"I STILL CAN'T BELIEVE THAT YOU'RE RELATED TO DENMARK TANNY. Are we in the presence of a royal?" John B questioned. They had just gotten back to Pope's house and were talking about the shocking information they had just gotten.

"A king?" JJ exclaimed, and Bree laughed as he started using an awful British accent and put a pretend crown on Pope. "We shall crown him. All hail the lord of Tannyhill! We're not worthy!"

Pope swatted him away with a chuckle. "Everybody relax. Can we relax, please?"

"Relocate to Cat's Ass, question mark?" Sarah questioned with raised eyebrows, a soda can from the store in her hand.

The Callaway girl nodded in agreement and excitement. It had felt like forever since she had been able to relax. "We haven't visited her in a little bit. I bet she misses us."

"How soon can we move in?" Kiara asked with raised eyebrows, and that was when the brunette girl remembered that her parents had kicked her out.

JJ, who also had no home at the moment, added, "'Cause I don't have a place to stay."

"Me either," Bree informed them. Then, her eyes widened when she came up with an amazing idea. "Triple decker bunk beds?"

"Triple decker bunk beds! Cheers to that," the Maybank boy exclaimed, and the three reached in and did a triple high five.

"I just keep thinking about the letter, the one that Limbrey sent," Pope told them. He pointed out, "It had the wheat symbol on it. That must mean it has something to do with the Royal Merchant, but if we find that cross, we can split it like we were gonna split the gold."

JJ pointed at him in agreement. "Yeah. I'm with that."

"And live happily ever after?" came a smooth and coke voice from behind them. Bree whipped around and saw the blonde woman on the crutches that they saw in Charleston, the one that tried to kidnap Pope. She had the blonde man that had the gun with her, and the Callaway hopped off the railing that she had been sitting on and stood up straight.

Pope glanced between her, Limbrey, and her accomplice person that was standing behind her. "You assaulted my father."

"Oh, I didn't assault anybody," the woman denied as if she were the most innocent person in the world. "Why would my employee a...assault your father? That's absurd. Listen, we can keep on negotiating, but the fact is that I want the key." Pope was about to lunge toward her when her goon grabbed him and held him against a pillar. "And I won't stop until I have it. I don't have a choice, which means you don't either."

"It's Limbrey, right? Is that right?" John B spoke up, causing all of the heads to turn to him on confusion, wondering what he was doing.

Limbrey nodded. "Yes."

"Is this what you're looking for?" he questioned, and then he pulled a key out of his pocket that resembled the key that Pope had found in his Mee-maw's old pharmacy. The brunette girl whipped her head around to Pope just in time to see him tuck the actual key pack in his own pocket, and she realized that the one that John B had was a fake.

The woman nodded quickly, believing the ruse, and Bree tried her hardest not to smirk knowingly. She had to play it cool. "Yes, it is."

"Looking at the tide right now, I'd say it's about feet deep out there. So, if I just threw it in the channel, the probability of you finding it again is slim to none. You wanna give it a shot? Ready?" John B quizzed before mimicking the action of throwing something.

"No! Hey!" Limbrey gasped before sighing in relief when she saw that he had nothing in his hand and that the key was safe in his other one. "Please don't do that."

Gesturing to the blonde man that was still holding Pope, the Routledge boy ordered, "Get him to back the hell up."

"Of course. Back up," she told the man, and he did as he was told. She turned to look at Pope. "As I have told you from the beginning, I am willing to be reasonable."

"Okay. I'll give you the key, but I want the tape," the Heyward boy demanded, and she seemed shocked that he gave into it.

Relieved that he agreed to the trade, she nodded with a sigh. "Of course. Of course."

"Pope. Hey, hey, hey, hey," the brunette boy called, stepping in front of his friend so that he could look him in the eye and sell it when all of the Pogues knew that it was all fake because the real key was safe inside Pope's pocket. "You don't have to do this, okay? This is your family."

"Hey, it's fine. It's okay. It's about your dad. That's way more important," the Heyward boy assured him before gesturing for him to give the blonde woman the fake key. John B did so, and Pope held his hand out for that tape.

"Oh, you're a good friend. Give him the tape," she told her little friend before turning her attention back to the boy. "You know, I wish that you'd come to this decision earlier. We could have avoided all this unpleasantness."

"Nice to meet you." John B called after her as she left, and Pope walked a little with them to make sure that they actually left.

JJ turned to his best friend with raised eyebrows and a smug smile. "How long do you think we have until she realizes she has your father's old key?"

"I'd give it ten minutes," he answered with a shrug.

Pope came back with a shocked and ecstatic expression on his face as he looked between each of his friends. "Okay, whose idea was the fake key?"

"Shockingly, not mine," Kie informed him, and Bree put her hands up, letting them know that it was not her.

"Hmm, I don't know," the Routledge boy muttered, putting his arm around JJ with a smile, and all of their jaws dropped to the floor when they realized. "Should we tell him?"

Bree, mouth still wide open, stared incredulously at the Maybank boy, not believing that he came up with such an amazing idea after the whole ambulance thing. "There's no way."

"Wow. I'm impressed. Maybe you are good for something," the Carrera girl exclaimed, throwing her arms up.

Pope raised his eyebrows before reaching out his arms to hug the blonde boy. "Did hell freeze over?"

"Even a blind pig can find an acorn at times," JJ laughed out, causing all of them to chuckle with slightly furrowed eyebrows, confused. "I actually don't know what that means, but I saw it on Reddit."

John B grabbed the tape from the Heyward boy and tossed it a little bit in his hand. The Callaway girl prayed that he did not drop it because that would be awful. "We gotta take the tape to Shoupe." JJ nodded.

"Yes, sir. Ward Cameron, we're coming for you, big boy."

《✵》

"OH MY GOD," SARAH GROANED AS THEY SPED DOWN THE ROAD. Topper had called minutes ago and informed them that the police were coming for Ward at that moment, so they were speeding to the Cameron house for two reasons. One was so that John B could see Ward get put away. The second one was so that the blonde girl could help her sister. "Can you please hurry? I need to be there for Wheezie."

John B looked over to his girlfriend with an almost emotionless expression. He raised his eyebrows at her as he floored it down the street and toward the mansion. "You think I wanna miss this?"

"Holy shit," the Cameron girl muttered when they reached their destination and peered over the wall that separated the yard of the house from the street.

John B sighed because none of them could see anything, and all of a sudden, he was climbing over the wall. "Screw it. I'm going over." He grunted as he did so, and all of his friends followed him. Once they landed on the grass, the sprinted toward the house where Rose and Wheezie were standing outside.

"Wheeze. Wheezie," Sarah mumbled, embracing her younger sister who was so freaking confused.

The younger girl looked up at her in questioned, pulling away slightly from the hug so that she could look her in the eye. She looked panicked and scared, which was understandable given the circumstances. "What's going on? Why are the police here again?"

"Go inside. Don't come out," she told her firmly, kissing the girl on the forehead before sending her inside with rose. The Pogues then sprinted toward the dock where all of the police are and down to the end of it where they saw Ward on his boat. Sarah called, "Dad!"

"Hey, hey. You gotta let us through," John B told the police officers that were trying to stop them from entering the scene, but Sarah needed to get to where she could see her father.

Shoupe informed and ordered them, "That's Sarah Cameron. Let her through!"

"What are you doing here, Sarah?" Ward questioned, his voice was shaky like he had been crying as he looked to his daughter in confusion. She was clearly not supposed to be there for some reason, and it clearly was not goof.

The blonde girl yelled to her father in concern and confusion, and Bree looked at JJ, not sure what to say or do besides just let the whole thing play out and see where it goes. "Dad! What are you doing?

"Vic, you gotta get her out of here!" the Cameron man ordered Shoupe, gesturing to the side and off the dock to tell him that she could not be anywhere near there at that moment. That just made all of them more nervous. "She can't be here right now!"

"Just come on in, and you... you... you can talk to her!" the police officer shouted back to him in an attempt to reason with him and get him to come in. Whatever he had planned, Bree did not have a good feeling about it.

He shook his head, listening to the police but only looking at her. It was kind of nice, really, that with everything that was happening, all he cared about was her. Bree might have thought that it was nice if it was not Ward freaking Cameron. "Sarah, I'm so sorry, baby. I can't! What are you doing?"

"Dad, no, no, no!" The girl tried to stop whatever he was doing because he was lifting the anchor of the boat, and the Callaway girl was pretty sure that they all had a good idea of what was about to happen.

"All right, move. Move," he spoke into his radio, and a half a dozen police boats began pulling up to My Druthers, sirens wailing. "Ward, this ain't gonna end the way you want it to! You don't need her seeing this."

As her father began running down the stairs connecting the floors on the very nice ship, the Cameron girl shook her head, her voice starting to crack as tears began to well up in her eyes. "Dad, don't leave! Where are you going?"

"I love you!" was the last thing that Ward said before he disappeared inside the boat.

Shoupe demanded, moving a little bit forward on the dock even though there was nothing he could do from where he was without falling straight into the water. "Hey! Damn it, Ward! Turn around and get back here!"

"Dad! No! Please don't leave!" Sarah begged, and now she was actually crying. Bree took a step toward her, ready to comfort her when she saw a flash of light, causing her to whip her head aound back to the boat.

And then the ship blew up.