Phoenix
The desk lamp throws a circle of amber across the files Dad’s moved aside to make room for two glasses of whiskey. He's in his chair behind the desk this time.
My father looks at his glass and starts.
Carl Metz ran the operation my father and Lance worked out of Maui.
Import and export is the polite description of it.
The actual business was laundering money, keeping no records and leaving no trail.
Occasionally other things moved through his network too, things that couldn't go through legitimate channels.
When a criminal organization grows large enough to require actual bookkeeping, it needs someone patient and invisible to run the infrastructure.
Metz was that person. Metz was good at it.
He was patient, methodical, invisible to everyone except the people who needed to find him.
My old man used to work for him, not directly though.
Metz had a whole damn ladder between himself and the guys actually doing the dirty work.
The cash from the jewelry gig trickled up, seventy to the outfit, thirty to pocket.
That was the deal. But my dad? He swiped a Harry Winston necklace clean, kept every cent, and turned it into his own kingdom.
"He showed up in Hawaii," Dad mutters, eyes fixed on the desk. "Not right away. Waited a good two years. Thought maybe he’d moved on, or that coming after me wasn’t worth the heat, not with what I’d built by then." A beat. "Turns out he hadn’t forgotten a thing."
"What’d he want?"
“He wanted me to hand back what I’d lifted and fall back in line.
Real pleasant about it too, laid out his terms in my Kihei kitchen.
It was eleven at night, two goons looming behind him like some cheap intimidation act.
" Dad lifts his head, sharp. "I’d spent those two years waiting for him to track me down. Two years figuring out exactly how I’d handle it when he did.
" His stare doesn’t waver. "So, I put him down.
The guys with him? They got real cooperative once Metz was out of the picture.
Left the island the next morning, vanished. "
I don’t ask about those two. Some truths can wait.
The lamp buzzes, faint. Mom shuffles in the kitchen—cupboard doors clicking, water running. She’s known for ages what gets hashed out in this room.
"James," I say.
Dad nods. "He was on the island. Didn’t see it go down.
Knew because I told him—not that night, but the week after.
Needed someone who’d get it, without needing the gory details.
" He exhales. "Didn’t ask. Just said some weights are worth carrying, others aren’t, and that was that. Didn’t bring it up again until …"
"Until the feds?”
"The feds were chasing shadows—Lance and Nina.
Whole different mess. Had nothing to do with me, and eventually, they figured that out.
" He leans back, the chair creaking under him.
“The FBI zeroed in on Lance and Nina, sure, but there was an entire invisible layer they never saw, Hawaii. Richard made damn sure of that. Two cases, cleanly kept apart like they should be. Nobody was supposed to notice the threads between them. But somehow, Richard slid the needle through, stitching them together.”
"How?"
Turns out Metz’s people had files on everyone. It was insurance, in case things went sideways. Metz himself was gone, but his operation? It just scattered like roaches when the lights come on, some picked up by other players in the game. And Richard? He knows those streets. Grew up in them.
Dad fixes me with that look—that steady, heavy stare that never blinks first. "He’s got something.
I don’t know exactly what, but it’s serious.
Serious enough to crack open a fifteen-year-old cold case like it never even went cold.
And if he plays it right, well, he could do a hell of a lot worse than that. "
I stare at the whiskey on the desk, untouched. The lamp glows the same way it always has, same warm circle, same old wood. So much was settled in this room. So much got tucked away and pushed out of sight. But not this. Never this.
"The dead man’s switch," I say. "The one holding the pin. It’s James."
Silence. My father looks down at his drink.
"If Richard goes down—hell, if he so much as sneezes wrong—that evidence lands in the lap of whoever can run with it fastest. And James? He’s credible.
He’s got connections, prosecutors, people who’d listen.
Richard doesn’t need him to play the hero.
He just needs him standing there when it all goes off. "
“Does James know?”
"Not a clue. Far as he’s concerned, the whole mess starts and ends with us. Richard? A ghost. The backup plan? A blind spot. He’s been hauling this around for fifteen years without ever realizing someone else has been digging it back up."
James lingers in my mind, perched at that Sunday lunch table, elbows planted on the crisp linen like he owned the place, casually digging into Jade’s manuscript.
But that look Jade mentioned—his eyes flicked toward my father, sharp and calculating.
Yeah, she didn’t misread it. It wasn’t just old pals keeping tabs.
James has been studying him for fifteen damn years, waiting, coiled tight for Hawaii to slither back into the picture.
"He knows it’s coming," I mutter, swirling the thought like cheap whiskey. "Doesn’t know how, doesn’t know when, but he’s watching. Like a damn hawk."
My father doesn’t blink. "Months now. Since the regulators started their noise." A slow sip, then, grudgingly, "He sees things."
"And when he pieces together Richard’s part in this?"
"Then he’ll ask questions."
The kind that have no clean answers. I sink into the chair, the weight of it all pressing down—my father’s confession, spoken calm as a weather report; a man dead in a Kihei kitchen, no remorse, no hesitation.
And Richard? That twisted bastard, dangling it over him like a sword, evidence tucked into the foundation of everything my father clawed into existence. For her.
I grab the whiskey. Burn it down.
"James," I say. "What’s the play?"
"Tell him." No hesitation. "Before Richard does. He’s earned that much." He pauses. "And I need to know if he’ll break."
"Will he?"
"James Dupree has been holding this for fifteen years.
He went through an FBI investigation and sat across from federal prosecutors and said nothing because he believed it was the right thing to do.
" He picks up his own glass. "Whether he still believes that when he understands the full picture … I don't know."
I rise, snap my jacket closed. Look down at him, all that golden light spilling over his desk, the decades of control, the single damn thing he can’t rein in.
"Tell him soon," I say. "Before Jade finds out from somewhere else. She's already thinking about Torres.”
My father looks up sharply. "What does she know?"
"Nothing she can prove. But she's thinking." I move toward the door. "She's perceptive too."
He nods once. I leave.