Chapter Twenty-One #2
“He wants you outside.”
“Good. I’m going.”
“No. He wants you angry.”
“I am fucking angry.”
“I know.”
Her palm presses flat against my chest.
“Be smarter.”
Every part of me hates those two words.
“Killing him doesn’t stop this.”
“You sure?” I ask, but I stay where I am.
Crowley speaks again. “You’ve found an empty house and old paperwork. I hope the exercise was satisfying.”
Legend says, “You seem nervous.”
Crowley chuckles. “I’m standing alone in a yard with four armed people hiding inside.”
Legend’s gaze sharpens. “You know exactly how many.”
Crowley doesn’t answer.
Twila catches it too.
He didn’t guess who came.
He knew.
Somebody’s watching more than we thought.
Then Crowley says, “Give my regards to Mr. Montgomery’s daughter.”
Sophie.
Legend’s face changes.
That one gets through.
Crowley hangs up.
Royal moves toward the window. “Shoot the tires.”
“No,” Twila says.
“Why?”
“Because that’s what he wants.”
Royal stops.
Good point.
Crowley gets into the SUV and drives away.
Nobody follows.
I hate every second of it.
Five minutes later, we search the patch of yard where he stood, but there’s nothing useful. No discarded phone, convenient fingerprint, or mistake waiting for us to pick it up.
Man came prepared.
Royal heads back toward the bikes, then stops.
“Whiskey.”
Something in his voice turns me around.
There’s a folded Pearly Gates church bulletin tucked beneath my seat strap, same clean respectable design as the rest of the church shit we’ve already seen.
I pull it free and turn it over.
Four words are written across the back in black ink.
YOUR FATHER UNDERSTOOD. YOU WILL.
Twila reads over my shoulder.
My grip tightens around the paper. “He means you.”
“Obviously.”
“I’m gonna kill him.”
“Get in line.”
I turn toward her. “You’re going home.”
The words are halfway out before I hear myself.
Twila’s eyebrows lift.
I close my eyes. “Fuck.”
“You were about to tell me to go home.”
“Yeah.”
“But?”
I look toward the road where Crowley disappeared, then back at her.
“But you’d just come back.”
A small smile appears. “Learning.”
“Slowly.”
“Proud of you.”
“Take it back.”
“No.”
Royal groans. “Can we finish the romance shit after we search the murder house?”
Twila flips him off.
Legend heads back toward the porch. “Search everything.”
We do.
The back shed contains a burned metal barrel filled with melted chunks of plastic and blackened phones, mostly cheap burners too damaged to recover. One SIM card near the edge looks like it might’ve escaped the worst of the heat.
I bag it. “Club tech.”
Twila nods.
The cellar smells worse than the house, all damp stone, old cardboard, rust, and something rotten that turns out to be insulation instead of anything human.
Thank fuck.
Empty boxes line one wall, some still carrying file labels with girls’ initials and dates. A few of those dates are recent enough to piss everybody off all over again.
There are no bodies down here.
No girls either.
That should feel like relief.
It doesn’t.
Because empty doesn’t mean safe.
Empty means moved.
By the time we finish, afternoon light has turned gold outside and we’ve filled evidence bags and a banker’s box with photographs, registration sheets, the Mercy House folder, the SIM card, and everything else Twila documented before collection.
We still don’t have the whole operation, but several things are harder to explain away now.
Crowley was physically present with Kaylee while she was being held.
He knew what happened to Amos twelve years ago.
Mercy House was real. The financial network Sophie already found reaches farther back than we knew.
And somebody carrying material consistent with what was kept inside this house has been near my daughter.
Twila stands beside the Harley holding the bag with the gold-stitched fabric. Wind blows a strand of blonde hair across her cheek.
I look at the bag. “She came from here.”
“The fabric did.”
“Same thing.”
“No. Evidence matters.”
“Deputy.”
“Criminal.”
I step closer. “He knew about that photograph.”
Her humor disappears. “Yeah.”
“Knew your daddy got threatened.”
“Yeah.”
“So Amos wasn’t scared of some ghost story.”
“No.”
I look down the empty road where Crowley disappeared. Behind us, Mercy House stands with its dead windows and old white paint peeling from the siding like skin.
“What was he scared of?” Twila asks.
I think about Crowley walking into rooms full of girls who couldn’t leave.
Respectable donors hiding behind charitable funds.
Fake guardians. Missing reports. A barefoot girl wandering a county road in a nightgown.
A photograph of sixteen-year-old Twila taken by somebody who wanted her father to know they could reach her.
Then I look at her.
“Men who think God makes good camouflage.”
Twila’s expression hardens. “Then maybe it’s time we tear the camouflage off.”
I smile. “That my deputy?”
She turns her head slowly. “Your?”
Fuck.
She caught that.
I grin. “Slip of the tongue.”
“Better be.”
“Could be worse.”
“How?”
“Could’ve said my woman.”
She steps closer. “Would’ve punched you.”
“Then kissed me?”
“Maybe.”
“Worth it then.”
She rolls her eyes and climbs onto the Harley behind me.
Her arms circle my waist. Gets me every damn time. I start the bike, and Mercy House begins shrinking in the mirror as we pull away.
We didn’t find the girls or learn exactly what happened to Cider. We still don’t know whether Montgomery understood what his money eventually helped fund, who the scarred woman in the photograph is, or whether Mercy was just a house, a woman, or both.
But we found something.
The new piece is Kaylee. A living survivor put Crowley inside the room with girls who couldn’t leave, more than once.
Now we also know he remembers what happened to Amos twelve years ago, knows Sophie is involved, knows about Wren, and knows we’re finally getting close enough to make him come looking for us.
That oughta scare me. We got evidence and a direction, and one smug preacher just made the mistake of threatening my woman and my kid in the same fucking day.
Crowley thinks God makes good camouflage.
Fine.
Kings know how to hunt in the dark.