Chapter 11 Hide And Hunt
Bishop
I don't run.
Running draws eyes. Running is what people do when they're scared and scared people make noise and noise is the one thing I can't afford right now.
I move fast and I move quiet and I get Delilah off the dock in under ten seconds.
"Boathouse." I keep my voice flat. "Now. Don't look at the road."
To her credit she doesn't ask questions. She goes. Bare feet on the dock boards, then grass, then the narrow gravel path that runs alongside the back of the property. I stay a step behind her, one hand light between her shoulder blades, watching the tree line where the headlights are still moving.
Slow. Deliberate.
They know this road.
The path curves behind the hedge line and for about fifteen feet we're exposed no cover between us and the access road if the driver cuts his lights and looks left. I put myself between Delilah and that angle without thinking about it. She doesn't notice. Good. I don't need her to notice; I just need her moving.
She moves.
The boathouse door is unlocked always unlocked, marina property, nothing worth stealing and I get it open and us inside without it creaking. Small mercy.
I pull it shut behind us. Don't latch it. A latch makes noise, and an unlatched door looks like nobody came in.
The boathouse is old. Original to the property, older than the house by thirty years at least. Dark wood, low ceiling, two slips with a beat-up aluminum fishing boat in one and nothing in the other. It smells like lake water and motor oil and the particular damp of a building that spends most of its life with its feet in the water.
The slats in the siding are wide enough to see through if you know where to stand.
I know where to stand.
Delilah presses herself against the interior wall, arms crossed, breathing controlled. She's watching me instead of panicking, which is more than I expected and exactly what I need.
"Who is it?" Barely a sound.
"Stay there." I move to the far wall. Find the gap between the second and third board where the wood has warped away from the nail. Three inches of sightline directly down the access road.
The SUV is parked at the edge of my property. Not on it just off it, one tire on the grass verge. Technically public road. Both of us know what that means and what it doesn't mean. Black. Tinted. Engine still running.
Two silhouettes through the windshield. Driver stays put.
Passenger door opens.
The man who gets out is not tall but he carries himself like height is irrelevant. Compact. Deliberate. Dark jacket despite the July heat, hands loose at his sides. He stands beside the SUV and looks at my property the way a contractor looks at a job site assessing. Not admiring.
Then he turns his head.
Reyes. Marcus Reyes.
Eleven years with Club Eidolon. Started on door security at the downtown venue, worked his way to enforcement by being the kind of man who didn't need to raise his voice or throw the first punch. Patient. Precise. The specific variety of dangerous that introduces itself quietly and lets the reputation do the rest.
He used to call me Boss.
Not because I outranked him in the club's hierarchy, I was adjacent to that structure, not inside it. He called me Boss because I was the one who told him where to go and what to handle, and Reyes was professional enough to respect the org chart even when he didn't strictly have to.
The last time I saw him was eight months ago.
The parking garage outside the venue. The incident already done, the damage already public, the story already decided. He'd been waiting by a black car not this one, a different one with his hands in his jacket pockets and that same flat expression he's wearing right now. He told me to get in.
I didn't.
What happened after that is the reason I own a beat-up marina house and go to bed at nine and know the name of every deputy in Lakeshore County.
He walks to the edge of the access road now. Stops at the property line like he's observing a formality neither of us believes in. Looks at the house. Looks at the dock still empty from this angle, the boathouse hidden by the hedge line's shadow.
I breathe out through my nose. Slow and even.
"Bishop." Delilah has moved she's beside me now, not touching, but close enough that I can feel the warmth of her in the cool damp air. Her voice is barely a sound. "Who is he?"
I don't look at her. Keep my eyes on the slats.
"Someone I used to work with."
"Club Eidolon."
Not a question.
"Yes."
She absorbs that without making it a production. I hear her breathing adjust a slow intake, deliberate exhale. Not panic. Something more controlled than panic. She's thinking.
"Is he here for you or," "Me." I say it with more certainty than I have. "He doesn't know you're here."
That's probably true.
Reyes has his phone out now. Reading something. He puts it away and looks at the house again, then turns and walks the property line toward the dock. Slow. Hands still loose.
He's not searching he's looking. There's a difference. Searching means you don't know what you're looking for. Looking means you already know and you're confirming.
He reaches the dock access path and stops.
Looks at the boathouse.
I go completely still.
Beside me Delilah goes still too. Not the flinching stillness of someone scared the pulled-in quiet of someone who understands that this moment requires nothing from her body. She doesn't shift her weight. Doesn't reach for me. Doesn't make a sound. She just presses back into the shadow of the wall and disappears into it.
I was wrong about her that first night. I looked at the wedding dress and the bare feet and the wide eyes and I thought fragile. I was wrong. She's not fragile. She's just never been in a situation that asked for this particular kind of strength before.
She has it.
Reyes looks at the boathouse.
One second. Two.
The fishing boat knocks softly against the dock inside the slip. A small sound. Completely normal. I watch Reyes's head tilt slightly at it not alarm, just attention. The way a man listens who has spent years learning the difference between sounds that mean nothing and sounds that mean something.
Three seconds.
I am aware of Delilah breathing beside me. Aware of the gap in the slats, the morning light, the distance between where I'm standing and where Reyes is standing and how fast that distance can close if he decides to close it.
Four seconds.
He looks back at the house.
Five.
I don't let myself exhale.
Then he turns to face the access road.
And when he speaks his voice carries across the still morning water with the particular clarity of a man who has never needed to shout to be heard.
"Morgan." A pause. Measured. Deliberate.
"We know you're in there."