Raina sat across from him and poured coffee.
“How is she?” he asked.
“Alive. Talking. More present than I expected.”
“What did you say?”
“The truth. School. The evaluation. What we need from her.”
“What do you need?”
“Her signature.”
Eli set down his fork.
“Did she sign?”
A pause.
“She said she needed time.”
“How much?”
“She didn’t say.”
“The sixty days—”
“I know.”
“What if she doesn’t sign?”
“She will.”
“What if she doesn’t?”
Raina’s eyes met his.
“She will.”
The certainty should have comforted him.
Instead, it made him uneasy.
Something had happened at Clearwater Road that Raina was not telling him.
He could feel it in the way she held herself, the way she drank coffee without tasting it, the way three card players at the other end of the table had become slightly quieter without pretending to listen.
He finished dinner.
The evaluation referral was submitted the following Monday.
On Wednesday afternoon, Eli returned from school and immediately knew something at the compound was wrong.
Four motorcycles he did not recognize stood near the main building. Inside, four men in different club colors sat at the long table. Doyle occupied Raina’s usual seat at the head, which by itself was enough to make Eli slow in the doorway.
One of the visitors looked at him.
Late forties. Weathered face. Hard in the way people became hard through exposure rather than exercise.
“You the Mercer kid?”
“Yeah.”
The man studied him.
“You look like him.”
Eli’s chest tightened.
“You knew my father.”
“Knew him.”
Past tense.
One word.
The entire room changed around it.
Doyle’s voice cut in.
“Hargrove.”
The visitor looked at him.
“Kid should know.”
“Not here.”
“He’s thirteen, not five.”
“I said not now.”
Eli looked from one man to the other.
“What should I know?”
Nobody answered.
He asked again.
“What should I know?”
The door opened behind him.
Raina stepped inside, saw Hargrove, saw Doyle, saw Eli in the center of the room, and understood the situation in a single sweep.