Chapter 28
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Outside, the town square has turned into a carnival.
Across from the station, in the little park with the war memorial and the good shade trees, someone has set up a riser and a bank of microphones.
A banner sags between two poles: PORT HAVEN TREASURE—THE LEGEND LIVES.
There are cameras, a Seattle news van with its dish cranked up, and a loose crowd of tourists holding paper cups and phones, drawn to the promise of a spectacle.
Merrick Marine Tours fleeces move through them, handing out maps.
Dean stops on the station steps and takes it in. “Fuck.”
I stand beside him and catalog the damage.
The riser is professional-grade—fold-out aluminum, black skirting, the kind you rent for corporate events.
Someone’s strung fairy lights across the front even though it’s nine in the morning and broad daylight.
A sound tech in a black t-shirt adjusts a microphone stand, his movements quick and practiced.
The Seattle news van idles at the curb, its generator humming, a cameraman unloading gear from the back while a woman in a blazer checks her phone like she’s on a tight schedule.
The crowd is maybe a hundred people. Not huge by city standards, but for Port Haven on a Tuesday morning, it’s an invasion.
Tourists in windbreakers and hiking boots, most of them holding laminated maps from Merrick Tours.
A woman in a Patagonia vest lectures a small group about tide charts, her voice carrying across the square.
A drone buzzes overhead—cheap, civilian, the same model that’s been haunting the island since my first post went viral.
I spot faces in the crowd. Piper stands on the far side of the square, arms crossed, glasses pushed up into her wild curls.
She’s watching the riser with an expression I can read from fifty yards: quiet devastation.
Colter has Hazel by the hand near the war memorial, Radar sitting alert at his side, the dog’s ears pricked forward as if he’s cataloging threats.
Hazel points at the fairy lights. Colter shakes his head, his smile strained.
Dean finds the small of my back. His palm is warm through my sweater, his fingers pressing just enough to say I’m here.
“Malcolm moved fast,” I say.
“Malcolm’s been planning this for decades.” His jaw works. “You just gave him the audience.”
I wince. He’s not wrong, and that knowledge stings. I shrug off his hand and start down the steps.
“Scarlett, wait. I didn’t mean—” Dean chases me, but Bodhi materializes from the crowd, stopping him from whatever he was about to say.
Bodhi wears his Haven company jacket, the fabric stretched across shoulders that carry too much weight for one man.
His eyes find mine, then Dean’s, then the space between us where Dean’s hand still rests against my back.
His face goes through a complex range of emotions—anger, annoyance, followed by resignation—in a matter of seconds before he smooths it out.
“We need to talk.” He says it to Dean.
Dean doesn’t move. “Now?”
“Now.”
“I’m with Scarlett.”
“I can see that.” Bodhi’s voice stays level. “This won’t take long. Ten minutes.”
Dean looks at me. The question is in his eyes before he asks it.
“Go,” I say. “I’ll be fine.”
“You sure?”
“I’ve navigated worse crowds than this.” I try for the smile. The one that says I’m handling it. It feels thin on my face, but Dean doesn’t call me on it.
He hesitates. “Stay right here by the police station. Don’t move. I mean it, Hollywood. I’ll be ten minutes tops.”
“Dean—”
“Ten minutes.” He steps close, lowers his voice. “Malcolm’s over there by the van. He hasn’t seen you yet. If he approaches, you walk away. Straight to the Driftwood. Patty Sue will let you behind the counter.”
“I don’t need a babysitter.”
“You need someone who gives a shit.” He holds my gaze. “That’s me. Be right back.”
He goes. Bodhi falls into step beside him, already talking, his voice too low to catch.
They cut through the crowd toward the marina, two broad-shouldered men moving with the same measured stride, and I am alone at the edge of the square with the weight of Evangeline’s journal in my bag and fifty strangers between me and the nearest exit.
The crowd shifts. A Merrick Tours employee—young, eager, the fleece too big on his frame—presses a map into my hands without looking at my face.
TREASURE HUNT OFFICIAL MAP. The paper is slick, expensive, the coordinates printed in a font designed to look handwritten. I fold it and tuck it into my pocket.
From across the square, Piper catches my eye. She doesn’t wave. Doesn’t smile. Just looks at me with those blue-gray Haven eyes, and I know exactly what she’s thinking: This is what you brought us.
God, what have I done to this town? These good people?
The sound tech tests a microphone. Feedback whines through the square, and the crowd flinches as one.
The woman in the blazer steps onto the riser, smoothing her jacket, and the cameraman swings his rig toward her.
Lights adjust. Someone from Merrick Marine Tours claps twice, and the crowd’s murmur settles.
Malcolm stands at the base of the riser, talking to Jasper.
They’re too far for me to hear, but I don’t need to hear.
Malcolm’s posture is camera-ready—shoulders back, chin up, the practiced warmth of a man who has spent decades cultivating his image.
Jasper stands with his weight on one hip, a cigar between his fingers, his cold eyes scanning the crowd like a predator searching for his next prey.
Neither of them has seen me yet.
I adjust my bag. The journal feels heavy in it. I’ve read the March entry so many times the words have burned themselves into my memory.
He held me down on my mother’s settee, and he violated me.
The morning sun climbs higher. The fairy lights on the riser look absurd in full daylight. The woman in the blazer leans into the microphone, and her voice carries across the square: “Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining us this morning for a very special announcement...”
As Malcolm turns toward the riser, his gaze sweeps the crowd, and he finally sees me.
Shit.
He smiles and starts toward me, stopping two feet away. Close enough for conversation, far enough to maintain the image. His suit is charcoal, pressed, and probably that costs more than most people’s rent. His wedding ring catches the morning light. He smells like sandalwood and expensive soap.
“Scarlett.” His voice is warm. Camera-ready. The same tone he used when he offered me this job over Zoom, leaning back in his leather chair with the harbor visible through the window behind him. “Perfect timing. KOMO’s doing a live segment in five minutes. I’d like you on the riser with me.”
“No.”
His eyebrows wing up. It’s the only hint he shows of his surprise. “No?”
“I’m quitting, Malcolm.”
His expression doesn’t change. The smile holds. His eyes, though...
I always thought Jasper was the dangerous one in the Merrick family.
I was wrong.
“I see.” He steps closer and lowers his voice. The crowd murmurs around us, oblivious. “Perhaps we should discuss this somewhere more private.”
“We can discuss it right here.” I keep my voice level.
“Thomas Haven wasn’t a thief. Charles Fairchild raped Evangeline the week before their wedding.
She took back what was hers—a bride price her father accepted for her body—and she ran.
Thomas Haven loved her. He didn’t kill her.
He tried to save her from a man who thought he owned her. ”
I say it all in one breath. No pauses. No hedges. The truth as I know it, laid out on the cobblestones of Port Haven’s town square where anyone could overhear.
Malcolm’s smile freezes. To anyone on the outside, they’d only see polite concern edged with the faint patience of a man dealing with an emotional outburst. But I see the meanness behind it.
He adjusts his cuff. “I’m aware of the journal, Scarlett.”
The air leaves my lungs.
“You’re... aware.”
“Of course.” He says it gently. Almost kindly. “But it can’t be trusted. The provenance is... complicated.”
Complicated.
“You’ve known.” My voice is thin. “This whole time. You’ve known what Charles did to her, and you’ve let everyone believe Thomas Haven murdered her for treasure.”
“Belief is a powerful thing, Scarlett. What people choose to believe about their history shapes the community they build. The feud between our families has given Port Haven its identity for over a century. It’s brought tourists.
Revenue. Jobs. The treasure hunt you’ve helped launch is already generating more economic activity than the island has seen in a decade.
” He gestures at the crowd, the cameras, the maps clutched in eager hands.
“Would you take that away from them? Over a diary with no chain of custody? A story that can’t be verified by any standard of historical documentation? ”
The cruelty of it is how reasonable he sounds. How measured. How carefully he’s selected the precise vocabulary—provenance, chain of custody, historical documentation—that a journalist would respect.
“It’s true,” I say. “You know it’s true.”
“What I know is that the story we tell matters more than the facts we can prove.” Malcolm straightens his tie.
“And the story we’re telling right now is putting food on tables.
Keeping businesses open. Giving people a reason to care about a small island that most of the world would otherwise forget.
” He places a hand on my shoulder. The touch is warm, paternal, and it makes my skin crawl.
“Think about what you’re doing, Scarlett. Not to me. To them.”
He nods toward the crowd. A young couple studies a map, their heads bent together, excited. A family with matching windbreakers clusters near the war memorial, the father pointing at something on his phone. They look happy. Invested. Part of something.