Page 16 of Open Road

“Name?”

“Janie. Rose is the girl.”

“How old’s the kid?”

“Three. Maybe four.”

Scout exhales through his nose, runs a hand across his jaw, and stares at the table. Scout is the most readable man I know, and what he’s reading right now is something he doesn’t want to hold.

“Where’s the husband?” Creed asks.

“Don’t know yet.”

“We’ll find out.” The finality of someone crossing an item off a list. “In the meantime…” He looks at Reaper.

Reaper looks back at him.

“No vote,” Creed says.

The words sit on the table. Not a question, not a proposal, a declaration. These two have been in lockstep for so long they barely need full sentences between them. Club protection extended. The woman and the girl are under this roof, which means they’re under this patch, and nothing south of the Georgia line is getting through the gate without going through us first.

Scout nods once. He might be the most decent of us, decent being relative in this company, but decent doesn’t mean soft, and he’s been at this table long enough to understand what the Rivet Knights coming south means for anyone standing in the wrong place.

“Winchester,” Creed says. “Eyes on their movement. Every six hours.”

“Already in progress.”

“Compound goes on alert status. Nobody in or out without my say.”

“You want the women moved?” Reaper asks.

“Not yet. No reason to move them until there’s a reason. No need to spook anyone who doesn’t need to be spooked.” A pause, weight in it. “The woman and the girl stay put. They don’t need to know about this yet.”

I don’t say anything. The coffee in my hands has gone cold.

Creed looks at me again. There it is, the thing in his face that means we’re getting to it now.

“You slept in the hall,” he says.

Not an accusation or a question, but an observation delivered the way Creed delivers most things of significance—flatly, without decoration, and giving it nowhere to hide.

“Floor was comfortable.”

Scout makes a sound into his coffee cup that technically isn’t a laugh.

“Uh-huh,” Creed says.

Reaper says nothing. Reaper has the particular talent of loading silence with opinion. His silence right now is louder than anything Scout has said all morning.

“She came in off a dark road with a bruised jaw and a three-year-old,” I say. “Made sense to keep an ear out.”

“Makes sense,” Creed agrees, and there is a particular flatness in the way he agrees that suggests he is agreeing with the stated reason while filing the real one somewhere for later.

The gavel comes down—Church is done.

Chairs scrape back. Reaper leaves without a word, which is how Reaper leaves every room.

Winchester pauses at the door, his hand on the frame, and turns back. “The Rivet Knights were seen in Georgia before,” he says. “Same corridor. Right before the compound hit last year.”