"You're not going to hit anybody," Clate said in a steady, calm voice. "You don't have enough time to get the arc you need to bash her head in. I'd be on you before the shovel came down."
His eyes flashed. "You want to risk it?" He waved the shovel. "Go on, both of you. Get out of here. I just want the treasure. Right now, it's all I've got left. When I have it and I'm free, I'll let her go."
Sally stifled a sob, and Clate eased another half step forward. Shepherd had a good angle on Piper's head. If Clate was a second off, she would be severely hurt, if not dead. His gaze descended to hers, just for an instant.
A flicker of pure, little-sister, in-your-face nerve.
Hell, Clate thought, and lunged forward just as Piper went for Shepherd, elbowing him hard on his shin. He yowled, and Clate plowed into his shoulders with both hands, sending him sprawling backward into his treasure hole. The shovel smacked Clate's chest, and he caught it before it could hit on the ground. Shepherd had landed badly, his head and shoulders and most of his torso in the hole, his legs half out. He wasn't stupid. He realized what had happened, and he started to sob miserably. Sally hung back, unable to go to him, her misery etched in her plain face as she fought for self-control.
Piper scrambled to her feet. "What took you so long? You should have just hit him and been done with it. The damned arc he needs to bash my head in. What kind of talk is that? Geez, I'm on my knees, half dead already after digging that damned hole, and you two are discussing my goddamned life!"
"You were scared," Clate said patiently.
"Damned right I was scared!"
"So was I."
Her mouth snapped shut. She stared at him. Tears welled in her eyes and she brushed at them with her dirty, bloody fingers. He held his shovel with one hand and scooped his free arm around her. She felt so good. She was all hot and sweaty, and when he looked at her bruises and cuts, he had to fight not to hit Shepherd over the head with his shovel.
She blinked back more tears. "Hannah's treasure. It's real."
But before they could deal with treasure, they had to deal with the Macintosh men and most of the police department of Frye's Cove, Massachusetts, who arrived in force, dispatched into the woods by Hannah herself. Paul Shepherd acted as if he were the victim, as if anyone in his position—with such a stupid wife, with such provocation as he'd endured—would have done exactly what he'd done. Then he shut up and refused to speak to anyone but his lawyer.
Sally didn't speak to anyone, just walked silently with Robert Macintosh back to the house that had been in her family for over two hundred years. Whatever demons she was fighting, she'd fight alone. By her own choice. Instead of sharing her grandfather's deathbed confession with the woman he'd married and tried to make amends for what he'd done, she'd kept it to herself.
Hannah was waiting on the terrace, gazing patiently out at the view that had been hers for so many years. With Ernie's permission, her nephew Robert had carried his grandfather's chest up from the woods. He set it in front of the Adirondack chair where his aunt sat.
Hannah turned to Sally Shepherd. "Jason didn't ask you to move it, did he?"
She shook her head. She hadn't cried since that first sob at seeing her husband with Piper, Clate noted. Whether it was shock or that Yankee stiff upper lip, he didn't know. She said, "After what he'd done, he couldn't bring himself to look inside the chest. He just buried it. He wanted me—he wanted me to do the right thing. He said he'd done what he could, but he was never able to bring himself to tell anyone the truth. Except me. He could have died with the truth. He could have spared me." She inhaled, struggling to hang onto her self-control. "But he didn't."
Hannah reached out a hand, but Sally didn't take it.
"He never asked me to forgive him," she went on. "The one he should have asked was you, Hannah. But he knew you'd never forgive him, and so he never asked."
"No." Hannah spoke calmly, confidently. "He knew I would forgive him, and so he never asked for my forgiveness. His was a foolish, impulsive, terrible mistake that led to the deaths of two people. He never intended anything bad to come of that night. When it did, he couldn't face what he'd done. He didn't want forgiveness, Sally. He wanted to live with his guilt. Perhaps he deserved to live with it."
"Then why tell me what he'd done?"
"So you could know. So you could look at reality for what it is, and accept the truth about him."
Piper sighed, impatient, fidgety, her energy all but spent. "Hannah, don't you want to know what's inside?"
"I was wondering how long you could stand it," Hannah said, a sudden, unexpected twinkle in her eye. Her niece had that effect on her, Clate realized.
With her family looking on, Hannah leaned over and tried the latches. "They're stuck. Andrew, would you mind?"