off for the season. When the motorcycles came up the drive, the security lights flickered on in sequence. Their sound rolled across the lawn and returned from the house as a low mechanical echo. Nolan followed in his pickup, watching the house grow larger in his windshield, and thought of the farmhouse photographs Ruth had shown him earlier that day.
Some of those homes had stood for a century before they were transferred through Pike's companies. He wondered whether any of their old stones or lumber had ended up in this estate, sold as reclaimed material without anyone remembering whose walls they had once supported. The thought made his hands tighten around the steering wheel. Silas stopped well short of the front steps. The riders shut off their engines and remained with their motorcycles as Nolan joined Silas beside the truck. They had come in numbers, and Nolan knew the sight could easily be read as an intimidation attempt, so he kept his hands visible and avoided going farther until someone from the house approached.
Two security men appeared beneath the portico. One called out that the property was private and that they needed to leave. Silas answered that Nolan wished to request a conversation with Warren Pike and would depart if instructed to do so. The security men exchanged looks. One went inside while the other waited at the top of the steps, apparently unsure how to classify a group of exhausted bikers standing quietly in the rain. Then the front door opened again, and Warren Pike appeared beneath the porch light.
He was dressed in trousers and a dark sweater rather than the expensive suit Nolan had seen at the diner. His hair was combed, his face composed, but the dark shadows beneath his eyes made it clear that his legal team had kept him busy. He descended two steps and stopped.
"You should have called," Pike said.
"I did," Nolan replied. "At Garrett Cole's house. The man who answered said you wanted to meet tomorrow. Then your lawyers tried to keep the documents out of public view before we'd even agreed on a place."
Pike looked past him at the motorcycles. "This is an impressive way to arrive for a conversation."
"It's a memorable way," Nolan said. "But nobody here is going to touch you, and no one brought evidence to hand over privately. I came to ask you to stop trying to hide it."
"The documents were taken from private property. My attorneys are doing their jobs."
"The question of entry is being handled with counsel," Nolan replied. "It doesn't explain twenty-two years of documents about families who lost their land. It doesn't explain why your handwriting is beside Garrett Cole's name in a plan to discredit my father. And it doesn't explain why men have been watching my apartment."
Pike's eyes narrowed. "You don't know enough about events from twenty-two years ago to make those claims responsibly. You were a child."
"I was a child," Nolan said. "That's why I had to grow up without the person who could have explained them. My father went to you before he went anywhere else. He believed that if you knew people were being harmed, you might choose to stop."