Chapter 13
LAURIE
Three Hours Earlier.
By the time Laurie found himself walking up the dirt road toward Chary’s home, what had to have been a mile out of Berryfield “proper,” he estimated Chary had a lead on him of only a few hours.
Laurie had gone straight from Hiram’s gray, worried expression back to Grand Central to buy a ticket to Boston, and then an overnight train to Bangor.
His original plan had been to arrive in Berryfield, slump on the Columbia station bench until light of morning, then hire a carriage in town and introduce himself to Chary’s mansion at breakfast, printed card and all.
He’d abandoned this plan as he realized, across a twelve-hour half-asleep journey, how stupid it would’ve been to give up the advantage of surprise.
Chary had been himself attacked, but he was still hiding something. Something that was more than likely there, in this rural, ostentatious, “not a mansion” blueberry estate.
By the man’s own admission, Chary had nothing (more) to hide in Gotham.
That seemed true. But if he did have something more to hide…
it was probably hidden where he felt safest. The place he ran toward in desperation.
True, Laurie had already been there of a day, surveilling, and under a similar concealment—Chary was not at all expecting him—but that had been a Sunday.
Chary’s usual routine. Today was instead the beginning cusp of Saturday, with Chary thrown off his usual.
Laurie liked to see what people did, off-kilter and off-schedule, so he’d hauled up into a tree lining the driveway and watched the dark house.
Spotting the man’s butler sneaking out the carriage-bay entrance, though, had been pure luck. That certainly hadn’t happened last time.
Outside of Manhattan, and sometimes even within it, live-in service was falling out of fashion and affordability.
In a rural house like this one, with Chary out for six days a week, it was even more assured the staff wouldn’t have been live-in.
With only half a day’s notice, Laurie had expected a flurry of activity the morning after Chary’s arrival, or perhaps one housekeeper to greet him in the middle of the night.
He had not expected a tall, dark-haired, mustached man in butler’s livery to leave the house and walk, not down the road and into town but off into the willows.
Less for him to carry a split-apart double-barrel shotgun over his shoulder, and for him to walk wholly unlike a man of lifelong service but unmistakably like a cop—a sheriff-turned-outlaw.
Laurie swallowed his nerves and followed.
The man turned out to be a hard one to stalk, but especially there, in the dark, with no city noises to cover Laurie’s steps, no buildings, streetcars, or cabs to slip behind—only field and trees and rocks, the occasional minor hill.
Laurie pulled on strings for muscles he hadn’t pulled in years: as his father’s lone son in rural Ulster County, he’d been obliged to go doe hunting throughout his youth.
Here, he had to be just as quiet and careful, though the man clearly wasn’t expecting to be followed; that helped.
Thankfully, the man found his quarry quickly, as dawn was barely cresting: a tiny log cabin standing between two broad evergreens, surrounded by bunches of massive, man-height ferns, its roof moss-covered.
A fairy ring of mushrooms marched vigilant before a fallen-over trunk of cedar to the right of the door.
Laurie kept a wary distance—pine needles were as much warning as a doorbell, if the not-a-butler’s steps were anything to go by—though what few windows the cabin had were unlit, shuttered.
He usually relied on the anonymous crowds of New York for camouflage, and when he didn’t have that, he made himself conspicuously ordinary; both skills were useless there in the empty, peaceful woods.
He had to make do with the cover of the tall ferns and a sideways, multi-trunked birch.
Minutes passed. Laurie heard nothing—some insistent robins, peeping frogs, thankfully no alerting birds exclaiming his unwanted presence—until a hard thump came through the plank door.
Then came a scream, a frustrated, male kind, one that caused the frogs’ chirping to hitch and the birds to leap. Instinct crackled at the back of Laurie’s neck. He ducked farther beneath the very wet but helpfully giant ferns.
The cabin door flung open, done more powerfully than he could’ve managed, or most anyone, really.
Out came the aforementioned butler, dark and hulking, now partially undressed, like he’d stopped halfway.
He was built like a barrel in braces and trousers, black hair unqueued and loose over his shoulders; the language of his body was frustrated, restrained, controlled.
The shotgun remained broken-open, just as threatening.
In the increasing light, without his livery, he looked vaguely familiar. Had Laurie seen him somewhere before?
Either way, Laurie stayed put.
At the edge of the cabin’s clearing, the man paused. Laurie’s heart stopped with him. The man half-turned and stared, frowning too accurately right where Laurie lay.
Laurie didn’t dare breathe. The ferns around him felt like they pulsed with his heart. Then Laurie realized they were rustling. A chipmunk unburied itself from birch leaves and skittered off across pine needles.
The not-a-butler harrumphed and turned back into the forest.
While Laurie was still flattened like a fawn, the cabin door creaked open a third time, and another man stepped out.
Dressed in a farmer’s shirt and nothing else, he was average height, slim and tapered from youth, tan from the sun, firm where Laurie wasn’t any longer—mostly around the waist. He had blond hair to his shoulder blades, honey-dark and sleek.
On his face was an unruly reddish beard that did nothing to hide his sharp, handsome features.
He hopped into a pair of blue jean overalls, shoved on a straw hat, and stalked down the same path the cowboy butler had gone.
Holy shit.
Laurie’s breaths now came as quick as his pounding heart.
Chary’s family weren’t all dead. He hadn’t murdered his brother. Neither had Tjofabier Raberding. Nobody had, in fact.
August—the handsomer Wright, the true heir to Wright Glass—was alive.
There it was, right there. This was the secret, why Maine was Chary’s home. Why he spent twenty-four hours a week on train travel. Not a lover. Not a house.
A brother.
Chary Wright had been lying to Laurie the whole time.