Page 163 of What We Bury

“She’s not the reason this started.” I look past him, to the TV, to the reporter’s mouth moving around words that will ruinsome girl’s life and barely dent his. “She’s another person I didn’t get to before the bad shit happened.”

The cup creaks in my hand. I slide it away before it splits.

“Now she’s caught in the middle of it. In the mess. In ours.” My jaw works. “And all I can do is protect her. Keep her from getting hurt worse than she already has.”

Dean looks at me for a long second.

“And the body?”

“There isn’t one.”

“Yet.” He fills it in himself this time.

I don’t answer.

Logically, this is where I should stop. But I can’t walk into Tuesday’s meeting with a hypothetical. I need to push harder.

I came here to find out what Dean is. And the only way to learn what a man does with the truth is to hand him a piece of yours and watch his face while he holds it.

“There’s a thing I carry,” I say, voice low. “Most of the time I keep it where it lives. But some nights the thing gets so big and dark that the only thing I can imagine putting it out is the right person’s blood on the floor.” My jaw works. I let it. “Not anyone’s. People like him. The ones who dump a girl in a stairwell and walk out like they had a right.” I watch him the whole time, clinical. “I don’t know how to keep fighting that want without doing something about it.”

I’ve handed people far smaller truths than that and watched the color go out of them. Watched the door close behind their eyes. The slow lean-back, theI should probably get going.If Dean stands up, I let him leave. Then I call Loki, close every door I opened, and make sure Dean never gets another piece of the truth.

Dean doesn’t stand up.

For a second, he doesn’t do anything at all.

Then Dean laughs.

It’s low and short and it doesn’t reach for anything. No horror in it, no nervous edge, noyou’re kidding.It’s the laugh of recognition—one animal hearing another make the sound it knows from the inside. He sets his cup down. Looks at me dead-on. And for the first time in six weeks of careful, settled calm, I see all the way to the floor of him.

“Me too, man,” he says.

The pressure in my chest eases.

“Me too.” Softer the second time. Like he’s tired of carrying it alone. “I’ve got the building. The license. I could do it clean and nobody would ever know.” He turns the cup again—and now I see it for what it is. Not a habit. A tell. The same lid, bolted down, leaning. “I sit in that circle every Wednesday and listen to people pray for the strength to let it go. And I smile. But I will never—never—fucking let it go.” He meets my eyes. “It would beso easy,Eli.”

I keep my eyes on his for one beat longer, then slip my hand into my coat pocket.

The card is thick between my fingers. Cream stock. Heavy. Expensive enough to feel obscene in a place serving burnt espresso and stale muffins. I set it on the table and slide it across to him with two fingers.

Gold letters catch the light—UD.

On the back, a number in my handwriting. Not the public line. Not the club desk. A private intake line Loki controls.

“If you mean that,” I say, “call this.”

Dean looks down at it but doesn’t touch it right away. “What is it?”

“A door.”

His eyes lift to mine again. Steady. Assessing. “What kind of door?”

“The kind that doesn’t open twice. You call, you know more than you can unknow. You don’t call, this conversation dies here.”

That gets his attention in a way almost nothing else has. Not with visible surprise—Dean’s too controlled for that—but something in his face narrows. Focus sharpens.

He picks the card up. Turns it over. Studies the number like he can read the rest of the sentence off the ink.