Chapter 6 - THE BLUE COAT PASSWORD
The sirens were growing louder—less than a mile away down the winding bluff road.
Julian looked wildly from the fireplace to the stairs leading up to the caretaker cottage. “Lily! If they take her to a state shelter—she has severe asthma, her nebulizer is upstairs, she panics around strangers—”
“Sign the voting release, Maggie,” Grant urged, tapping a two-page notarized document lying beside the lamp. “Give me back my CEO seat and the sixty percent voting block. If I’m CEO when the sheriff walks through that door, I tell them the bank audit was an internal clerical misunderstanding, I drop the complaint, and nobody touches the little girl.”
Julian reached for the pen on the workbench. “Give it to me, I’ll sign whatever he wants—”
“Wait!” I grabbed Julian’s wrist, my mind racing faster than it ever had when I balanced six restaurant ledgers during tax season.
I looked at Grant’s shoes.
They weren't wet with mud from the lakeside path. They were dusty with beige gypsum powder—the kind of drywall dust that came from the renovation work on the upper floor of the boathouse.
And Grant hadn't called the Lake County Sheriff’s fraud unit at ten o'clock on a Saturday night. Fraud units didn't respond with screaming sirens in five minutes.
911 emergency responders did.
“You didn't call the sheriff about bank fraud, Grant,” I said, my voice dropping to an icy whisper as I noticed the smell of kerosene clinging to his shirt cuffs. “What did you do upstairs before Julian followed you down here?”
Grant’s smile faltered for half a second.
At that exact moment, Ruth’s voice screamed from the top of the exterior cedar staircase:
“Maggie! The garage under the cottage is on fire!”
Thick black smoke billowed from the vents above the boat slip.
Grant hadn't come here to negotiate a custody threat. He had set a delayed kerosene fire in the storage bay beneath the cottage—intending to trap Julian inside the vault room while destroying Arthur Vance’s safe, and blaming the entire blaze on a disgraced young executive burning his crooked books!
Grant lunged for the side pier door, trying to bolt into the darkness.
Julian didn't hesitate. Thirty years of stolen life exploded into motion. He tackled Grant across the wet wooden deck outside the door, the two men crashing into a stack of aluminum boat oars before Grant managed to kick free and scramble up the muddy bluff path toward the street.
“Let him go!” I shouted at Julian, who was already bleeding from his lip as he staggered up. “Lily is in the cottage!”
We sprinted up the exterior stairs through driving rain and thickening black smoke. Ruth was at the top landing with a garden hose, soaking the wooden door frame, while Celeste stood frozen by my Buick, screaming into her cell phone at the 911 operator.
“The smoke is coming up through the floor grates!” Ruth coughed, pressing her canvas apron over her mouth. “I tried the door, Maggie—the heat warped the deadbolt frame!”
Julian threw his shoulder against the heavy oak cottage door once, twice—then grabbed the iron tire wrench from my hand and smashed out the leaded glass sidelight. He reached through the jagged shards, slicing his forearm through his coat sleeve, and twisted the interior deadbolt open.
Gray smoke poured out into the rain as we plunged inside.
The living room visibility was dropping by the second. The kerosene fire in the utility bay below was eating through the pine floorboards near the kitchen, flames licking up around the radiator pipes.
“Lily!” Julian roared, dropping to his hands and knees to breathe below the smoke layer. “Lily, baby, come to Daddy!”
Silence—except for the crackle of burning pine and a terrified, high-pitched wheezing sound coming from the far side of the bay window.
She was obeying my instructions. She wouldn't unlatch the window seat for anyone while she was scared—not until she heard the password.
I dropped to my knees beside Julian, crawling across the hot hardwood floor toward the built-in cedar bench beneath the front windows.
I pounded softly on the wooden paneling.
“Lily!” I called out, forcing every ounce of calm into my smoke-raw throat. “Lily, sweetheart, it’s Maggie! Blue coat ducks! The password is blue coat ducks!”
For one agonizing heartbeat, nothing happened.
Then the brass interior hook clicked.
I yanked the bench lid open. Curled inside among the quilts was a tiny girl with dark curls, clutching a plush velveteen rabbit in one arm and an old cordless phone in the other. Her little chest was straining for air.
Julian scooped her into his arms with a fierce, broken sob, burying his face in her neck. “I’ve got you, baby girl. Daddy’s got you.”
“Wait—her nebulizer bag,” I gasped, spotting the blue medical kit on the kitchen counter near the rising flames. I darted past the island, grabbed the kit and Julian’s leather coat from the chair, and followed them back out onto the rain-swept landing just as the first Lake Forest fire engine roared down the gravel driveway, its red lights cutting through the storm.
Paramedics swarmed the bottom of the stairs, strapping a pediatric oxygen mask over Lily’s face in the back of the warm ambulance while a nurse wrapped gauze around Julian’s cut forearm.
Lily looked over the clear plastic mask at me as I sat on the ambulance bumper, soaking wet and covered in soot.
She reached out her small hand and touched the tarnished silver rosary still wrapped around my fingers.
“Are you the nice lady from Daddy’s picture?” she asked softly behind the mist of the oxygen mask.
Julian looked down at me, his dark eyes glistening with tears he didn't try to hide. He placed his good hand over mine and his daughter’s.
“That’s your grandma, Lily,” Julian said, his voice thick with emotion. “She’s the one who kept you safe tonight.”
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A police cruiser skidded to a halt behind the fire truck. Two soaked Lake Forest detectives stepped out, walking briskly toward the ambulance—followed closely by Grant, whose tuxedo shirt was torn and mud-streaked, a bandage pressed dramatically against his forehead where he had struck the oars.
“Officers, thank God!” Grant shouted, pointing an accusing finger directly at Julian and me. “That’s him! Julian Vance lured me up here when our merger collapsed, attacked me with a tire iron, and set fire to his own records room when my wife tried to intervene!”
