Chapter 3 - What Jason Was Really Looking ForI should have called the police immediately.
Dad didn’t shout.
That surprised me.
Instead, he looked at me with the cold disbelief of a man who still expected me to stop everything.
“You’re really doing this?”
I sat on Grandma’s couch with an ice pack against my shoulder.
“I didn’t do anything.”
“You’re letting them arrest your father.”
“No, Dad. You did that.”
Mom flinched as if I had struck her.
Jason stood at the windows overlooking the frozen lake, both hands pushed into his pockets.
Nobody mentioned the envelope.
I had slipped it beneath my coat while the deputy photographed the room.
The Coast Guard investigators—Special Agent Owen Mercer and Lieutenant Commander Priya Shah—had arrived because I had missed two scheduled calls involving a procurement investigation at the district office where I had recently been temporarily assigned.
Finding their commanding officer bleeding on the floor had changed their priorities.
“You’re going to the hospital,” Mercer told me.
“I’m fine.”
“That wasn’t a question.”
Jason turned.
“Commanding officer?”
Mercer looked at him.
“Commander Hayes oversees regional maritime-security coordination for three ports.”
The room became painfully quiet.
Dad had spent years introducing Jason as “my successful son” because Jason ran Hayes Construction, the small company Dad had founded.
I was simply “Rebecca, who works for the Coast Guard.”
I saw something unfamiliar in Jason’s face.
Not pride.
Embarrassment.
Dad was escorted outside.
Mom followed the deputy onto the porch.
Before she left, she turned toward me.
“You could stop this.”
“What should I tell them?”
“That it was an accident.”
I stared at her.
She had watched my father swing an iron poker at me.
Still, her greatest concern was protecting him.
“No.”
Her eyes filled.
“You’re destroying this family over property.”
“No, Mom.”
I pointed toward the doorway Dad had just walked through.
“He did.”
She left without another word.
Jason remained.
Mercer looked toward him.
“You should probably leave.”
“This is my grandmother’s home too.”
I spoke before Mercer could.
“No. It isn’t.”
Jason stared at me.
That sentence hurt him more than I intended.
For a moment I remembered us at eight and eleven, running barefoot from the lake with Grandma yelling that we were dripping water across her floors.
Then Jason looked at the torn deed.
“Grandma didn’t mean to cut me out.”
“I never said she did.”
“She left me twelve thousand dollars.”
“And the construction equipment.”
“Equipment worth maybe eighty grand.”
“That’s more than most people inherit.”
His jaw tightened.
“I gave her seven years.”
There it was.
Not greed exactly.
Something more complicated.
Resentment.
He had been the one nearby while I was gone.
He had carried groceries up these steps.
Changed smoke-alarm batteries.
Driven Grandma through snowstorms.
And now he believed those years entitled him to the house.
“Why didn’t you challenge the will legally?” I asked.
Jason looked at the floor.
“Dad said attorneys would bleed us dry.”
“So kidnapping me here with a fraudulent deed seemed better?”
“Nobody kidnapped you.”
“You blocked my car with your truck.”
His silence answered for him.
Agent Mercer stepped forward.
“Mr. Hayes, you need to leave.”
Jason finally walked toward the door.
Then he stopped.
“Rebecca.”
I waited.
“You don’t know everything.”
“About what?”
“Grandma.”
He looked at the fireplace.
“There’s a reason Dad is desperate for this house.”
Before I could ask what he meant, he left.
At the hospital, doctors found deep bruising along my ribs and shoulder but no fractures.
I was discharged shortly after sunset.
Mercer offered to drive me back to town.
Instead, I asked him to take me to Grandma’s house.
“You sure?”
“Yes.”
The cabin had never frightened me.
Not even after Grandpa died.
Not even after Grandma spent her final months sleeping downstairs because her knees could no longer handle the staircase.
But when I stepped inside that night, every shadow felt different.
The overturned chair remained where Dad had kicked it.
The torn deed had been bagged as evidence.
I locked the door.
Then I carried the yellow envelope to Grandma’s kitchen table.
My hands trembled while I opened it.
Inside were three things.
A letter.
A small brass key.
And a photograph.
The photograph showed my father standing beside a man I didn’t recognize.
They were younger—perhaps twenty years younger.
Behind them stood Grandma’s barn.
Dad was handing the man a folder.
On the back, Grandma had written:
May 17, 2005. Frank thinks I never saw.
My heart started beating faster.
I unfolded the letter.
Rebecca,
If you are reading this, then my fears were justified.
Your father will tell you the house belongs to Jason because Jason stayed and you left.
Do not believe him.
Jason cared for me in ways I will always appreciate. That is why I provided for him separately.
But this property cannot belong to your father.
Not directly.
Not through Jason.
Not through anyone he controls.
Your grandfather discovered something years ago involving Frank, the development company, and land along the lake.
Frank believes certain documents disappeared after your grandfather died.
They did not.
I kept them.
The brass key opens Box 317 at Mountain Federal Storage.
You must go there before Frank does.
And Rebecca—
Do not assume Jason knows the whole truth.
Grandma.
I read the letter three times.
A development company.
Lakefront land.
Documents.
I called Grandma’s attorney, Thomas Bell.
It was nearly ten.
He answered on the third ring.
“Rebecca?”
“Did Grandma ever mention Mountain Federal Storage?”
Silence.
Then:
“Where are you?”
“At the house.”
“Lock the doors.”
My skin went cold.
“They’re locked.”
“I’m coming over.”
“Thomas, what is happening?”
He hesitated.
“Your grandmother made me promise I would only explain if you found the key yourself.”
I stared at the brass key.
“Explain what?”
“Why she changed her will.”
Twenty-five minutes later, headlights appeared through the kitchen window.
I expected Thomas.
Instead, a dark pickup stopped beside the barn.
The driver’s door opened.
Jason stepped out.
He looked toward the house.
Then toward Grandma’s barn.
And he was carrying a flashlight and a crowbar.
I turned off the kitchen light.
Jason crossed the snow.
He didn’t come toward the front door.
He went directly to the barn.
May you like
I watched him break the padlock.
Whatever Grandma had hidden, my brother was searching for it too.
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