorite nephew through college. ”
“Callen?”
“The boy had no idea how evil Vine was. He saw him as a benevolent friend of the family.”
“And he was on his way to put her body in the foundation of the house he was renovating,” Ben said. “You were right about everything.”
They stepped aside as the Coast Guard medics carried Vine by on a stretcher.
“Will he make it?” Lainie asked.
“He lost a lot of blood. Right now he’s stable.”
Ben took her hand and helped her from the Havana to the Coast Guard cutter. “Sorry justice was delayed.”
“I’m just glad to finally see it.”
When the cutter got underway to head back to Long Beach, Lainie leaned into Ben at the rail, and he encircled her waist with his arm to make certain she was safe and protected.
Next to Lainie was a place Ben decided that he wanted to be for a long time.