The Drop #2
Roan didn't think. He took a fistful of Mara's coat and pulled.
The two of them went down into the black gap between two units, Koda folding down between them.
The light came on across the tin where their heads had been.
Not all of her made it clean. Her boot had hung a half-second out in the lane, and she dragged it into the black just as the beam swept the gravel where it had stood.
One breath slower and the light would have caught the leather and stopped on it. She felt the miss of it in her teeth.
They were pressed in close. There was no room to be anything but close.
Her back was against the cold ribbing and he was over her, one arm braced above her shoulder, and the sweeper's beam crawled the wall a hand's width from his boot.
Koda lay against his shin, absolutely still, a warm anchor holding the whole stopped second together.
The light stopped.
The engine idled. Somewhere up the lane a window came down, and there was nothing but the tick of a motor and Roan's own blood in his ears.
Her hand found his sleeve and closed. Not for rescue.
To say the same thing his own not-moving was saying.
Don't. His face was a breath from hers in the dark, close enough that the cold of her cheek came off her and touched his, and neither of them gave the beat away.
He felt her breathe. He counted it. He did not close the last inch, and she did not close it, and the not-closing of it sat between them louder than anything they'd said out loud in the truck.
The window went back up. The beam swung off the wall and moved on. Gravel crunched, slow, unbothered, up the lane and out the gate.
Neither of them moved for a ten-count after it was gone. Then Roan let the breath out of his chest, and her hand loosened on his sleeve, one finger at a time, and he made himself sit back off her into the cold.
"You good," he said. Barely a sound.
"I'm good." Her voice wasn't quite steady. She smoothed her coat down with one flat hand. "I got the number when he lit the lock. It's in the camera."
He almost laughed, low, and swallowed it. "Then we didn't need to come in at all."
"We didn't know that ten feet ago." She pressed the back of her hand once to her mouth. "Now we're done being here."
They came out of the row the same as they'd gone in, low and quiet, Koda a silent knee-high shadow beside them.
Across the road, into the dead orchard, into the truck.
Roan got Koda up onto the seat and the dog leaned his whole weight into him once, hard, then settled, work done.
Mara pulled her door shut without a click and sat with the camera in her lap, both hands flat on it, staring at the dark tin across the road.
"That was closer than two minutes," she said, finally.
"It was ninety seconds. It just spent longer than that." Roan flexed the hand that had gripped her coat, and let it open. "You can put the camera down. It's not going anywhere."
"I know." She kept both hands flat on it. "Give me till the road. I'll set it down at the road."
Roan rolled them out slow with the lights off until the storage row dropped behind a rise. Then he clicked the headlights on and the county road came up gray and empty ahead.
"Say what you're thinking," he said.
"I'm thinking it was too easy." She kept her eyes on the road. "A courier that calm. A box that old. He put his hand flat on the tin like he'd done it a hundred times. That was a man doing a boring thing, Roan. A chore he's run a hundred nights."
"It looked like routine."
"It looked like ours." She turned in the seat. "That's what's wrong. We came out here thinking we'd catch the machine reaching for our corridor. But this, the box, the account, the month-end walk, this is worn smooth. This has been running for years."
Roan drove a while with that. Koda's chin came onto his thigh, warm, steady.
"Years," he said.
"Long before the first house on our line ever burned." Her voice had gone quiet and level, and that was worse than the fast voice. "This channel didn't get built for the corridor. The corridor got plugged into it. The fires didn't start the money."
"The fires joined it."
"The fires joined something that was already moving." She looked back out at the road running under the lights. "And I want to know how long it's been moving, and who was standing at the desk before any of us knew there was a desk."
"So we're not chasing an arsonist," Roan said.
"We're chasing a bookkeeper." Her voice didn't rise. "The fire is the loud part. Somebody quiet has kept this clean since before either of us touched the case, and he is still keeping it clean tonight, in his sleep, without lifting a finger."
"That's the man I want."
"That's the man I've wanted my whole career." She said it soft. "I just never got to stand this close to his money before."
The ground had shifted under the whole case, and he drove a mile without a word and let the size of it come.
"Then we find out how far back it goes," he said.
"We find the front of it." Mara set the camera down in the console, slow, both hands.
"Tonight. Before somebody closes that window for good.
" The county road ran on under the lights, dark on both sides.
"Money this old keeps books. Books keep names.
I want the name before somebody remembers to shut the door. "