Big D listened to Ezekiel’s proposal without interrupting.
That alone suggested how little he liked it.
“You want to talk to him.”
“I want him talking.”
“He knows you hit his place.”
“He knows somebody did.”
“And you want to clear that up?”
Ezekiel looked through the windshield. Crystal had parked beneath a tree whose roots had lifted one corner of the pavement. Beside him, Serena watched the evening traffic.
“He lost something,” Ezekiel said. “We’ve got something he wants. That gives us a reason to have a conversation.”
“You mean her.”
Serena leaned toward the phone.
“I mean the folder.”
D went quiet.
“The photographs,” she continued. “The papers from his locked room. He does not know how much we understand.”
Ezekiel glanced at her.
“That’s the point.”
“And if he decides taking them is easier?” D asked.
“Then we find out whether he’s more interested in the papers or in whoever gave them to him.”
Crystal turned in her seat.
“You’re making that sound cleaner than it’ll be.”
“I know.”
Serena looked back toward the road.
Rocko had people. Money. A place to go when the first place failed.
He was accustomed to being the one who decided what others needed.
She wanted to see what happened when someone offered him uncertainty.
The invitation did not pass directly through Big D.
One of the people who knew both sides carried a message. There were papers from the ruined operation. Their present owner wanted to discuss what they were worth.
Rocko answered before midnight.
He wanted them brought to the house.
Ezekiel refused.
The exchange that followed was unpleasant, slow, and conducted almost entirely by people who would rather have been doing something else.
By morning, they had agreed to meet in a detached garden room on the same property.
Serena disliked the compromise.
So did Ezekiel.
Neither mistook that for a reason to think Rocko would dislike it equally.
They spent the remaining time examining the folder again.
Ezekiel found the same name beside several entries.
Marek.
No surname. Nothing to say whether it belonged to a person, a place, or an account.
Serena read it over his shoulder.
“Does it mean anything to you?”
“No.”
“Nor to me.”
He wrote it down.
At another time, she might have been discouraged by how little they had.
That morning, she was pleased to have a question Rocko could answer.
The garden had once been somebody’s pride.
Rose canes bowed beneath dead flowers. A stone birdbath stood crooked in the grass, its bowl filled with leaves. The path to the detached room had disappeared beneath weeds at the edges, though someone had recently cleared enough of it to walk through.
Serena looked at the house beyond.
The bitter scent remained, faint in the moving air.
She did not feel weak.
That mattered. It did not reassure her entirely.
“It could be a common ingredient,” she said quietly. “Or something used with it. I still cannot tell you.”
Ezekiel nodded.
“We leave if that changes.”
She looked at his face.
“And if you cannot hear me?”
“I’ll still be looking.”
He was frightened. She could hear it in his pulse and see it in the effort he made to keep his injured arm loose.
She wanted to touch him.
Instead, she let her fingers brush his for one step.
He caught them briefly.
Then the door opened.
Rocko wore the same pale shirt from the photograph.
He stood beside a small table with a glass of water in front of him. Behind him, sunlight showed every mark on the windows.
A second man waited near the wall.
Older. Narrow-faced. One hand held low beside his jacket.
Serena watched that hand.
Rocko watched Ezekiel.
“Mercer.”
Ezekiel stopped inside the doorway.
“Rocko.”
The recognition spoiled the fiction of an anonymous seller.
Neither pretended otherwise.
Rocko’s attention shifted to Serena.
It lingered.
“So that’s how.”
Ezekiel pulled out a chair.
“Sit down.”
Rocko smiled.
“My house.”
“Then you know where the chairs are.”
For a moment, nobody moved.
Then Rocko sat.
Serena remained beside Ezekiel.
She heard the older man’s heartbeat change when Rocko looked at her again.
Not much.
Enough to keep her attention on him.
Ezekiel placed copies of several pages on the table.
The originals were elsewhere.
Rocko glanced at them without touching them.
“You caused me a lot of trouble.”
“You had a lot of people locked up.”
“Is this a speech?”
“No.”
“Good. Because I don’t care.”
Serena’s fingers tightened against the back of Ezekiel’s chair.
Rocko noticed.
He seemed to enjoy it.
“What do you want?”
“Who supplied the equipment?”
“I buy a lot of equipment.”
“The weapons with the grooves.”
Rocko’s gaze flicked toward the other man.
Ezekiel saw it.
“So he knows.”
The man by the wall did not answer.
Serena could smell tobacco on his jacket and something sharper beneath it.
Rocko leaned back.
“You took papers you don’t understand. Now you’re trying to turn that into a payday.”
“Then explain them.”
“Why would I?”
Ezekiel touched one of the pages.
“Because somebody’s going to ask where these went.”
Rocko’s smile diminished.
“Who else has them?”
Ezekiel let the question sit.
Serena watched Rocko begin calculating.
That was what Ezekiel had wanted.
A man who was bargaining had to reveal what he feared losing.
“Marek,” Ezekiel said.
The older man moved his thumb against the side of his jacket.
Serena shifted just enough to remain in his view.
Rocko looked at the page.
“What about him?”
“He supplied the cases?”
“He arranged them.”
“For the attack on Casa Val?”
Rocko’s eyes went to Serena.
She had not moved.
“I didn’t arrange that.”
“But you knew.”
“I knew there was a job.”
“You provided somewhere to take people afterward,” Ezekiel said.
Rocko spread his hands.
“I provide places. Transport. Staff. That’s business.”
Serena heard herself speak before she intended to.
“Was anyone else taken?”
Rocko looked at her.
“From the house.”
He studied her face.
For the first time, he seemed less interested in what she was than in what she wanted.
“Could be.”
Ezekiel’s hand touched hers beneath the table.
Rocko saw the movement.
His expression changed again.
“There it is.”
“Answer her,” Ezekiel said.
“You two together?”
Serena’s anger rose so quickly that she almost stepped forward.
Ezekiel kept his voice level.
“Were there others?”
“I didn’t take attendance.”
The older man spoke.
“Enough.”
His voice carried an accent Serena could not place.
Rocko glanced back.
“I’m handling it.”
The man’s jaw tightened.
Serena looked between them.
Rocko might own the room.
He did not own the whole conversation.
“Marek went to the old pump works,” Rocko said.
The words came quickly now.
The older man straightened.
Rocko kept his eyes on Ezekiel.
“North side. Building’s been shut for years. He uses another name when he deals with the property. Ask for Voss.”
“Marek Voss?”
“If that’s his real name.”
“What’s there?”
“People. More equipment. I don’t get invited to every room.”
“Is he still there?”
“He called me yesterday.”
The man beside the wall said Rocko’s name.
It sounded like a warning.
Rocko turned on him.
“You want the papers back or not?”
Serena understood something then.
Rocko was not merely selling information.
He was proving he possessed information worth protecting him for.
She doubted the other man appreciated the demonstration.
Ezekiel kept his attention on Rocko.
“Did Marek order the attack?”
“He had the pictures before it happened. He knew what was in that place.”
“And the people carrying the weapons?”
“His people. Some of mine.”
Serena’s hand slipped from beneath Ezekiel’s.
Rocko noticed too late.
“You sent them.”
“I sent men to work.”
“To my home.”
He leaned away from her.
“I didn’t know you personally.”
The sentence seemed to offend her more than an insult could have.
Ezekiel rose.
“We’ve heard enough for now.”
The older man drew his weapon.
Serena was already moving.
Ezekiel caught the scrape of metal, the sudden flash of a pale groove, and understood only that the gun was not aimed at him.
It was aimed at Rocko.
Serena struck the man’s arm aside.
The discharge tore through the window.
Rocko ducked beneath the table.
Ezekiel recoiled, his chair catching behind his knees. He fell hard enough to drive pain through his ribs.
The older man drove Serena against the wall.
She heard the window glass shifting behind her. Felt the same unpleasant heat she remembered from the first weapon.
Then she had his wrist.
Ezekiel could not see the whole exchange. A table stood between them, and Rocko was crawling toward the door.
He snatched up the fallen chair and drove it against the older man’s knees.
The attacker stumbled.
Serena used the interruption.
She wrenched the weapon away and flung it beneath the table. Then she struck him hard enough to send him through the damaged window frame.
He hit the ground outside and did not immediately rise.
Ezekiel found his feet.
“Rocko!”
The door slammed.
For a heartbeat, Serena wanted to follow the older man.
Then she saw Ezekiel pressing a hand against his side. She drew him around the corner of the garden room, away from the shattered window.
“Are you hurt?”
“Still checking.”
She glanced back. No one followed. Her hand touched his cheek, and she kissed him once, hard and brief.
“That was very well done.”
“Can we finish leaving?”
Then Rocko shouted from the gate.
They moved.
They found him beside the gate.
It had stuck.
He was fighting with it one-handed while holding a pistol in the other.
When he turned, Ezekiel stopped.
Serena moved between them.
Rocko tried to bring the weapon up.
Ezekiel drew his own pistol, but Serena reached Rocko first. She caught his arm and struck it against the gatepost.
The pistol fell into the weeds.
He made a sound that was more outrage than pain.
She pushed him back against the wall.
Ezekiel approached slowly, keeping his pistol lowered.
Behind them, the older man was moving again, dragging himself away from the broken window. A car engine started somewhere beyond the house.
Serena looked toward the sound.
Rocko seized on it.
“See? That’s what you need to worry about.”
Ezekiel glanced down at the pistol in the weeds.
Then at the man against the wall.
“You were going to shoot us.”
“You came after me.”
“You tried to draw before she touched you.”
Rocko breathed through his mouth.
Serena could hear his heart pounding.
He was afraid now.
It did not make her pity him.
It made him ordinary.
“I told you what you wanted,” Rocko said.
Ezekiel said nothing.
“Marek. Voss. The pump works. You got it.”
“What happens after we leave?”
Rocko looked at him.
“What?”
“What do you do next?”
“I go somewhere else.”
“And start again.”
The words came from Serena.
Rocko looked between them.
“You think you shut down the whole world because you broke one door?”
Ezekiel’s jaw tightened.
“Those people were locked in.”
“People need things. Work. Money. A ride somewhere. They make deals.”
“Then why couldn’t they leave?”
Rocko’s face hardened.
“Because they owed.”
The silence afterward seemed to reach even the road beyond the property.
Serena loosened her grip enough for him to stand on his own.
He mistook it for progress.
“Listen. D wants me gone? Fine. I’m gone. He can have his little patch. I can do business somewhere else.”
“The same business,” Ezekiel said.
Rocko shrugged with the arm that did not hurt.
“Better than dying over it.”
Ezekiel looked at him for a long time.
Serena watched the decision approach before he made it.
His pulse had changed.
She could not tell him what it meant.
Rocko began offering money.
More than D had promised.
Ezekiel scarcely seemed to hear the amount.
He remembered Lena stopping at the open street. The young man upstairs recognizing the man who brought him there. His cousin asking when it would be safe to go home.
He remembered Rocko in the photograph, one hand in his pocket, waiting to be admitted somewhere comfortable.
This man could leave.
He had places to go.
The people he held had needed someone to break a door.
Ezekiel’s hand tightened around his pistol.
Rocko saw it.
“Come on.”
Ezekiel looked toward Serena.
She stood beside the wall, her white face marked by a small cut from the broken glass. She met his eyes without nodding, without encouraging him.
The choice remained his.
His arm began to tremble.
He could put the weapon down.
He knew that.
For one long moment, he almost did.
Rocko swallowed.
“We’re done here. You got what you came for.”
“No,” Ezekiel said.
He fired.
The sound went out across the garden.
Rocko fell beside the gate.
Ezekiel remained standing with the pistol in his hand.
For several seconds, he could not make himself lower it.
Serena stepped beside him.
“Ezekiel.”
He looked at her as though he had heard his name from far away.
“We have to go.”
His mouth moved.
Nothing came out.
She touched his wrist.
He lowered the weapon.
They left the garden together.
The older man and the car were gone.
Serena noticed.
She would remember later.
For now, she kept pace beside Ezekiel, close enough to catch him if he faltered and careful not to hold him upright before he needed it.
Crystal took one look at them and opened the car.
“What happened?”
“Rocko’s dead,” Ezekiel said.
She looked at Serena.
Then she understood.
Ezekiel sat in the back.
Serena joined him.
Crystal started driving.
Nobody asked about the money.
For several streets, Ezekiel watched his hands.
He had expected them to feel different.
They looked like his hands.
The same small scars. The same dark skin. A pale line across one knuckle where he had caught it against something in the garden.
He rubbed it with his thumb.
Serena placed her hand beside his on the seat.
She did not take hold.
After a while, he reached for her.
Big D waited in the kitchen.
He stood when they entered.
Crystal told him about the older man, the weapon, and the name Rocko had given them.
Ezekiel corrected one detail.
“He called himself Voss when he dealt with the property. Rocko didn’t know whether it was real.”
D nodded.
“And Rocko?”
Ezekiel looked at him.
“I killed him.”
D’s expression changed.
Not surprise.
Something more complicated.
“All right.”
“That’s all?”
D looked down, then back at him.
“No.”
He pulled out a chair.
Ezekiel remained standing.
D let the chair stay empty.
“What he was doing,” he said, “there are crews around here that hate my guts and still wouldn’t touch it. Keeping people. Selling them. That’s not territory.”
Ezekiel said nothing.
“I’m glad he can’t do it again.”
Serena watched Ezekiel absorb the words without accepting them as comfort.
D reached for an envelope on the counter.
“The rest is here.”
Ezekiel looked at it.
For a moment, Serena thought he would refuse.
Instead, he took it.
They had agreed to be paid.
Refusing now would not change why they had gone or what he had done.
“The favor?” he asked.
“Finished.”
D held his gaze.
“You don’t owe me another thing for this.”
Ezekiel nodded once.
Then he said they were leaving.
At home, he washed his hands.
Serena stood in the doorway until he turned off the tap.
He had no blood on them.
He washed them anyway.
“He didn’t have the gun anymore,” he said.
She leaned against the frame.
“No.”
“He was still going to do it.”
“I believe he was.”
Ezekiel looked at the sink.
“I knew what I was doing.”
Serena waited.
“That’s the part.”
He dried his hands slowly.
“The first night, everything kept happening. I was scared. They were reaching for guns. I just—”
He stopped.
She let him.
“This time I had a second.”
“Yes.”
“I could’ve made another choice.”
She stepped closer.
“You could have.”
He looked up.
Her answer hurt him.
She saw that.
But he had asked for the truth by telling her his, and she would not answer with something easier simply because she wanted him to let her hold him.
After a while, he said, “Stay here.”
“I am here.”
“I know. Just…”
She put her arms around him.
He leaned against her.
For once, she had nothing to explain.
They wrote down Rocko’s answers before exhaustion could blur them.
Marek. Voss. The old pump works on the north side. Contact as recently as the day before.
They wrote down what remained uncertain too.
Rocko had not confirmed other survivors. He had not explained where the weapons came from. The older man had tried to silence him and had escaped.
Serena looked at the last line.
Someone now knew how much they had learned.
Ezekiel closed the notebook.
“Tomorrow.”
She nodded.
The envelope remained on the table.
Beside it lay the photograph of Casa Val.
Serena put neither away.
They belonged to the same day, however much she wished one could be separated from the other.
When they went to bed, Ezekiel lay awake facing the ceiling.
She settled beside him.
After some time, his hand found hers beneath the blanket.
He did not ask whether she thought he was a good man.
She did not try to answer a question he had not asked.
Outside, a car passed and kept going.
They listened until it was gone.