7. Rowe
ROWE
Our meeting trailer always smells the same. Like mediocre coffee and whatever colognes the boys decided to wear today.
I take the seat closest to the door because that's the seat I always take, then I rest my forearms on the table and lace my fingers, trying to look like a man who slept.
Across from me, Logan drops into his chair hard enough that the legs scrape across the floor. He hasn't stopped smirking since breakfast. He hasn't said anything since breakfast either, which is somehow worse, because he normally can’t keep anything to himself.
Cole is on the long bench against the wall, balancing a paring knife on the pad of his index finger.
Jonah is wedged into the corner with a mug that looks like a thimble in his hand.
Marek is in the seat he always takes, in a shadowy corner, his deck face down in front of him, his light gray eyes focused on nothing.
Jules sits at Elias's right. Nova sits in Silas's lap, which is the only place she ever sits when she's in this trailer, one hand on the small swell of her stomach, the other tugging the chain of her key pendant back and forth across the hollow of her throat.
Teddy stands behind them, arms crossed, the bulk of his sidearm a faint shape under his jacket.
He hasn't quite gotten the carnival's habit of sitting on every available surface yet. Or wearing casual clothes.
Elias raps the ruby of his cane against the table once.
“Silas.”
Silas manages to slide his laptop forward and turns it so the screen faces the room.
A photo. A man.
My stomach drops.
He's older than I remember. Of course he is.
Twenty years older. The black hair is gray at the temples now, his jowls are heavier, but the eyes are the same.
Pale and watery and steady. A church-bulletin smile.
He's standing on a porch with a hand on the shoulder of a Labrador, and behind him is a wreath on a green front door.
My fingertips go to my forearm of their own volition. Through the cotton of my shirt, I can feel the ridges of the scars under my thumb. Long ones. Neat. He liked them neat.
Logan sees me do it. His smirk dies.
“Samuel Harlan,” Silas says. “Sixty-three. Owns a hardware store off the main square. Two streets back is a craftsman house with a wraparound porch and a paid-off mortgage. Widower. His wife died six years ago, ovarian cancer, and from the look of the casseroles still showing up on his front step on Sundays, half the women at the Methodist church would like to fix that for him.”
“Children?” Jules asks.
“Two. Both out of state. The son's an accountant in Hartford and hasn't been home in nine years.
The daughter's in Phoenix with three kids and visits at Christmas.” Silas reaches around Nova to tap a key.
The photo changes. A storefront, HARLAN HARDWARE across the awning in faded red.
“He opens the shop himself at seven. Closes at six. Lunch at the diner two doors down, same booth, every day except Sunday.”
“Sunday he's at church,” Cole drawls, knife still balanced.
“Sunday he's at church. Front pew. Reads the second lesson on the first Sunday of the month.”
“Of course he does,” Logan mutters.
“He sits on the school board,” Silas continues, and my thumb digs harder into the scar. “Has done so for eleven years. Currently the vice chair. There's a scholarship fund with his name on it for promising boys from disadvantaged backgrounds.”
The trailer goes quiet.
Jonah sets his mug down very carefully on the table.
“Say that again, brother,” he rumbles.
“Scholarship fund,” Silas repeats. His blue eyes are colder than I've seen them in a while. “For promising boys from disadvantaged backgrounds. It's small. Two grants a year. He personally interviews the finalists.”
“I'll set his house on fire,” Logan says flatly. “We don't need the trailer. We don't need a schedule. I'll set his house on fire tonight and we leave.”
“Logan.”
“I will, Elias. I'll fucking—”
“Logan.” Elias doesn't raise his voice. He doesn't have to. “Sit.”
Logan didn't even stand, but now he leans back into the chair so hard the wood groans.
My thumb keeps moving. Left forearm. Right forearm. Back to the left. The fabric drags. The scars are old enough that they don't hurt, but the memory of them does.
“Rowe.”
I look up at Elias.
He's watching me. They all are.
“You want to do this?” Elias asks.
The answer is yes. The answer has been yes for twenty years.
“Yes.”
“Tell me again.”
“Yes.”
He nods, once.
“Good. Then let's do it properly.” His pale eyes sweep the table. “We're not here long enough to get sloppy. Two-week run. Silas, walk us through it.”
Silas taps the laptop again. A map of Thistlewood with pins opens.
“Phase one. We start tonight, after the show. Tagging.” Silas's mouth twists faintly.
“Front porch, side of the house facing the neighbor's bay window, and the back of the hardware store.
He'll wake up to the porch tomorrow. The hardware store he'll find when he opens at seven. We let it sit a day. Then we move on.”
“Move on to what?” Teddy asks.
It's the first time he's spoken. He's still getting used to this part. Watching him try to keep his federal-agent face on while we plan a murder is something I'd find funny if I weren't four seconds from clawing my own arm off through my shirt.
“The reputation.” Silas keeps going. “There's a member of the school board, Marlene Pickett, whose grandson didn't get a scholarship Harlan promised. Her grandson went through the entire interview process a month ago. She’s already pissed. And I have photos.”
“Photos of what?” Jules asks, ever the journalist.
“Nothing too damning. Just Harlan being… too close. Hand on a shoulder. Standing in the kid's doorway at the boarding house where the finalists stay during interview week. Innocuous to anyone who hasn't been us. Suggestive to anyone with a kid.”
Cole whistles. “You sneaky bastard.”
“I hired a PI last month.”
“Of course you did,” Nova murmurs, and presses a kiss to Silas's jaw.
Elias takes over.
“Last phase is the trailer. Jonah, that's you and Cole. I want it personalized, like we personalized it for Voss. Curtains, the lamp with the green shade, the rug, the chair with the high back. He grew up in a parsonage. It needs to smell like one.”
Jonah nods slowly. “Pine cleaner.”
“Pine cleaner. Lemon polish on the wood. The radio low on a gospel station. I want him to walk in and feel ten years old.”
My thumb has worn a path along the inside of my left arm.
Through the shirt, I can feel the raised lines like braille.
Be still. Be quiet. Be good. Put on a show for my friends.
I don’t care that she’s crying, God wants you to lie together.
I know you like when I do this, Rowe, you always come for me.
My stomach roils as I replay his words for the millionth time in my life.
I know that Wren saw the scar above my wrist yesterday at the bear's enclosure. She looked away fast. She didn't ask.
I picture her face. Her brown eyes. The crease between her brows when she was listening to Peanut's heart. The little laugh in the elephant enclosure when Rome touched her hand.
The grip on my forearm loosens.
I drop my hand.
“Rowe,” Elias says again. He's been watching me. “You're the main show. You go first this time. Logan after.”
“I know.”
“Anything you want done differently?”
I think about it. I've been thinking about it for twenty years. I have a list. I've added to it and crossed things off it and rewritten it and there's a version of it that lives behind my eyes like the Idaho stain on my ceiling.
“His hands,” I say. “We ruin his hands first.”
Logan's jaw clenches once, then releases.
“Done,” Elias says.
“And I want—” I have to clear my throat. “I want him to know it's me. Not just that we're the boys from the Sanctum. Me. I want him to look at me and see what I look like now and know I'm the one who’s bringing justice.”
“Done.”
“And then Logan.”
“Then Logan,” Elias agrees, like we're going over a menu.
My twin reaches across the table and grips my wrist. Right over the scar I made myself. He's the only one who can do that. He doesn't say anything. He doesn't have to.
“Standard execution and disposal,” Silas says, picking up the thread.
“Twelve days from now. The trailer's ready by day eight.
We pick him up on day ten, late, after he closes the shop and gets home.
Cole on the locks, Jonah on the lift. We work him from day ten into day eleven.
He's gone by sunrise on day twelve. We're packed and rolling by noon.”
“What about the daughter?” Jules asks. “The one in Phoenix.”
“She doesn't call. We checked the phone records. He calls her on her birthday in November and on Mother's Day. By the time he’s a missing person, we're three states away.”
“And the church?” Teddy asks.
Elias steeples his fingers. “What about it?”
“Won't they notice when he doesn't show on Sunday?”
“They will. Eventually. By then, the porch is tagged, the photos are out, the rumor is moving.
The story will be that the upstanding Mr. Harlan finally couldn't live with what people were starting to whisper.
Skipped town. Took his own life somewhere in the woods.
Or got picked up by a younger man at a truck stop.
Pick one. The town will pick its favorite.
Either way, the memorial service won't be well attended.”
“Christ,” Teddy mutters.
“You can leave this meeting whenever you'd like, Agent Coleman,” Silas says calmly.
Teddy doesn't move. Silas, Nova, the baby that’s coming—I know it all means too much to him. It means everything.
Elias raps the cane again.
“We move tonight after the show. Rowe, Cole, Logan, you take the porch. Silas, the hardware store. Jonah, you're with me on the trailer build through day eight. Marek—” he turns his head slightly toward the corner.
Marek hasn't looked up from his cards. He hasn't touched them either. He just sits with one fingertip resting on the back of the top one.
“Marek.”
“He has a dog,” Marek says quietly.
We all turn his way.
“In the photo.” He doesn't lift his eyes. “The Labrador.”
“What about it?” Logan asks.
“Don't kill the dog.”
“I wasn't going to kill the fucking dog,” my twin hisses.
Marek's fingertip moves a fraction. “We take the dog when we go.”
The trailer is silent.
“Marek will take the dog,” Elias says.
“Marek will take the dog,” Silas agrees.
I exhale.
Meeting done. Cole gathers his knife and his coat and slaps Jonah on the shoulder hard enough to dent a normal man.
Logan pushes his chair back and lingers for just a moment without saying anything.
Jules tugs Elias up by the lapel of his coat and murmurs something into his ear that softens his mouth.
Nova rises off Silas's lap and stretches, her hand resting on her stomach. Teddy’s eyes go to the bump.
Marek hasn't moved.
I stay too. I don't know why. My fingers find my forearm again, but lighter this time. Just the ridge above my wrist where Wren's eyes caught the scar tissue and slid away.
“Marek.”
He looks up. “Yes, brother.”
“Do you think it works?”
He doesn't ask what I mean. He turns the top card of his deck over without looking at it. Sets it face up between us on the table. I don't look at it—I keep my eyes on his.
“I think a man can carry a lock his whole life,” he says, “and never find out it was open.”
“That's not an answer.”
“No.” He turns another card. Still doesn't look.
“I think the lock is in your hand, Rowe.
And I think killing him doesn't open it.
But I think killing him puts down something heavy you've been carrying with the same hand.
Which means when you finally try the lock, you have one hand free that you didn't have before.”
I swallow hard.
“There's a woman,” I say before I know I'm going to say it.
His mouth twitches almost imperceptibly. “I know.”
“How do you know?”
“You haven't touched your arm while you were thinking about her just now.”
I look down at my hands.
“Oh.”
“Mm.”
He gathers the deck. Slides the cards I didn't look at back into the middle.
“Go take care of your animals, brother,” he says. “She'll be here soon.”
I stand but pause at the door.
“Marek.”
“Yes.”
“The dog.”
He doesn't look up from his deck. “I'll be good to him.”
I wonder why he wants that specific dog for himself but know better than to ask.
“I know you will.”
I step out into the afternoon. The sun is high over the Big Top, the wind carrying the sounds of my animals to me. I head toward them with one hand in my pocket and the other loose at my side.
I don't touch my scars once on the way.