"Will she talk?"
"Not to me." It's out before I can stop it, and the next words come faster, bitten off at the edges. "Maybe to you. The service record. The medal. The exemplary citizen."
The bite lands. I feel it the second it leaves my mouth — the sour taste of a low blow thrown with precision, aimed where it does the most damage, because Trevor's service is the one thing about him that's never been complicated, and I just used it as a weapon, and the worst part is I meant to, and I hate myself for it with a clarity that's almost physical.
Trevor sinks. Not much — a fractional drop of the shoulders, a tightening around the eyes — but I catch it. I always catch it. Ten years of studying Trevor Hollander's face from distances that were never quite safe has left me fluent in his tells, and it's not a fluency I can unlearn. He says nothing. Just stands there with his hand on the mug and his eyes on the page and the weight of what I said sitting between us.
A beat. The fan turns. Down the hall the concentrator hisses, and the sound fills the silence in a way that makes it heavier.
Trevor picks up the page. Reads it again. Sets it down. Turns to the hook by the door where his jacket hangs — canvas, olive drab, the kind of jacket that belongs on a man who knows how to use his hands for something other than leaving bruises on his stepbrother's shoulders.
He pulls his wallet, flips it, checks the veteran's ID is there. Pockets it. Doesn't look at me when he speaks.
"I'll go this morning."
Three words. Flat. Delivered like a compass bearing, not like agreeing to walk into a stranger's house and askabout the sister she watched disappear four years ago. No hesitation. No conditions. JustI'll go, and the simplicity of it lands in my chest with everything else that's landed there today.
I let my arms drop. Trevor Hollander is putting on a jacket to talk to a woman who slammed a door in my face, because he's the kind of man people open doors for and I'm the kind they slam them on, and the difference between those two men is about six feet of kitchen floor and twenty years of history, and neither distance is one I know how to close.
"112 Dellard," I say. "East side, past the water tower. Small blue house, chain-link fence." One instruction. The only one that matters. "Don't push her. Don't mention my name. Don't lead with the investigation. Let her get there herself. If she's going to talk, she'll talk. If she's not, nothing you say changes it, and pushing just makes her shut down harder."
Trevor nods. Once. Sharp. Marine affirmative — the kind of yes that doesn't need elaboration, because his mind was made up somewhere between my pitch and the wallet check, and the speed of his decisions is one of the things I've always hated about him and one of the things I've always needed.
He pulls on the jacket. The canvas rustles. He takes the keys off the counter and heads for the door. Boots on linoleum. Shoulders straight under the olive drab, the marks hidden now, which is its own relief and its own loss.
I watch his back cross the kitchen. The broad shoulders, the straight spine, the way Trevor occupies a doorway like he's measuring whether the frame can handle what'scoming through it. He doesn't look back. Doesn't pause. Doesn't do any of the things a person might do if they were having second thoughts — about the door he's going to knock on, or about what happened against a workbench twelve hours ago and went unmentioned.
The screen door opens. The hinges whine. It settles behind him with a click that feels too final for a Monday morning, and then he's gone, and the kitchen is just a kitchen again — cluttered, close, dishes in the rack, coffee cooling in two mugs that belong to two men who can't be in the same room without everything catching fire.
I sit. My hands find the edges of the Brenda Coyle page and hold it flat against the wood, like I'm worried it might leave too. Outside, the Ford starts. The engine turns over with a rumble that carries through the screen, and I listen to it pull away — gravel under tires, the sound fading down Cembrook toward town, toward Dellard Street, toward a blue house with a chain-link fence and a woman who shut a door in my face two years ago and might, if the day's feeling generous, open it for Trevor.
I hope she opens it. I hope she talks. I hope he comes back with something we can use, because the case needs it and Hannah needs it and sitting in this kitchen with cold coffee and the ghost of Trevor Hollander low in my hips is not a sustainable strategy for anything but losing my mind.
The page stays flat under my palms.Brenda Coyle. 112 Dellard Street. Annette's sister.The names don't change. They just sit there in my handwriting, waiting for someone to knock on a door that might open this time, because the person knocking isn't me.
Chapter Twelve
Trevor
Ipull up to 112 Dellard Street and the Ford's engine ticks twice before it goes quiet. The house sits where Cole said it would — small blue clapboard, the paint faded almost to gray, a screen door hanging off its bottom hinge like it gave up mid-swing and decided to stay that way. Shrubs gone wild along the foundation, green and brown tangles reaching for the siding. The concrete path from the curb to the porch is cracked down the middle, the fissure wide enough that weeds have punched through, and the weeds are winning. Everything in Roan that isn't actively maintained is actively deteriorating, and Brenda Coyle's front yard is a case study.
I sit in the truck. The heat presses through the windshield, thick and insistent, turning the cab into something between an oven and a confessional. My shirt's already sticking to my back. The shoulder aches — the one that took the round, doing its thing when the temperature climbs or my posture slips below acceptable. I straightenagainst the seat. Adjust the jacket I shouldn't be wearing in this heat but needed for the pockets and the look of it, the olive drab that says veteran without me having to say anything.
The street is quiet. Dellard runs east-west off the main drag, a block of houses that were probably nice thirty years ago and have lost ground steadily since. Chain-link fences. Satellite dishes. A plastic flamingo on its side in a yard three doors down — same as the one at Tally's place, which means either Roan has a flamingo problem or there's a sale somewhere I missed. Nobody on the sidewalks. The cicadas are cranked to eleven.
I get out. Close the door soft. The gravel underfoot is the same crushed limestone that's under every drive in this town, mud in spring and dust in summer, and right now it's dust, rising in small puffs around my ankles. The screen door doesn't budge when I push it — the hinge seized, rusted through at the bottom pin — so I step around it and knock on the inner door. Three solid raps. The kind of knock that says I'm not selling anything and I'm not leaving.
I wait. Count to fifteen. The porch creaks under my weight. I can hear movement inside — floorboards, the shuffle of someone who wasn't expecting company and is deciding whether to pretend they're not home — and then the deadbolt turns. The door opens a few inches. Chain still on. A face in the gap.
Brenda Coyle looks like she hasn't slept in a decade. Dark circles carved under her eyes, the skin there gone thin and papery, like something's been eating at her from the inside and the eating shows. Her hair's pulled backtight, a practical knot, dark strands going gray at the temples. A faded flannel over what might be a tank top, sleeves rolled to the elbows, and her arms are thin — not slim, thin, the kind that comes from forgetting to eat because eating takes a presence grief doesn't allow. She looks at me the way people in Roan look at strangers: like I'm either a threat or a waste of time, and she hasn't decided which.
"Yeah?" One word. Flat. Guarded.
I keep my hands visible, palms out, slightly away from my body, the way you do approaching someone who's been hurt and doesn't trust easily. My voice comes flat and unhurried, the register I use when I need to sound like the least dangerous man in the room.
"Trevor Hollander. Wade's son." I let it land. "Back in town for the funeral. Not a cop. Not a reporter. Cole mentioned you might remember me."
Her eyes change. Not soften — sharpen. The calculation runs behind her face, gears turning, memory pulling a file she hasn't opened in years. Her jaw works once.
