Page 78 of The Pack's Knotty Runaway
“I’m with Reed on this one,” Ash says, his voice dropping into a low, chest-deep rumble. “We know where the guy is. We know how long he’s paid through. Now’s the time to move.”
“Agreed,” I say, and they both look at me in surprise. “And as tempting as a good old-fashioned beat-down sounds, I have a plan that’s a hell of a lot better than violence. And it happens tonight.”
Reed frowns. “Walk me through it.”
35
Reed
For the record, I wanted to kick the door in.
You know, just for style.
I said so in the truck, and Bram looked at me the same way he did when I was six and proposed we test whether the hay elevator could throw a kid into the pond. (It can, by the way.)
“We knock,” he said.
So here we are a little after ten at night, parked across from the Creekside Inn with the engine ticking. Nobody talks. Bram’s in full police uniform, hat on the dash, a manila folder squared on his knee. He’s been on-duty quiet the whole drive.
“All right, boys. Let’s do this,” he finally says, and we climb out.
Pearl Hutchins, who has run the Creekside since before I was born, is behind the desk when we come in, not looking remotely surprised to see us.
“Evening, boys.” Her eyes go over Bram’s uniform, then the folder, then my hands.
“Evening, Pearl,” Bram says. “I’m going to need the spare key to room nine, just in case our ‘friend’ doesn’t open up.”
She sets a key on the counter before anybody has to ask twice. “Went up after supper and hasn’t come down. Quietest guest I’ve had all year.” A sniff. “Doesn’t tip.”
In Pearl’s courtroom, that’s a hanging offense.
The stairs complain the whole way up. Room nine sits at the end of a hall behind a dark window, and Bram knocks three times slowly.
A floorboard shifts inside. The spyhole goes dark. Then the chain, the deadbolt, and the door opens on a guy in an undershirt with the record’s face on.
Brown hair. Thirties. Medium everything. A face you’d lose in a two-man lineup, which I guess is a professional asset.
I’ve been carrying that description around for days, and the real thing looks like a guy who sells extended warranties. Then he clocks the uniform, and his scent does the rest of the introductions: I can smell the fear and the sweat in it.
“Wade Fenton,” Bram says.
“... Who’s asking?”
“Deputy Miller.” A beat. “From Apple Blossom Orchard.”
Wadelooks at the folder. At Ash. At me. At a hallway that has exactly one staircase and three Millers in it. You can watch him run the numbers and get a bad answer. He steps back and lets the door swing wide.
The room’s small and neat. Duffel half packed on the bed. Laptop on the desk. And on the nightstand, a camera with a lens as long as my forearm.
My blood goes from idle to redline so fast my ears ring. That lens has been somewhere, pointed at something, at somebody...
Bram’s hand lands on my shoulder. Light.Don’t.
I breathe through it the way I do at a structure fire. In through the nose, count the exits, save the burn for later.
Bram opens the folder on the desk and starts laying pages down, one at a time, unhurried.
“About a week ago, a man walked a bag up to a parcel counter in Lakeview and shipped it to our house.” The counter slip goes down. “Prepaid, cash. Sender, Wade Fenton.”
