Cawley himself sat, depondent. Milo had tied him to his chair, though it hardly seemed necessary; even if Cawley’s injuries hadn’t prevented him from escaping, his fight was gone.
They packed the remaining food, some fresh clothes, water, taking only what they needed. Once they had collected the bounty on Cawley, there would be no need to sell mousetraps or rubbing alcohol to survive.
When they were ready—bags packed, horses saddled, fire damped down—Brooke led Milo and the girls to the garden and its pile of stones.
If the Hollands had lived to see it, Emily’s funeral would have been an occasion for howling speeches and bloody vows. As it was, Brooke could think of nothing to say. Hands in her pockets, she fingered the shreds of the old T-shirt she’d taken from the scarecrow.
“I thought you didn’t have a mom,” Holly said.
“I did,” Brooke said. “I should have told you.”
She would tell them. About her family, and everything they’d taught her.
She pulled the shredded shirt from her pocket and stuffed it down between the stones.
“Goodbye, Mama,” she said.
They left the house unlocked. Let anyone seeking refuge here help themselves.
THEY SAW NO OTHER travelers on the road. Bird calls, trees creaking in the breeze. The morning grew sunny and warm, and the snow sank into itself, pockmarked by clumps that fell from the branches. Descending a switchback against gray cliffs, they passed above a lake, not yet frozen, a black mirror in the snow.
Holly rode the gelding, and Milo carried Sal on the roan, chatting lightly with her. Sal’s responses were few. She had been quiet since the fight in the kitchen, sucking her thumb most of the time, folded into herself.
Brooke carried Cawley on Emily’s draft horse. The burnt, raw smell of him filled her nose.
The outpost was a mile off the hill road, on the near side of Shaw Station. They arrived in the afternoon. The place had belonged to the national park service once, with a campground and hiking trails. On the old parking barrier, the feds had nailed up signs. FEDERAL PROPERTY. NO UNAUTHORIZED ACCESS BEYOND THIS POINT. TRESPASSERS WILL BE PROSECUTED. NO HUNTING. NO ACCESS.
In the distance was a concrete and steel bunker with a double-high garage on one end. Brooke had never seen the outpost in person. She remembered Callum telling her and Robin that there was a trapdoor in that roof, that the marshals could climb straight out into a waiting helicopter if they were under attack. By the brutal look of this place, Brooke could believe it was true. High in the walls were thick, shatterproof glass windows. Cameras were mounted on steel poles, behind cages. Their approach was being watched, if there was anyone in residence to watch it.
When they were a hundred feet out, a panel in the steel door slid open and a voice shouted, “Dismount and place your weapons on the ground! This is federal property!”
“No shit,” Cawley muttered.
“We’re here for the warrant on Stephen Cawley,” Brooke called out. She couldn’t see anything through the speaking panel on the door.
“Place your weapons on the ground and step away! You are on federal property and subject to federal law. We can and will use force if you do not comply!”
“This is Cawley,” Brooke called. “We have children here! You show yourself first.”
“If you are carrying firearms, place them on the ground and step away or I will shoot! This is your final warning!”
“Who are they going to shoot?” Sal whimpered, her thumb hanging from her lip.
“It’s okay,” Milo said.
“Mom?” Holly asked. “What should we do?”
“We don’t know who’s in there, Milo,” Brooke said.
“We came to turn Cawley in,” Milo said. “This is how it works. They’re marshals.” He dismounted and crossed to Brooke’s horse, unstrapped the rifle from her saddle, and dropped it on the ground. Brooke worked one leg over the horse, still sore and weak in her movements, and slid down.
Cawley’s attention was palpable now, eyes darting between the rifle and the opening door. A marshal emerged from the gloom of the doorway, and then another, their handguns trained on the visitors. For a moment, Cawley seemed about to throw himself off the horse—Brooke could feel the desperation radiating from him in the face of these men, their handguns and their bunker—but then he slumped. It would be pointless, bound as he was.
The marshal in front was the same young man who had stood up at the Buxton auction to announce the warrant. He advanced on Cawley, half-crouched, jaw set, gun raised, backed up by the second marshal, who was paunchy and middle-aged.
“Stephen Cawley?” The young marshal shouted from ten feet away.
Cawley just stared at him.
“I said, are you Stephen Cawley?”
“You know who I am, Jeff,” Cawley said wearily.
“Stephen Cawley, you are under arrest for fleeing lawful detention and are hereby remanded to federal custody, where you will be charged with third-degree felony escape in addition to your other charges.” The marshal Cawley had called Jeff unhooked a set of nylon restraints from his belt and secured them around Cawley’s wrists before taking out a retractable razor and sawing through the rope Brooke had used to tie him to the saddle.
Waste of a good rope, Brooke thought.
“Where’d you pick him up?” Jeff asked Milo.
“Near Buxton,” Milo said, lifting Sal down from the roan.
“You brought him all the way from Buxton?” Jeff turned to the older marshal, who had holstered his gun. “I told you it was worth it going up there, Chester.”
“He’s killed two people,” Milo said.
“What?” Chester asked. “There’s nothing in the system. We would have seen it.”
“Lorne Davey from Buffalo Cross and—”
“Milo,” Brooke shook her head. “They don’t care.”
“Not our jurisdiction,” Chester said, with audible relief. “Unless the victims were traveling under federal visas.”
“Let’s get on with this,” Brooke said. “There’s five thousand dollars bounty on him, and you’d better have it.”
INSIDE, THE BUNKER looked like Callum Holland had personally decorated it. A first-person shooter paused on an old wall screen. A split vinyl sofa with the cushions caved in. Free weights and a bench in the middle of the kitchen. A sink full of dishes. A life-size poster of a naked teenage girl, waxed and bent over the hood of a car. The place stank like rancid oil.
Holly stared at the poster of the naked girl, disgust wrestling with embarrassment in her face.
“Why don’t you guys wait outside?” Brooke said.
“Yeah,” Milo said, surveying the room. “Come on, Hol. We’ll go back outside.”
“Dad, why did that girl have her—” Sal’s voice was cut off by the heavy steel door closing. An eddy of fresh air moved through the room before the stale stench of the outpost returned.
“Let’s do this quick,” Brooke said to Jeff. Despite his youth, he seemed to be the one in charge. “Where’s the bounty?”
“We don’t keep that kind of cash on hand.” Jeff took out his phone and started swiping at it. “The goddamn rabbits around here will shoot you for a five-dollar bag.”
“Stephen Cawley killed my mother two nights ago. I know you don’t care, but you better realize I don’t have a drop of patience left for him or for you. If the money’s not here, where is it?”
“You’ll get it,” Jeff said. “Don’t worry. I just need authorization so we can print a check.”
“A check’s no fucking good to me.”
“If you want me to cash it for you, I have to charge fifteen percent. That’s policy.”
“I brought him a hundred miles, right to you.”
“It’s policy.” Jeff shrugged, throwing himself down on the sofa, his eyes still on his phone. “Who do you want it made out to?”
She hesitated. “Brooke Holland,” she said.
Jeff looked up, cocking an eyeb
row. “They’re going to run your name before they authorize the check, you know. I can detain you right here if you have an open record.”
“I’ve never done anything to the feds,” she said stonily.
He shrugged again and turned back to his phone, jamming tiny headphones in his ears.
The older marshal, Chester, had to clear piles of junk out of a holding cell before he could put Cawley in it. Then he looked over Cawley’s injuries, noting everything down on a form, and pulled out a large first aid kit.
Chester sprayed something over the burns on Cawley’s scalp. Cawley closed his eyes and sweated while the marshal cleaned the wound. If it hurt, he made no sound.
The TV screen on the wall turned itself off. Jeff was still on his phone. Brooke combed through the first aid kit, removing gauze patches and antiseptic wipes for the cut on her arm, burn cream for Sal’s fingertips, adhesive bandages, sodium pills, petroleum jelly.
If Chester noticed her taking these things, he pretended not to. Brooke watched him wrap Cawley’s swollen knee. The feds would take care of Cawley’s injuries. They’d probably pay for doctors, rehab, food, books—whatever prisoners were entitled to, whatever was considered humane. Measure his literacy, x-ray his teeth, test his blood, murmur dolefully about the forces that had made him.
Edmund had taught Brooke to think of life as some kind of cage match for the fittest to survive. And she had done it, brought Cawley in, just as she intended. Was she supposed to feel proud? The same forces that made him had made her, after all. Only, she had not killed a federal agent, or stolen from them, or destroyed their things. She had beaten and terrorized people, fractured families, put drugs in the hands of children, sowed despair, ruined lives. Still, the marshals would run her name in a database and see nothing.
“I’m sorry.” It was Chester. He was done bandaging the prisoner. “About your mother. I’ve been stationed here a while, since your family was still in chalk, and the Cawleys. The people that took over after them make Emily Holland look like a freaking saint. I saw her a few times, riding around. She poached a deer I caught once; heard the shot, I guess, finished it off before I could get there.”
“No such thing as poaching from a fed,” Brooke said automatically.
“Yeah, that’s what she said.” He nodded sagely.
When Chester left to put away the first aid kit, Brooke approached Cawley’s cell. He was lying on his side, facing the wall. His head was bandaged, and Chester had rolled his pants up to accommodate the plaster wrapped around his knee and ankle. The bruises where the plaster ended were black, already turning green.
“How did you find me?” she asked Cawley’s back.
He didn’t answer. From the set of his neck, she could tell he wasn’t asleep.
“Just tell me, and I’ll leave you alone.”
Slowly, Cawley turned, easing his burned head down onto the towel they’d given him to lie on, and spoke dreamily to the ceiling. Chester must have given him oxy. “I told you, I wasn’t looking for you,” he said. “I thought you were her.”
“Who?”
“Your mother. She’s been after me for years. Like it wasn’t enough, what they did. Word travels. If I ever showed up in the county, blah blah. Same old shit.”
The scar in his lower lip pulled when he spoke, Brooke noticed. He must feel it all the time.
“Why would you look for her in Buxton?”
“I didn’t. I’ve been running chalk through the tar sands for years with that fucking narc.” He twitched a finger across the room at Jeff, but the marshal had his headphones in and didn’t hear. “Crooked piece of shit. Somebody figured him out and the motherfucker turned on me, let his fed buddy take a bullet like a fucking pussy. And then they put a bounty on me because they’re fucking feds and they shit money—” Cawley dissolved in a fit of coughing.
“Then what?” Brooke prompted him when he was done.
“I needed a horse. You tried to cover that brand, but I could see it underneath. Seen that goddamn H so many times I couldn’t miss it if I tried. I thought, That bitch is coming at me here now? It wasn’t hard to find out where the horse came from. People are friendly in that town. So I went to deal with her.”
“But my kids,” she prompted him. “Who did you think—”
“I was fucking high. I don’t know what I thought.” Cawley was quiet for a minute. Then he spoke to the ceiling again. “I forget sometimes, how long it’s been. Anyway, I shouldn’t have fucking bothered about that horse. I didn’t know it was you.”
“Well, it was,” Brooke said.
“Yeah.” Cawley turned to face the wall again. “It was.”
20
It was well into the afternoon before they left the outpost with a check for Cawley’s bounty. They arrived in Shaw Station as evening was falling. The hill road descended sharply into the basin of the Warren River, passing through a narrow latitude of woodsmoke. The town below was as Brooke remembered it: a sprawl of streets filling the lowland between hills, as if life had pooled there. She led Milo and the girls past the east-end mall, which had become a recycling center. The rest of the suburban commercial zone was mainly green now, orchards and chicken farms, parking lots made over to solar panels.
They passed into town proper. Some things had changed; many more had not. The old trees, the pitted roads, the familiar house fronts. Brooke realized that part of her was surprised to find it all still here. Had she expected the entire county to come to ruin along with her family? That would be Edmund’s reasoning. His vision of survival had been so fraught, so narrow: a single unerring path, navigated by force of will, and any diversion from it a dead end. A world that outlived him, that lived without him, was unthinkable. Brooke was weary of the whole thing. She was weary, especially, of the idea that her life was a test, to pass or fail.
Holly and Sal took it all in silently. Compared to Buxton, Shaw Station was a metropolis. Block after block of lit windows, strangers’ homes, a TV playing news from a pirated signal, children shouting, amplified music, a peal of laughter. Brooke saw curiosity creep into her daughters’ faces, a softening of the pinched anxiety that had taken up residence there in the past week.
Brooke led them through the neighborhoods, looking for a place where they might stay the night. On a side street, they had to stop for a group of children who were crowding the road with hockey sticks and nets, playing out the last minutes of daylight.
“Car!” shouted a girl Sal’s age, and the goalie pulled his net aside to let the horses pass. Holly and Sal studied the other children. The players took no particular notice of them. Shaw Station was near the interstate, within reach of federal territory and the city; strangers passed through often enough that one family on horseback was unremarkable.
The place Brooke was looking for was still there: a motel joined onto a two-story house, where the side street met a commercial strip. Bare, ancient lilac trees grew at the edge of the sidewalk. Brooke recalled that the motel had been made over into apartments but that a room or two was kept free for travelers. Brooke hadn’t known the owners. She had only heard they were decent—the kind of people that didn’t allow chalk and didn’t do business with the Hollands.
There were lights on in some of the units. Brooke knocked on the door of the main house. No one answered. She waited and knocked again, then a third time. Finally, a girl with a toddler on her hip opened the door. The girl wasn’t familiar to Brooke, but that didn’t mean anything. The girl would have been a toddler herself the last time Brooke was in Shaw Station.
“Do you still rent rooms?” Brooke asked.
“Sometimes,” the girl said. She looked Brooke over, cast a quick glance at Milo and the kids behind her. “It’s kind of late. I can’t show it to you now.”
“We don’t need to see it. We’ll take it as is,” Brooke said.
“Where you from?” the girl asked, looking harder at Milo.
“Buxton,” Brooke said. “We can pay cash tomorrow.”
/> “Uh-uh,” the girl said, letting the squirming toddler down to run back inside. “I only take advance.”
With a few more minutes of negotiating, Brooke agreed to leave one of the saddles as a deposit. The girl handed over a large brass key welded to a soup ladle and pointed them down the row of doors to the far end.
Inside, the room was clean enough, and the queen-size bed had been made up with fresh blankets since the last guests. Better still, the bath ran clear warm water. Milo showed Holly and Sal how to work the faucet and diverter—they shrieked and then laughed as water shot out of the showerhead.
Brooke stopped unpacking and listened.
They were laughing.
Things had happened, Brooke knew, that would stay with them forever. She had not been able to prevent it. But for now they were laughing.
After the water turned cold (more shrieking), Holly and Sal wrapped themselves in blankets and sat in front of the big picture window. The motel was on a hill, overlooking a wide spread of lights from town.
“What are we going to do now?” Holly asked.
Brooke sat down with them, gazing out over the town. “When places open up in the morning, we’ll look for somewhere to cash that check.” She hoped the exchange station would do it. The other option—the Shaw Station courthouse—she had no desire to see again. “Then we need to buy some food, and some warm things.”
“Are we going home?” Sal asked around her thumb.
“Yes, Salamander,” Brooke said. They would go home, together. Flood the bogs. Harvest what they could. Recover Star, if that was possible.
And then?
She remembered what Milo had said about giving everything up for her. She thought about Holly’s loneliness on the farm.
“I have a brother,” Brooke said, a shy flutter in her chest. “In the city. You guys have cousins.”
“We do?” Holly craned around, eyes wide.
“I don’t know how to reach them, though. I don’t know, honestly, if Robin would want to hear from me.”
“Of course he would,” Milo said.
“I have—” Holly scrambled to her feet, rifling through her pile of things on the floor. “I have this.” She held up Milo’s old phone, like a trophy.
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