Chapter 20: The Price

I put Eli in the arms of the nearest prospect.

"Take him up to the trucks," I said. "Don't look back."

He went, fast, with his hand over my son's head.

Then I turned and walked onto the dock.

"Hallie," Gage said.

"Let me."

The boards were cold under my bare feet.

Brock held the lighter over the can, and the little flame leaned in the wind off the lake.

"Stop there."

I stopped six feet away.

"The can's empty," I said. "You poured all of it on my porch."

"There are fumes."

"Then you'll burn, too. Go ahead."

His eyes moved to my face.

I saw it then, the thing I should have seen three years before.

He wasn't brave.

He had never been brave.

He had been quick and sly and friendly, and he had never once done a hard thing in front of people who knew him.

"You wouldn't," I said.

"I would."

"You'd have to stand in the middle of it. You couldn't ask someone to stand there for you."

His mouth shook.

The lighter flame wobbled.

Behind him, in the water on the far side of the dock, something moved.

The red-bearded man came up the ladder with lake water streaming off him.

He had swum out from the shore, quietly, in the dark.

Brock heard the boards creak and started to turn.

The red-bearded man hit him once, low, with a shoulder in the ribs.

The lighter flew out of Brock's hand.

The can hit the boards, bounced and went over the edge into the lake with a splash.

Brock went with it.

He came up screaming and thrashing, and two more of his old men were already on the dock, on their knees, reaching down.

They didn't pull him out gently.

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