Page 87 of The Drifter

They'd pulled the video from the care facility before we were off the ground, and I'd watched it twice on the drive to the airstrip. It was burned in now, every frame. A tall man in a good suit, silver at the temples, relaxed. He'd come in at the late shift with two agents behind him and paper in his hand, and my father had walked me through what the paper said—material witness, federal investigation, custody authorized. All of it stamped. All of it signed. All of it, near as the lawyers could tell at midnight, real, or real enough that no night nurse on this earth was going to stand in front of it.

The video had no sound. It didn't need any. I watched him lean on the counter and talk to that scared woman in scrubs, smooth as silk, patient as a salesman with all night. I watched her shoulders come down and her head start nodding, and I understood I was looking at a man who had spent a career making people hand him things they'd sworn to protect.

And then, they'd wheeled my mother out into the dark. Calm. Gentle, even. A blanket over her knees.

She'd waved at somebody off-screen.

That was the frame I couldn't put down. My mother, who forgets the year and the faces of her sons, waving goodbye to a nurse like she was going on an outing. Trusting the whole world, because the disease had taken everything except her sweetness. They drove her off the edge of the camera's sight, and then, she was gone. No word since. No demand. No contact.

Silence, from a man whose whole art was talking.

The silence was the message. It said, I have her, and I am in no hurry, and the hurry will be yours.

Most of the family had stayed in Charleston, and that was right. The fight with Craine was a fight of paper and signals and leverage, and my father's machine was built for it—lawyers already moving, contacts already burning, Grant and Wyatt and the whole quiet weight of Dominion Hall grinding into motion.

But Cash and Tommy and I wanted to be here. Had to. Valentine is ours. That ground raised us. If Craine was going to play his game on our home turf, he was going to find three of the sons that turf had made, standing on it.

We were just passing into Texas airspace when the call came.

Tommy's phone. He looked at the screen. His face did something I'd never seen on it—the grin architecture going flat all at once, like a house dropping its lights.

"Unknown," he said, and answered it. "Yeah."

He listened. The conversation on his end was three words long, clipped to the bone. I watched my brother's jaw work while somebody talked. Then, his eyes came up and found mine across the cabin.

"It's Craine," Tommy said. "He'll only talk to you."

The cabin went dead quiet. Cash sat forward. Max's head came up off his boots.

I took the phone.

"This is Clint."

"Clint Dane." The voice was warm. That was the first thing, and it was worse than cold would have been—a rich, courteous voice, the voice of a man welcoming you into his office with the good chairs. "I'm so glad to finally speak with you. I've been reading about you for months, you understand. The file doesn't do you justice."

I said nothing. Silence is a tool, and I wanted to hear how he handled it.

He handled it fine. He let it sit exactly as long as it wanted to sit, comfortable as a cat, and then, he went on like I'd answered.

"I'd like to invite you home," he said. "To Valentine. It's beautiful country this time of year. You know that better than anyone, don't you. All those loops you traveled. I thought we might have a chat, you and I. Just a chat."

"Where?"

"Home, Clint. The ranch." A smile came through the phone. "Come alone, Clint. Your brothers can wait with the airplane. Cash has had his turn with me, and I confess Tommy's sense of humor wears on a man."

The thread of anger went through me then, hot and fine as wire.

He knew where we were. Altitude, heading, manifest. He knew who sat in which seat of a private aircraft over the Texas line, and he wanted me to know he knew. He'd spent the knowledge casually, the way a rich man spends a hundred dollar bill. Somewhere in the federal machine, or Victoria's leftover web, or both, this man had eyes that reached into our sky.

"Okay," I said.

"Wonderful."

"And my mother?"

"Your mother is fine." His voice didn't change one degree. "Better than fine. She had a good breakfast—she likes the peaches, incidentally, you should know that, the kitchen staff at that facility had her on a dreadful rotation—she's had her medications, on schedule, correct dosages, and she is safely tucked away somewhere comfortable. She's watching television as we speak."

"She'd better stay that way."