Page 50 of Forbidden Protector

John's face does something fast and total, the grin dropping clean off it. "Whose land side?"

"Timber side coming in. Walked in, walked out beside his own tracks."

"Beside them." John's voice has gone flat and professional. It’s a different register than the one he used thirty seconds ago with his son. "Not on them."

"Both lines clean."

"That's not a mistake, Holt. That's a man telling you he was there and doesn't care if you know it." John looks toward the mountains. It’s the same look Holt gets when he's reading terrain instead of a room. "That's not casing a target. Casing, you hide. This is announcement." A beat. "You said the tape was tied at eye height?"

"Rider's eye height. Double knotted."

"He wanted it found." John says it like a man confirming something he already suspected and hoped he wouldn't have to. "That's not subtle work. That's a man with a name he wants remembered."

Nobody has to say the second name out loud for me to feel the temperature in the yard drop a few degrees.

Holt's eyes cut to mine, once, and something in them says later, and I let it be later, because Miles is climbing the fence rail with Gus barking encouragement, and this is not a conversation for an eight-year-old's ears.

We eat at the picnic table under the eave. Sandwiches and a bag of chips John produces from the truck like a magic trick.

For twenty minutes nobody talks about tape or trucks or a county that buries what it doesn't want to look at. John tells a story about a training exercise that ends with Holt falling face-first into a river, and Holt lets him tell it and doesn't correct a single detail, which is its own kind of gift I understand now is rare.

Miles finishes his sandwich before anyone else, wipes his mouth on his sleeve, and looks at me with the flat, uncomplicated directness only a child can manage.

"Are you Uncle Holt's girlfriend?"

The table goes very quiet.

John's mouth opens and nothing useful comes out of it.

Holt has gone still in a way I recognize now, the same stillness from a snowfield with Jacob in it, except there's nothing here to read and nowhere for the stillness to go.

"Miles," John says, finally, weakly. "Eat your chips, bud."

"I already ate my chips. You said Holt didn't have one of those. A girlfriend. You said that in the truck."

Under the table, Gus thumps his tail against my boot, once, twice, patient, entirely unbothered by the silence he's sitting in the middle of.

Nobody answers the boy

I don't look at Holt, and Holt doesn't look at me, and the not-looking says more than either of us would if we opened our mouths.

FIFTEEN

HOLT

Miles has gone quiet against my shoulder, leaned in heavy and warm.

The sun is doing what afternoon sun does to a kid who's been running on adrenaline and powder-week excitement since sunrise. His eyes are at half mast, fighting it, one hand resting on Gus's back, the dog pressed against Miles's leg.

I shift my arm under him, easy, and that's all it takes. He can sleep it off in the truck. Right now I'd rather have him awake.

"Hey, bud." I nudge his shoulder. "Tell Mac about the passport."

It's out before I catch it.

Across the porch, one of Mackenzie's eyebrows lifts, slow. She doesn't say a word about it, which is somehow worse than if she had.

That does it. Miles comes up off my arm like I've flipped a switch, all the drowse gone out of him in half a second.