Page 44 of Open Road

Up close, it’s better.

For the first time all day, I stop thinking about everything else.

Chapter Fifteen

JANIE

The change happens between one breath and the next. One moment, the compound is its ordinary morning self, coffee smell from the kitchen, the distant banging of something metal in the workshop, Gerald making his slow patrol between the gate and the shade of the big oak. Rose is at the table with her crayons, narrating a creative decision to Mr. Rabbit with the focused intensity of an artist in consultation.

Then Winchester comes through the back door. He doesn’t raise his voice or run. The men in this club don’t signal alarm the way civilians do. There are no wide eyes or a visible surge of adrenaline. What Winchester does is cross the common room with a particular quality of purpose, the kind that has a destination and a reason, stops at the hall, and says two words to Creed in a voice pitched too low to carry.

Creed’s face doesn’t change.

That’s how I know.

A face that doesn’t change when it should is not a neutral face but a controlled one. There’s a difference, and four years of studying Craig’s expressions at the dinner table have made me fluent in it. Creed turns from Winchester without hurry, scans the common room once, the particular scan of a man taking inventory, and raises his chin at Reaper across the room.

Reaper is already standing.

The whole exchange takes eleven seconds.

Rose looks up from her crayons and glances at me. Children read rooms the way animals do, through some frequency adults have mostly lost. Her face is asking me something.

“Keep coloring, baby,” I say, my voice steady.

Devil appears at my shoulder as if she were there all along.

“Come on, love.” Her hand on my arm, warm, no grip to it. “Bring the crayons.”

“What’s happening?”

“The men are handling something.” Her eyes meet mine, and the warmth in them doesn’t retreat, but underneath it is something clear. Present. The look of a woman who has been in this room before, during other lockdowns and moments when the compound shifted from one thing into another. “Best place for us right now is the inner rooms.”

Rose slides off her chair, crayons gathered in both fists, and she looks at Creed again.

Creed crouches down to her level.

Something in my chest does a complicated thing, watching a man like Creed fold himself down to the eye level of a three-year-old in the middle of whatever is happening. He says something to her, quiet, private, and meant for her. Rose considers it. Nods solemnly, with Mr. Rabbit pulled against her chest. Then she crosses to Devil and takes her free hand without being asked.

Creed stands. The controlled face is back, and then he looks at me.

“Roam’s been informed,” he says. “You’ll see him shortly.”

He walks toward Church.

The inner rooms are at the back of the compound, removed from the perimeter, no external windows. A sitting room with sofas worn soft from years of use, a small bathroom, a door that locks from the inside with a bolt the width of two fingers. Devil knows the bolt without looking for it. Her hand finds it the way a hand finds a familiar light switch in the dark.

It slides home with a sound that means something different than it did ten minutes ago.

Jet is already here.

She’s on the far sofa with her knees drawn up, a mug between both hands, the particular posture of someone who has arranged themselves into the smallest configuration that still looks like calm. She looks up when we come in. Her eyes move across my face with a recognition that bypasses whatever social protocol says you’re supposed to lead with, no question, no reassurance, no performance of normalcy.

“First time?” she says.

“Is it obvious?”

“A little.” It’s not unkind. She tips her head toward the sofa opposite. “Sit down. It helps.”