Page 21 of Animal Tamer
“Tell me again.”
“Yes.”
He nods, once.
“Good. Then let's do it properly.” His pale eyes sweep the table. “We're not here long enough to get sloppy. Two-week run. Silas, walk us through it.”
Silas taps the laptop again. A map of Thistlewood with pins opens.
“Phase one. We start tonight, after the show.Tagging.” Silas's mouth twists faintly. “Front porch, side of the house facing the neighbor's bay window, and the back of the hardware store. He'll wake up to the porch tomorrow. The hardware store he'll find when he opens at seven. We let it sit a day. Then we move on.”
“Move on to what?” Teddy asks.
It's the first time he's spoken. He's still getting used to this part. Watching him try to keep his federal-agent face on while we plan a murder is something I'd find funny if I weren't four seconds from clawing my own arm off through myshirt.
“The reputation.” Silas keeps going. “There's a member of the school board, Marlene Pickett, whose grandson didn't get a scholarship Harlan promised. Her grandsonwent through the entire interview process a month ago. She’s already pissed. And I have photos.”
“Photos of what?” Jules asks, ever the journalist.
“Nothing too damning. Just Harlan being… too close. Hand on a shoulder. Standing in the kid's doorway at the boarding house where the finalists stay during interview week. Innocuous to anyone who hasn't been us. Suggestive to anyone with a kid.”
Cole whistles. “You sneaky bastard.”
“I hired a PI last month.”
“Of course you did,” Nova murmurs, and presses a kiss to Silas's jaw.
Elias takes over.
“Last phase is the trailer. Jonah, that's you and Cole. I want it personalized, like we personalized it for Voss. Curtains, the lamp with the green shade, the rug, the chair with the high back. He grew up in a parsonage. It needs to smell like one.”
Jonah nods slowly. “Pine cleaner.”
“Pine cleaner. Lemon polish on the wood. The radio low on a gospel station. I want him to walk in and feel ten years old.”
My thumb has worn a path along the inside of my left arm. Through the shirt, I can feel the raised lines like braille.Be still. Be quiet. Be good. Put on a show for my friends. I don’t care that she’s crying, God wants you to lie together. I know you like when I do this, Rowe, you always come for me.
My stomach roils as I replay his words for the millionth time in my life.
I know that Wren saw the scar above my wrist yesterday at the bear's enclosure. She looked away fast. She didn't ask.
I picture her face. Her brown eyes. The crease betweenher brows when she was listening to Peanut's heart. The little laugh in the elephant enclosure when Rome touched her hand.
The grip on my forearm loosens.
I drop my hand.
“Rowe,” Elias says again. He's been watching me. “You're the main show. You go first this time. Logan after.”
“I know.”
“Anything you want done differently?”
I think about it. I've been thinking about it for twenty years. I have a list. I've added to it and crossed things off it and rewritten it and there's a version of it that lives behind my eyes like the Idaho stain on my ceiling.
“His hands,” Isay. “We ruin his hands first.”
Logan's jaw clenches once, then releases.
