Page 31 of On Fire

“Carlson’s pretty sure this parade will be the next target?”

Finn nods. “Yeah. And so is ATF. That means we have five days to get our shit together.”

“I’ll text Keller,” I say.

“You got it.” Then he pauses for a moment. “You know sometimes things—people really—happen and you just have to take a leap.”

“What,” my speech is deliberate, “are you talking about?”

“Nicolas Silvano, I know you better than anyone on the planet.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“Well,” he says. “It shouldn’t be that way.”

΅

When I pick Keller and Luke up, it’s clear Keller’s just finished breakfast. He’s cleaning his fingers with wipes as he climbs into the car.

Luke slides into the back seat with his collection kit and I’m instantly on alert. He is way too animated for eight-thirty in the morning.

“You’ve never been inside the house, right?” He’s busy strapping himself in.

Keller looks stricken in the passenger seat.

I clear my throat. “No. I think last time I just picked you up, right? Keller?”

Without waiting for his brother’s response, Luke continues. “It’s kind of like an old lady home, and I keep telling him he need to rip off the back and extend it.”

“I like my house,” Keller says.

“Out and up. The guy’s head practically scrapes the ceiling.”

It’s funny watching the two of them together. Luke is different around his brother. With Devon and the Russos he’s quiet, loving, always there in a non-cloying way and mature—with his brother, they are reduced to battling teenagers.

In a few minutes, though, Luke receives prelim photos from the scene taken last night. He’s got his laptop balanced on his knees and is going through them, using his phone as a hotspot. Keller and I go back and forth about his plans for stationing trucks in Rockland during the parade and then nervous, he just starts jabbering about some article he’s read recently about Pompeii. Then soccer.

This pulls Luke’s attention from the laptop back to his brother.

“I still say you should just go back to the high school. You love coaching girls’ soccer.”

I had heard something about how Keller had kicked Devon off the team when she was a junior. She and the guardian for the all the Russos, George Hamilton, sued the school and lost. Now he’s her boss and they have been forced to make peace with each other.

Keller shakes his head like a petulant child. “I am never going to do that again.”

“Oh, come on. It’s different times now.”

“Those pictures you got there say different,” Keller says. “I threw Devon under the bus. I don’t want to ever do that again.”

“How did you ‘throw Devon under the bus’?” It’s a legitimate question.

“Let’s just say I had to prove something to a group of single brain-cell types,” Keller says. His try at being cryptic falls flat. I have no idea what he’s talking about.

“What is the big deal for crissakes?” Luke leaned forward between our seats. “Big bro here was getting a lot of pressure to terminate Devon because she was so fucking good and the only girl on the boys’ soccer team. There was one other coach who was going to out this guy if he didn’t ‘man up’ and do it.”

Despite his girth and height, Keller seems to shrink into his seat.

“Out you?” I said, gripping the wheel.