Chapter 7

The custody ruling came the next morning. Arbitrator Henderson granted me temporary sole custody of Micah and named me interim trustee of Caleb's estate, including the Mateo Delgado trust. Vivian's motions to seal the DNA report were denied. The criminal hold stayed.

I should have felt safe. I didn't.

Vivian was allowed one supervised visit with Micah at the Harbor House, a neutral family center on the edge of the shipyard. I didn't want to allow it, but my lawyer said a flat refusal could hurt me later. I agreed only because the center had cameras and two staff monitors.

At 10:30, I dropped Micah off. He wore his little yellow raincoat and carried his wooden toy boat. He kissed my cheek and said, "Mama, I sail."

"Two hours," I told the monitor. "Call me if anything changes."

At 10:54, she called. Her voice was high and panicked. "Ms. Marchetti, Vivian's security man took him. He had a court paper. I tried to stop him-"

I was already in my truck. "Which way?"

"Toward the marina. The family yacht."

I called Hector, then Deputy Ruiz. Hector met me at the pier with a duffel bag and a look I'd seen on sailors before a storm. Rain was coming down in sheets. The Rourke yacht, a white hundred-footer called the Vivian Grace, was already easing away from the dock.

"She's running," Hector said. "Coast Guard is twenty minutes out."

"Micah doesn't have twenty minutes."

I knew that yacht. I had rebuilt its auxiliary engine two summers ago. I knew its fuel system, its ignition panel, its emergency cutoff. I knew the maintenance hatch near the stern. Vivian had never once thanked me for that work. She had called it "woman's tinkering."

I grabbed a wrench and a handheld radio from Hector's truck. "Keep the radio open. If I don't call in ten minutes, send everyone."

Lena Marchetti, the widow they tried to erase, climbed down the pier ladder into the black water and swam toward the yacht her in-laws had stolen with her son.