Second Honeymoon Page 0,87

told me.

“You’re right,” I said. “It’s no consolation to me or my kids. But I’m sure it means a lot to your family.”

McMillan glanced at a photograph of his teenage son and daughter that was sitting on a small table next to his armchair. He nodded.

The two of us talked for only a minute longer, during which he was either too smart or too scared to ask for my forgiveness. That was something he’d simply never get.

But what I could and did offer him was this: acceptance of what had happened.

I told him I could accept the fact that he fully understood what a mistake he’d made and what a terrible loss it was for my boys and me. He’d made that abundantly clear, and I believed him.

“Thank you,” he said softly.

Then, after we both stood up, I did something I never imagined I’d ever do. Not in a million years. Or even longer.

I shook his hand.

“What changed your mind?” asked Harold Cornish once we left the house. As our go-between, McMillan’s attorney had been waiting for me in the foyer. “Why did you finally agree to meet with my client?”

I could’ve told Cornish a very long story about what I’d been through since I’d last seen him on his little visit to my back patio. Martha Cole. Ned Sinclair. And the one thing the three of us had in common, a singular desire.

Instead, I simply summed it all up for him. “Nothing good ever comes from revenge,” I said.

EPILOGUE

Chapter 120

“OKAY, FOR THE last time,” said Sarah, smiling at me from the bow. “How is it that we’re on this boat?”

“It’s like I told you. I met a guy on a Jet Ski down here and he owed me a favor.”

Sarah folded her arms, waiting me out. It didn’t take long. You can only be coy with a pretty girl in a black bikini for so long.

I told Sarah about my first trip to Turks and Caicos, when this whole crazy ride began. And in the case of the Speedo-wearing con man, Pierre Simone, I meant “crazy ride” literally.

With perhaps a little encouragement from police commissioner Joseph Eldridge, however, Pierre managed to provide a humdinger of a make-good. “I won it in a poker game,” he told me on the phone in his French accent, his exact whereabouts undisclosed. “Zee guy had a flush, and I had zee full boat.”

I didn’t know if Pierre was simply making a joke. I didn’t care. For one glorious week, I had a forty-foot-long tall-rig Catalina and the chance to dust off my skippering skills, which I learned as a teenager during three summers at my local YMCA sailing camp.

I also had one hell of a first mate joining me for the ride. Even the scars from her bullet wounds were damn sexy, at least to me.

“I’m grabbing a beer,” said Sarah, heading down to the galley. “You want one?”

“Absolutely,” I said from the helm.

Back in Riverside, everyone had been home for a couple of weeks. Max and John Jr. raved about their time at Camp Wilderlocke, and Judy and Marshall raved about their Mediterranean cruise. Still, with all their great stories to tell, it was my story of bringing down two serial killers that they couldn’t get enough of.

“A doubleheader!” Max called it from underneath his Yankees cap. As for my being Ned Sinclair’s ultimate target, he proceeded to offer up the ultimate solution. “You should’ve just changed your name, Dad!”

That gave everyone around the dinner table that night a good laugh. It also gave me further proof that if family is the true currency of happiness, I was a very wealthy man.

Of course, having Warner Breslow’s check in my bank account wasn’t too shabby, either. Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars for services rendered.

And in my safe at home was the signed agreement for my bonus.

Breslow had asked me if Max and John Jr. were good students. “Do they do their homework?” he inquired. They had always gotten good grades, but now they had even more incentive to study. Breslow would be paying for both their college educations.

“Ethan and Abigail loved kids,” he told me. “For as long as I live, I’ll be reminded of that when I think of your two boys.”

The tabloids would still write nasty things about Warner Breslow, and some of it might even be true. But I’d like to think I caught a glimpse of the man few other people had ever seen. What I saw was