Chapter 4 - The Poisoned Well
While NCIS systematically dismantled my family in the interrogation building, I lay in a private room on the third floor of the Naval Medical Center.
An IV line dripped pain medication into my arm, warming my veins and dulling the sharp, agony-laced throb in my chest. Two of my ribs were cracked, my shoulder was severely sprained, and I had a mild concussion.
The door to my room opened softly.
First Sergeant James Callahan walked in, carrying a large paper cup of coffee and a small white box from the base bakery. Callahan was a forty-five-year-old Marine with silver hair, a mustache that strictly adhered to regulations, and a fatherly presence that had guided half the young Marines in our battalion through their toughest trials.
"How are you holding up, Sergeant?" Callahan asked, pulling a plastic chair beside my bed and setting the box on the table.
"I've felt better after a twenty-mile hump through the swamps, First Sergeant," I said, trying to smile, though it pulled at the stitches on my lip.
"Doctor says you'll be on light duty for three weeks," Callahan said, opening the box to reveal a cinnamon roll. "Captain Reed is downstairs right now with the NCIS team. They just pulled the motivation behind this whole mess out of your step-sister."
I stared at the ceiling, letting out a long, slow breath. "It was about my mother's estate, wasn't it?"
Callahan nodded grimly. "NCIS ran a preliminary check on your father's business back in Greensboro. Turns out Daniel Mercer’s textile distribution company is $1.2 million in debt. Lenora’s personal lines of credit were maxed out three months ago."
I closed my eyes, pieces of a puzzle I had ignored for ten years finally falling into place.
When my mother, Evelyn Mercer, passed away when I was fourteen, she left behind a $900,000 trust fund and a two-hundred-acre timber property in coastal Virginia. Under the terms of her will, the entire estate was locked in an irrevocable trust until my twenty-fifth birthday—which was coming up in less than two months.
If I died, or if I voluntarily renounced my sole beneficiary status before my twenty-fifth birthday, the entire estate defaulted to my biological father: Daniel Mercer.
"They've been trying to force me to sign a quitclaim deed for three years," I whispered, the bitterness tasting like copper on my tongue. "Every holiday, every phone call I picked up... Lenora kept saying I owed it to my father to help his business. When I blocked their numbers six months ago, I thought they had given up."
"They didn't give up," Callahan said softly. "They got desperate. They knew your birthday was coming up in eight weeks. Once you hit twenty-five, that trust unlocks, and they can't touch a single leaf on that Virginia property."
"So they came onto base," I said. "They thought if they beat me up in my own living room, isolated me, and threatened me like they used to when I was sixteen, I'd sign whatever paper Lenora shoved in my face."
Callahan set his coffee down, his face hardening into absolute stone. "They forgot one very important detail, Sergeant."
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"What's that?"
"When you were sixteen, you were alone," Callahan said, looking me straight in the eye. "Now, you have an entire Marine Expeditionary Force standing behind you. And we don't let anyone lay a hand on our own."
