Page 296 of Property of Whiskey

“Over who?”

“All of us.”

My stomach drops.

Twila doesn’t change expression. “Were you free to leave when he was there?”

Kaylee stares down at the photograph. “He knew.”

Twila waits.

Kaylee’s fingers tighten around Bullet’s.

“He knew everything.”

That changes the room.

Crowley being dirty ain’t news. The Kings figured that out a long time ago. What changes is Kaylee. A living survivor putting him inside the room where she was being held, more than once, and saying he knew she couldn’t leave. Not a stolen file. Not something we found breaking into church property. A witness.

Kaylee keeps staring at his picture. “They made us kneel when he came.”

Bullet looks like he wants to tear the table apart with his bare hands.

Twila notices. “So he was there more than once.”

“Yes.”

“Did they call him Reverend while he was there?”

“We all knew him.”

Twila nods. “Okay.”

She slides the photograph away, and Kaylee’s breathing eases almost immediately.

Then Cider reaches across the table.

“Wait.”

Royal turns. “What?”

She isn’t looking at Crowley. Her attention has locked onto somebody behind him, half cut off by the edge of the photograph.

A woman. Mostly one shoulder and an arm, with her hand resting against the back of a folding chair.

Cider leans closer. “The hand.”

Royal’s entire attention shifts to her. “What hand?”

She points.

The woman’s left hand is hard to make out in the grainy photograph, but something crosses the skin. Scar tissue maybe. A dark line running from the base of her thumb toward her wrist.

Cider touches the same place on her own hand.

“The woman.”

Royal moves closer but catches himself before crowding her. “Cider, you remember her?”