Page 40 of Open Road

I buckle up.

The truck pulls out of the lot, and I watch the mall recede in the side mirror and think about three bags and a woman who hands you the right thing off a rack and walks away without making a lesson of it.

About a voice that went quiet in a fitting room for thirty seconds.

About blue eyes.

Thirty seconds is enough to build on.

Chapter Fourteen

ROAM

Creed is talking about the Rock situation. Memphis, Rock’s man, is due in Jacksonville by the end of the week, concerning logistics, timing, where to put him, how much to bring him into the Vane conversation before he’s earned the full picture. Creed talks through problems the way he does everything, methodically, no wasted motion, and he expects the men he’s talking to to be present for it.

I’m present for it.

Mostly.

Devil’s truck comes through the gate at half past four, pulls into the lot, and through the passenger window, before the engine cuts, I can see Janie’s profile. She’s turned toward the back seat, saying something to Lucy, and she’s laughing.

Not the careful version. It’s not the laugh she produces when something is mildly amusing, and she’s decided it’s safe to acknowledge it, but a real one, head tipped back, her whole face involved. The afternoon light coming through the glass turns it golden.

Creed stops talking.

I realize I’ve stopped listening.

“The Memphis situation,” Creed says, in the particular tone of a man noting something he intends to revisit.

“End of the week,” I say. “I heard you.”

“Mm…” He looks at the truck, then looks at me. The corner of his mouth doesn’t move, but something in his eyes does, the private version of amusement Creed allows himself in moments he won’t comment on directly. “I’ll send the details to Winchester.”

He walks inside.

The truck doors open. Devil comes around the front, three bags distributed between her hands with the efficiency of a woman who knows how to carry what needs carrying. Lucy emerges from the back with her own purchases and a commentary on something that has Devil shaking her head. Janie gets out last.

She has three bags.

The bags are not the point. The point is what’s in them, or more specifically, what three bags mean. Devil went to work on someone today, and Devil’s work tends to produce results. Janie is looking at the compound gate, automatically checking it, checking the familiar shapes of the yard. Still does this and probably will for a while. The checking is part of what the last four years have built in her, and it doesn’t come undone on a schedule.

She walks inside without seeing me.

I wait ten minutes. Enough time for them to get sorted, for Rose to have located Janie and attached herself, for the immediate aftermath of an outing to settle. The compound has its own rhythm, and I’ve learned it over two decades, when to move through a space and when to wait outside it.

In the common room, Reaper and Scout are playing a card game that neither of them is paying full attention to. Scout looks up, reads something in my face, and opens his mouth.

“Don’t,” I say.

He puts a card down.

The hall is quiet, and the door to Janie’s room is most of the way closed. Rose’s voice is audible through the gap, providing a detailed account of her afternoon with Mr. Rabbit, who apparently has strong feelings about something that happened with Nerd and a crayon.

Three knuckles on the door.

The voice stops.

Rose opens it.