Page 53 of Shatter

Nobody says anything.

I set the pliers down on the concrete between my boots.

When I stand, my knees crack.

I walk back to the wall and put my back against the cold block with my arms crossed tight, because if I don't put my hands somewhere, I don't know what they'll do.

Tor pushes off the wall.

He walks over to the chair and looks down at Travis for a long moment.

"Anything else?" His voice gives nothing away.

"No." Travis shakes his head, fast. "No, I swear, that's everything I know. Please. Please, I've got a kid. I've got a little girl."

Tor looks at him a moment longer.

Then he turns to me.

"Go on up, prospect." His voice is low. "You did good. We'll finish."

I don't move.

"Hakon." Gunnar's standing next to me now, and I didn't see him cross the room. "Come on."

Behind me, Rati bends down and picks up the ball-peen hammer.

I walk out.

The door clanks shut behind me, and the pines swallow me up, dark and wet and smelling like resin.

I'm twenty steps into the trees before I hear it.

One short, flat sound, through the cinderblock.

Then nothing.

I stop walking.

I stand in the dark with my hands hanging at my sides, and I look down at them.

There's blood under my fingernails.

His, this time.

In the smokehouse, I pulled a man's fingernail off with a pair of pliers and talked to him in the voice I use to tell Ulf his bike needs new brake pads.

My hands never shook once.

I've never done it before, and I didn't have to learn it.

It was already there.

Somewhere in me, under twenty years of holding doors and saying thank you and fading into the backs of rooms, there was a man who already knew how to do this.

My father's son.

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