Page 11 of The Maverick

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"Not Mama."

"You sure?"

"She's fine, Tommy. Same place. Same room. I called this morning."

I felt the air come back into me a little. Not all the way. Just enough to ask the next question.

"Then what?"

"It's about us. The brothers."

"Which ones?"

"All of us."

I stood there in the grass with one boot on and one boot off, and the river behind him moving the way mountain rivers move, and I tried to put the wordsall of usinto a shape I could carry.

"Everybody's safe," he said, before I could ask. "For now. I'm not standing here because somebody's hurt. I'm standing here because there are people I need you to meet. People who've been helping me and Wyatt figure things out."

"Wyatt."

"Yeah."

"Wyatt's in Charleston?"

"Wyatt's in Charleston."

I let that sit a second. Wyatt didn't go anywhere except where the Army told him to go and the ranch called him home. Charleston wasn't on either list. Charleston was old money and tourists and shrimp and grits. Wyatt didn't eat shrimp and grits.

"And the rest?" I asked.

He shook his head once. "Don't know yet. Still scattered. One's deep into something east of Mosul that the Army won't put words to over a phone. One's running an op the Navy doesn't put on paper. The others are wherever the others are. Working on it. One at a time."

"Why Charleston?"

His mouth did that thing it did when he was holding back, where one side of it pulled tighter than the other.

"You'll see."

I'd known him too long to push.

"You're going to get a text in about ten minutes," he said. "Small airstrip ten miles outside town. Plane'll be waiting. You take it to Charleston. You'll get more answers there than I can give you here."

"You coming with me?"

That same pained look.

"Not yet. Got loose ends I need to tend to."

I nodded. Once. He nodded back. Once.

"Tommy."

"Yeah?"

"It's good to see you."

"Yeah."

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