Arthur's Secret

Dust and debris rained down, choking the air, coating everything in a fine, grey powder. I coughed, my lungs spasming, trying to clear the grit.

I was lying on a pile of rubble. The floor of the library had collapsed into the crawlspace, creating a jagged crater.

"Arthur?" I croaked.

"I'm here," he whispered.

He was pinned under a section of drywall, but he was breathing.

I looked around. The house was groaning, the structure compromised by the explosion. Fire was spreading from the carriage house, licking at the broken windows of the library.

But where was Richard?

I saw a hand protruding from under a fallen bookcase. A hand wearing a gold wedding band.

I crawled toward it. I tried to lift the shelf, but it was too heavy.

"Richard?"

He groaned. "My back..."

He was alive. But he wasn't going anywhere.

And Simon?

The vent was gone. The chimney had collapsed inward, burying the priest hole.

I pulled myself up, using the wreckage of the desk for support. My leg screamed in protest, a sharp, hot pain. I looked down. A shard of glass was embedded in my thigh.

I gritted my teeth and yanked it out. Blood welled, warm and sticky. I tied my scarf around it tight.

"We have to go," I told Arthur. I started digging at the drywall trapping him.

"Leave me," he said, his voice weak. "I'm done, Helen."

"No one is done until I say they're done."

I freed his legs. He couldn't walk. I pulled him out of the hole, dragging him across the slanted floor toward the hallway.

The front door was blown off its hinges. The night air rushed in, feeding the flames.

I got Arthur to the porch. The rain was still falling, a cold blessing against the heat of the fire.

I looked back inside. Richard was trying to crawl out of the library.

I hesitated.

He had held a gun to my head. He had threatened Maya.

But he was still my husband. Or he had been.

I ran back in. I grabbed his arm and pulled. He screamed, his face contorted in agony.

"Get up!" I yelled.

We stumbled out onto the lawn, collapsing in the wet grass.

The house was fully engulfed now. The roof of the carriage house had caved in. The library was an inferno.

We watched it burn. The history of the Vance family, turning to ash.

"Where is the drive?" Arthur asked, clutching my arm.

I checked my pocket. It was gone.

"I dropped it," I said. "In the fall."

"No," Richard whispered. "You didn't drop it."

He opened his hand.

The black hard drive sat in his palm. Smeared with blood, but intact.

"Why?" I asked.

"Because it's over," he said. "The money is gone. The house is gone. This is all that's left."

He handed it to me.

"Take it. Use it."

I looked at him. His eyes were empty. The ambition, the greed, the fear—it had all burned away.

"Why did you do it?" I asked. "Why did you help him? Why did you hide the body?"

"I didn't hide the body," Arthur said, his voice surprisingly clear.

We both looked at him.

"I didn't kill her," Arthur said. "And Julian didn't kill her."

"What are you talking about?" Richard asked.

"Julian called me that night," Arthur said. "He was frantic. He said Sarah had fallen. He said she was dead. He wanted me to fix it."

"And you did," I said. "You staged the accident. You paid off the coroner."

"I paid the coroner to keep quiet about the pregnancy," Arthur said. "But I didn't stage the accident."

He looked at the fire.

"I went to the river. I found Julian. He was wet, shivering. But Sarah wasn't there."

"She washed away," Richard said.

"No," Arthur said. "She was gone. But her bag was there. The one with the money."

"The ten million," I whispered.

"It was empty," Arthur said.

I stared at him.

"Someone else was there," I said. "Someone else took the money."

"And someone else killed her," Arthur said.

"Who?" Richard asked.

"I don't know," Arthur said. "But I found this near her bag."

He reached into his pocket. Not the jacket pocket where the drive had been. The inside pocket of his shirt.

He pulled out a small, silver object.

A lighter.

Engraved with initials.

*S.B.*

Simon Blackwood.

I looked at the burning house. At the collapsed chimney where Simon was buried.

"He was there," I whispered. "He was blackmailing Julian. But he was also blackmailing Sarah."

"He wanted the money for himself," Arthur said. "He took it. And he killed her to cover his tracks."

"So Julian ran..." I said.

"Because he thought *I* did it," Arthur said. "He thought I killed her to save the family name. And I let him believe it. Because it was easier than the truth."

The truth was that the family lawyer, the man who had protected us, guided us, and threatened us, had been the rot at the center of the foundation all along.

And now he was burning with the rest of it.

But the money... if Simon took the money thirty years ago...

Where was it now?

I looked at Richard.

"The trust," I said. "The one Simon told you about. The one in Maya's name."

"He lied," Richard said. "There is no trust."

"Yes, there is," I said. "But it's not in a bank."

I looked at the lighter in Arthur's hand.

*S.B.*

"Simon didn't spend it," I said. "He hoarded it. He hid it."

"Where?"

"In the only place he felt safe," I said. "The only place he controlled."

I looked at the carriage house. The fire had started there. In the basement.

Where the wine cellar was.

And where the tunnel ended.

"The vault," I whispered. "The bricks under the blanket... they weren't just bricks."

I remembered the weight of the bag I had thrown at James.

It wasn't paper.

It was gold.

Simon had converted the cash into gold bars. And he had hidden them in the fake body.

And now... they were melting.

The fortune wasn't gone.

It was just changing state.