Page 179 of Slack Tide Kill

"Cover him in shells, we said!" Reg fumed. "Not stick them in his bloody eyes! You've made a legend here, boy, and you better hope Bledd swings for it soon, or we all will."

"I'll make up for it," he said quickly, feeling the shingle shifting beneath his feet. "None of this will ever come back on you."

"It better bloody not." Reg jabbed him hard in the chest. "And the second my name comes out the mouth of any copper in Kent, that bastard goes down too. Understand?"

"Yes, Dad. Of course. I'll–"

Another slap. This one harder, almost a punch.

"I'm not your Dad, am I? Least not until you sort this out, you useless prick. Earn the name, boy. Earn it!"

He'd fled. Wept. Drank. Then he'd done the work. Twisted the investigation at every possible step. Lost documents and misplaced leads. Misheard witnesses and pushed the Bledd theory, though it never caught on.

Nobody dared say Reg Rook's name. Nobody went near his businesses.

Until one person did.

"What's this about Reg Rook having a child at 14 years old?" Glory asked, by his side.

Mercer snapped back to the present, then almost laughed again. She almost had everything she needed, but she would never suspect him. That was the power of family, something Reg had taught him, and it was funny. He jerked the wheel abruptly, forcing Glory to spill the papers in the footwell.

"Sorry," he said, "thought I saw someone in the road."

Glory spun, scanning the rear window. "A person, out in this?"

"God, I hope not. Can you keep lookout? It's taking everything I've got to stay on the road."

"Of course."

She rested a hand on his arm. That was nice. He wondered how her face would shift when he finally pushed the button that brought all this lonely, aching misery to an end.

Chaos. Order. The only answer he'd found in his years of banishment in London, after Reg sent him away a second time.

"It's getting too hot here, son," he'd said, this time out in the marsh. "You've done me proud. You really have. But now I need you to sod off for a while until things cool down, or the whole family comes crashing down. A sacrifice for the whole; then you'll come back. Take your rightful place as my eldest. You understand that, right?"

He'd said he did. He'd left. He'd waited. He'd worked hollow-eyed for the Met, doing a job that didn't matter. He'd waited and watched and listened, and the fog hadn't shifted until word finally came to him that Reg had died.

Then he'd finally seen the truth.

His father had never intended to call him back.

Family wasn't real. Blood relations didn't matter. Fathers and sons, mothers and daughters. None of it meant anything, because family was a choice, one made not just once, but again and again.

And no one had ever chosen him. In that moment, he'd glimpsed his answer.

"What's that?" Glory asked, leaning forward to peer into the side mirror.

Mercer heard it then, the distant whine of a siren. He peered into his rearview, through the gray and the storm, but couldn't see anything. Just the tides swelling down the road, the sea backfilling across the marsh through the holes he'd blown in their defenses.

Then there.

He saw it. Now he laughed out loud. Blue and red lights flashing in the murk. It wasn't possible. How could it be? He'd left them all at the station. But then the girl was crazy. The boy would follow her anywhere. It had to be them.

"Why are you laughing?" Glory asked, but he couldn't stop now. He pushed the accelerator down and the van surged forward.

Sally Rogers. Liam O'Connell. The first time he'd met them he'd felt it, but the second was when he'd been sure. At his houseboat on the Rother, when he'd already had Nancy Cagen dosed in his living room just yards away. He'd teased them about rhubarb while Cagen breathed her final breaths.

What a merry chase.