Inside was a piece of paper, folded many times and yellow with age. He eased it out and opened it beneath the work light. There was a woman's name and an address in a small town north of them, followed by one sentence in careful handwriting. She has everything. Tell her Elias sent you.
"Ruth Adler," Nolan read. "Hartland's Creek."
Silas stared at the paper, then looked toward the door as if an answer might be waiting beyond it. "That's a name I haven't heard in years," he said. "Former property assessor. If Elias trusted her with documents, he'd have known exactly what he was doing."
Nolan held the paper until its edges trembled. His father had left him a route that led from a box to a photograph, from a photograph to a leather cut, and now from the cut to a person who might still possess the truth. His mother had preserved every part of that route while pretending it did not exist.
Silas stepped into the main room. He did not shout or make a dramatic announcement. He simply looked around at the men who had been working and said, "We have an address. We ride north."
A dozen men were on their feet before he finished speaking. Nolan folded the paper and placed it back in the box, then lifted the cut over his arm. For the first time since his mother died, he understood that her silence had not been empty; it had been an act of preservation that had finally reached its destination.
Ten motorcycles pulled out of the clubhouse yard under a low gray sky. Nolan followed in his pickup with the heater blowing air that never seemed to warm and the metal box secured on the seat beside him. He had the address in his pocket, but the line of red taillights ahead of him made the directions unnecessary. They rode north through country that looked increasingly untouched by the last twenty years. Farm roads cut between fields emptied by the season; silos stood beside barns with roofs patched in several different colors. At a crossroads Nolan saw an abandoned house with windows boarded in plywood, and he wondered whether its owners had lost it to Pike's companies or simply grown tired of fighting the arithmetic of rural life.
They stopped once for gasoline and coffee. Decker supervised the motorcycles with the easy efficiency of a man accustomed to group travel, while Silas came to Nolan's window and leaned against the truck. His leather cut was damp at the shoulders, and steam rose from the paper cup in his hand.
"Tell me more about Marcus," Silas said.
Nolan stared over the rim of his coffee. "He was good with engines, decent with people. Made a pot of chili every Sunday and fed anyone from the garage who showed up. Said he didn't have much family left, and I didn't press him. I thought that was respect."
"Where did he live before he worked with you?"
"He said he was from another state, and we weren't the kind of friends who traded childhood photographs," Nolan said, then paused. "He asked about my mother sometimes—whether she was doing better, whether I had any contact with my father. I thought he was checking on me."