Page 37 of Oleander

“Leave it,” Hollis snapped. The man withdrew. Hollis noticed the crew now moved with a new caution, not the deference of servants but the calculation of witnesses. He wondered who among them had been approached, who had copied manifests, who had overheard calls.

The security chief called back. An encrypted account associated with Dorothy had transmitted files three days after her death. The recipients were masked, but one packet appeared to have reached an attorney representing Platform Nine families. Another had gone to an investigative consortium. A third destination remained unknown.

“Shut them down,” Hollis said.

“We can’t retrieve material already delivered.”

“Then make them afraid to use it.”

“Sir, these might be men that aren’t afraid of anything,” said the new security chief.

“Such men don’t exist,” he said sarcastically.

The reply came carefully. Too many agencies were watching. Too many journalists had copies. Any overt pressure could become further evidence.

Hollis listened, and beneath the professional language heard something intolerable: refusal. His new assassin squad, assembled precisely because Voss had developed inconvenient scruples, was warning him of limits.

“You work for me,” Hollis said. “Do you understand?”

“Yes, sir.”

But the answer lacked conviction. Hollis ended the call and looked around for someone to blame. Dorothy was dead. Voss was supposed to be dead. The disaster was supposed to have receded beneath settlements, sealed exhibits, and public fatigue. Instead, every buried thing had begun rising at once.

The financial channel returned from the trading halt. Burton Drilling opened down another eighteen percent. A camera showed protesters gathering outside corporate headquarters, some carrying enlarged photographs of Platform Nine’s dead.

Hollis unmuted the sound long enough to hear Dorothy’s name. The reporter described her as a possible source who had preserved internal safety records before her death.

He hurled the remote. It struck the screen and dropped to the deck.

“Possible source,” he said through clenched teeth.

Dorothy had always needed an audience for her virtue, at least in his eyes. She had sat across their breakfast table pretending concern while stealing from him page by page. She had welcomed his friends, chaired his foundation, slept beside him—at least for the first few years. And then she built the instrument meant to destroy him.

But anger could no longer hold back arithmetic. The shares were collapsing. The lenders were circling. Operations were understaffed and one more accident could place his orders before a grand jury. Voss might be alive. Dorothy’s archive was multiplying beyond his reach. Hollis felt each fact arrive not as information but as a door closing.

He called the bridge. The captain answered at once. Hollis asked how quickly the yacht could be underway.

“We’re provisioned for local cruising,” the captain said. “For an offshore passage, I’d want fuel calculations, weather routing, customs clearance—”

“I asked how quickly.”

“Two hours, if nothing changes.”

Nothing had changed for Hollis until everything had. He scanned the Gulf’s open horizon. A white speck far beyond the stern might have been a fishing boat, a patrol vessel, or simply glare. He tried to enlarge it through the yacht’s camera system, but his hands were unsteady on the controls. He imagined warrants traveling faster than ships. He imagined Voss in a conference room, naming names. He imagined Dorothy’s voice guiding strangers through the evidence.

“Sir?” the captain prompted.

Hollis lifted the dead cigar to his mouth and tasted ash. His bourbon sat untouched beside the dark stain on the teak. The Imperium’s engines were silent, but he could hear machinery everywhere: market servers matching sell orders, printers feeding subpoenas, platform pumps laboring under crews too thin to protect them.

“Wake everyone,” Hollis said. His voice cracked, and he hated the captain for hearing it. “Recall the tender. Cancel shore leave. I want fuel, provisions, cash, and every secure drive aboard within the hour.” He looked again at the speck on the horizon. It seemed larger now.

“Where are we bound?” the captain asked.

Hollis gripped the rail until his knuckles blanched. Behind him, the screens glowed red across the shaded deck.

“Bermuda,” he said. Then, louder, because volume had always passed for certainty. “Prepare the Imperium for Bermuda. We leave now.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE