7. Dane
Chapter seven
Dane
Iwas checking the back-door deadbolt for the third time that hour when I heard Farrow leave the parlor.
I knew it was him before he cleared the doorway. The ancient floorboards gave everyone a signature sound. Reed was square on his heels. Cabot landed mid-foot and rolled. Wiley walked the way he thought, forward-leaning. Farrow was the lightest of us. He stepped on the seams.
The hall from the parlor to the kitchen was sixteen feet long. It would take Farrow fifteen seconds to reach me. Cabot and Wiley remained in the parlor with Reed at the front door.
Farrow stopped a step behind me.
The kitchen light was the color of weak tea. The late sun caught in the upper panes of the back window.
Farrow closed the last distance and wrapped his arms around my waist. One arm was low across my hips. The other reached higher, the palm of his hand flat over the left side of my chest.
He pushed his chest up against my back as he exhaled against my neck. I kept my hand on the lock.
Farrow pressed his lips against my jaw.
“You’ve been holding that lock for two minutes,” he said, low. “I think it’s locked.”
“It is locked.”
“Then the security’s solid. Stop working for a moment.”
He smelled the way he had three weeks ago in my apartment: cherry and vanilla cologne. He kept his lips where they were, and his nose nuzzled my cheek.
“Reed’s at the door,” I said.
“He is.”
“Cabot and Wiley—“
“Are in the parlor. I checked before I left.” His hand on my chest pressed firmly. “And I know the floors, Dane. They announce everyone, even you.”
I closed my eyes for the length of one breath. I leaned back against him. Not far. Just enough to press my shoulder blades into his chest.
“Yes, you’re still there,” Farrow said. He stepped back before I had to.
The footsteps retreated to the parlor. He’d confirmed what he wanted to know.
I turned and walked back down the hall. Cabot looked up from his notebook as I entered the parlor. Farrow was at the window seat, one shoulder to the wall beside the frame, his body angled into the room.
“Upstairs,” I said.
Cabot’s pen paused. “Now?”
“Now.”
“Why?” asked Wiley.
“I want you off the ground floor before it’s dark out,” I said. “Bring whatever you’re working on.”
Cabot rose first. Wiley took longer. He capped his red pen and tucked a folder under his arm before standing.
“Lead the way,” he said.
We were halfway up when Wiley asked, “Is there a reason we—”
“Yes,” I said. “The bedrooms are upstairs. They are also to the rear, so you’re not on a shared wall with the street.”
“You’re concerned about the line of sight?” Cabot asked.
“I’m concerned about you being visible from the street when you shouldn’t be.”
“That seems reasonable,” he said. “I’m doing my best to be invisible.”
“You’ll take this one,” I told Wiley, opening a door at the rear. “Bathroom’s across the hall. Keep the door closed when you’re sleeping.”
He stepped in and looked around. The room had a single bed and a small desk with a ladder-backed chair.
“You want it locked?”
“I want it closed. Locking will slow movement.”
He nodded. “And him?” He tipped his chin toward Cabot, who waited in the hall.
“Next room. Same rules.”
Cabot rested his hand on the doorframe. “My grandmother kept a house like this in Brookline. She had the same wallpaper and the same steps that creaked. It’s odd to be inside it again.”
“Settle in. If there’s something you need, let Farrow or me know.”
I’d just reached the bottom of the steps when the knocks came. They had a pattern: three raps, a brief pause, and two more. It was The Guardians' cadence. Reed opened the door.
Eamon stepped inside with two hard cases.
“Afternoon. I feel a bit like Security Santa. I come bearing gifts.”
I took the cases and led Eamon to the parlor. He immediately surveyed the space. “Cabot and Priest?”
“Upstairs in their bedrooms,” I said.
“Bring them down. Most of this is for them.”
I set the cases on the coffee table and flipped the latches. They contained two hardened laptops, matte black, with no branding.
“Guardians routing,” Eamon said. “Direct line through us. If you go off-network, I’ll know inside thirty seconds.”
He drew a small handset from his jacket and set it beside the laptops. “This is paired. It will allow five minutes of traffic. After that, it goes dark, and we replace it.”
Wiley entered the parlor, and he immediately focused on the handset. “Can I call Samuel?”
“Yes, and I have an update,” Eamon said. “We’ve moved him to a low-profile property in Newton. It’s one of ours. Vega is staying with him. She’s solid.”
Wiley reached for the handset. “How long do I get?”
“Five minutes,” I said.
“That’s not—“
“It’s what you get.”
His mouth opened and closed. “Fine.”
He moved into the hallway, dialing as he went.
I didn’t listen for specific words; I listened for the shape of the sound.
His voice was low and even. It came out with a rapid cadence at first, but then the pauses between statements lengthened.
The five minutes passed quickly. Cabot joined us in the parlor, and Eamon showed him one of the laptops.
Wiley reappeared. The color had drained from his face, and his eyes were red around the edges.
“You’re done,” I said.
“I’m done.”
He set the phone on the table and pointed at a laptop. “These are for us?”
“Yes,” Eamon said.
Wiley sat on the couch and opened the laptop. He disappeared into the digital world.
Cabot looked up from his computer. “How many of them are out there?”
“We don’t know yet,” Eamon said. “Which is why I brought this.” He pulled a small camera from inside his jacket.
It was a matte gray cylinder no longer than my thumb. Eamon set it on the coffee table beside the laptops and pulled a coil of adhesive backing from his pocket.
“Where do you want me to mount it?” I asked.
“This front parlor window. Right side of the upper sash, behind the shutter slat. Narrow cone, street-facing.”
“Battery?”
“Forty-eight hours. We’ll swap it Friday.”
He helped me mount it. He pulled out his phone and walked me through the pairing in under a minute. The feed opened on my screen. It was a low-resolution, narrow angle on a slice of sidewalk and the curb.
“You’ll have it on your phone,” Eamon said. “Farrow, too, if he wants.”
Wiley sat on the couch with his laptop. He hadn’t looked up since he’d opened it. Cabot had taken an armchair and was working through the second laptop.
Eamon shrugged his coat back on. “I’ll be reachable. Reed stays at the door. If anything moves, I’m twenty minutes out.”
“Understood.”
He paused in the foyer. He scanned the surroundings once, nodded at me, and was gone.
The door closed. Reed reset the deadbolt.
I checked the camera feed on my phone. A woman walked by, pushing a stroller with a child in it.
In the kitchen, the kettle was on. Farrow had already set two mugs on the counter.
“Tea or coffee?” he asked when I joined him.
“Coffee.”
“Tracks.”
He brewed instant for both of us. He took his black, the same as me.
“We need to talk about a rotation,” Farrow said.
He turned then and handed me a mug. He was close enough that I could see the small flush at his throat where his collar sat open. I’d been looking at that throat all afternoon.
“The camera buys us the front street,” he said. “It doesn’t buy us sleep coverage. It doesn’t buy us the upstairs hallway when Wiley decides he needs water at two a.m.”
“Reed holds the door.”
“Reed holds the door for fourteen hours, and then what?”
I drank the coffee. It was surprisingly good for instant.
“What are you proposing?” I asked.
“Six on, six off. You and me. One of us awake on the upstairs landing or in the parlor, the other one in bed. We rotate at midnight and again at six. Reed flexes between the door and the kitchen depending on where we are.”
“That gives us five hours of real sleep per block.”
“Ten across the day. Distributed. We can hold that for a week if we have to.”
I drank the coffee. He was right, and we both knew he was right.
“Settled,” I said. “Six and six.”
He didn’t move to leave. Neither did I.
“About earlier—“
“Don’t,” I said.
“I was going to say I’m not sorry.”
“I know you’re not.”
Farrow laughed, low, almost soundless. “Then why stop me from talking about it?”
“Because if you say it out loud, I have to do something with it.”
He set his mug beside mine. The two of them touched at the base, ceramic to ceramic. He looked at the contact and then at me.
“I’ll take the first watch,” I said. “You sleep until midnight.”
“I won't sleep until midnight.”
“Then lie down until midnight.”
He picked up his mug and walked past me, touching my cheek briefly with his free hand.
When I returned to the parlor, it had settled into working quiet.
Cabot’s pen had returned to the notebook. He’d set the laptop aside for now.
Wiley was the opposite. He leaned in with the laptop, opening tabs and scrolling through documents.
He had not spoken since the call with Samuel. I let him work.
Half an hour later, Farrow went upstairs to bed. A few minutes later, Wiley stopped typing. He scrolled forward and back a few times, and then that stopped, too.
“Wiley.”
He didn’t answer.
I raised my voice slightly. “Wiley.”
“Hold on.”
I moved behind his shoulder
The screen displayed a state filing site. He had an articles-of-incorporation document open. The digital signature at the bottom was Henry Harcourt Benton.
I read the name and waited for Wiley to tell me what it meant.
He opened a second tab. It was the same site, but a different filing. He scrolled to the signature line. It was a different name.
“Same registered agent,” Wiley said. His voice was soft. “Same P.O. box in Burlington, Vermont. Henry’s defunct LLC and four current Onyx Bay entities all ran through the same Vermont mailbox. They didn’t think anyone would look this far back.”
Cabot had stopped writing. “Henry,” he said. Then, more quietly, “Oh, Henry.”
I was already reaching for my phone.
Eamon picked up on the second ring.
“I need you back here.”
“How long do I have?”
“Twenty minutes ago.”
A pause. “On my way.”
I ended the call and looked at the screen again. Henry Harcourt Benton, on a 2019 incorporation document, sharing a registered agent with an entity that had existed as a shell for funding Onyx Bay.
It didn’t prove Henry was working with them, but it raised the possibility.
I looked across the parlor at Cabot.
“Is there more?” I asked.
“About?”
“Henry.”
He took a breath. “I’ll need to think. I never focused on Henry. I need to think.”
“Then think. Whatever you remember about him—events, dates, who he came in with, who he left with, his friends, his enemies—we need it. Not tomorrow. Tonight. If you can pull anything out quickly, we’ll share that with Eamon.”
“Yes.”
“Use the laptop if you need to.”
“Yes.”
He picked up the laptop. His hands were steady.
I pulled out my phone and looked at the camera feed. Outside, a man in a wool overcoat had stopped pretending to check his phone. He was looking at the front of the house.