Page 46 of Rowe

“You think this is funny?” Nobody answered. His gaze landed on the ceramic frog sitting beneath Sal's arm. “What is that?”

Sal looked down as if seeing it for the first time.

“A mistake.”

Victor crossed the room and slapped it from his hand. The frog struck the floor. It did not break. Everyone stared at it. From somewhere near the back of the room came a tiny involuntary snort. Victor's head snapped up.

Silence returned. Emilio stepped forward before murder could become contagious.

“They found nothing because the people down there won't help us.” Victor looked at him.

“You defending them?”

“No. I'm telling you what happened.” Victor pointed at the men.

“Forty armed men couldn't find one woman.” Theo surprised himself by speaking.

“Maybe being armed was part of the problem.” Every face turned toward him. Victor slowly approached.

“What did you say?” Theo could hear his pulse.

He remembered the porch. The rain. The woman who called Victor's organization a terrible benefits package. He remembered the old man and the cows, the waitress and the diner, the grandmother with the broom.

He also remembered Victor's threat. So, he told the only truth he had.

“They knew we were coming before we got anywhere. Every place we stopped, somebody had already heard about us. We weren't searching empty country. We were searching through people who didn't want us to find her.”

Victor stood inches away.

“People can be persuaded.”

“Maybe one.” Theo looked around at the forty exhausted men. “But not everybody.”

Victor's hand twitched. For one moment, Theo expected the room to explode. Instead, another phone rang. Nobody moved. It rang again. Emilio answered. He listened, said nothing, and held the phone toward Victor.

“Who is it?” Victor asked. Emilio's face had gone strange.

“No one.” Victor snatched the phone. A recorded voice played through the speaker. It was female, calm, and impossible to identify with certainty.

“You're still going the wrong way.” The call ended. Victor stared at the screen.

Forty men stared at Victor. No one laughed now.

The message might have been Mara. It might have been one of a hundred people who had heard the story. It might have been a teenager in a bait shop enjoying himself. That was the cruelty of it. Victor could not know.

He threw the phone against the wall. This one broke. Night settled beyond the warehouse windows.

Downriver, boats moved with quiet lights. Somewhere beyond them lay the Gulf. Upriver lay Baton Rouge and the docks Victor wanted badly enough to corrupt claims, buy loyalty, threaten owners, and build his private kingdom along working water. Yet the map before him seemed different now.

For years Victor had looked at those waterways and seen routes, property, leverage, tonnage, access. He had believed ownership began with money and ended with fear.

Mara Guillory had taught him another kind of geography.

A road could exist and still be closed. A building could stand and still be invisible. A woman could be alive and still beyond reach. He looked at the scattered pins on the floor. A blue one rested beside the unbroken ceramic frog. Victor turned back to his men.

“You failed me.” No one denied it. “You all understand what I said before you left.”

The room tightened.