Page 1 of The Oligarch's Daughter

PART ONE

EVERYONE DIES

Present Day

1

Until that day, Grant had never killed anyone. He had thought about it before, of course, the way you imagine the worst thing you could do if you had to. You rehearse it in your dreams, in your unconscious. Inwardly, you debate.

How far would I go?

Grant’s girlfriend was helping him cook dinner, the night before it happened. She was Sarah Harrison. She taught first grade in the town’s elementary school and was sweet and gentle with a core of steel. He’d been attracted to her since the first time he met her, at the Starlite Diner five years ago. But there remained a distance between the two of them. Entirely his fault. He cared about her, but there was too much he couldn’t tell her about himself.

Sarah was making a salad while he kept watch on a chicken roasting in the oven. The kitchen of the old farmhouse was big and comfortable and cluttered—red-and-white linoleum floor, a tin-topped dining table, wood-paneled walls. He’d restored the house himself, mostly, doing the carpentry in his boat shop. The whole kitchen smelled of roasting garlic, an aroma Grant loved.

As she chopped, Sarah told him about her day. “This girl threw up on the stairs during dismissal, and I sent her out to her mom,” she said. “The mom was so pissed off she called the school to complain that her daughter had vomit on her shirt. ‘Why didn’t you clean her up before sending her out?’ she said. So I get yelled at, and meanwhile, I had to clean up this giant pile of barf.” Sarah was tall and slim and had shoulder-length chestnut-brown hair and cognac-brown eyes, and she was wearing her old UNH sweats, maroon with fraying cuffs. (It was a chilly evening.)

Grant tried not to laugh, but then she did, a rueful laugh, which made it okay.

“How was your week?” Sarah said. “Tim still refusing to pay you a deposit?” A local fisherman named Tim Ogilvy had brought in a bare-hull fiberglass boat for Grant to finish out but refused to pay until the work was done.

“Today I told him either he gives me a couple hundred bucks for materials or I’ll put his boat in the yard and chain her to a tree.”

“What’d he do?”

“He paid.”

“Didn’t that piss you off? That you had to do that?”

Grant shrugged.

“There’s that shrug. Was that too feel-y a question?” she asked.

That was when his phone rang.

Later, he would wish he’d never answered the call. But it was a good friend, Lyle Boudreaux (Captain Lyle, he liked to be called), and he didn’t phone very often.

Sarah nodded and smiled, silently letting him know she didn’t mind if he answered it. She was peeling a cucumber.

“Captain, what’s up?”

“Look, Grant, I’m not feeling so hot tonight, and I don’t think I can make tomorrow morning’s trip. And I was wondering if you could cover for me. Some couple from New York. I don’t want to lose them as customers.” Lyle had a deep-sea fishing charter business and depended on repeat business.

Meanwhile, Grant was waiting for a coat of epoxy to dry and didn’t mind making a couple hundred bucks for a morning of sailing Lyle’s boat. Lyle was very protective of her, a twenty-eight-foot Downeaster, but he trusted Grant. After all, Grant had built her.

“Sure,” he said.

“Oh, great, thank you,” Lyle said, sounding relieved.

“Okay. Be at the boat at seven?”

“Can you deal? I know it’s early.”

“Sure.”

Grant had taken Lyle’s boat out for a morning charter once before, when Lyle’s second baby was born, a few months back. She was a great boat, of course, and according to the maritime forecast, tomorrow was supposed to be a clear, sunny day.

No problem, Grant told him.

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