Chapter 10: The Trade

Lowen's POV

Stellan's phone lay in the middle of the breakfast table, face up.

A photo of a handwritten page glowed on the screen.

Nobody was eating.

It was seven in the morning, and every Niemi was in the dining room.

Linnea sat at the far end with swollen eyes and her hands in her lap.

Garrick held the phone in both hands. He was reading the last entry for the third time.

"Let the boy's hand slip," he said quietly. "Cut at the Stone before the pack."

"He wanted a public cutting," Beck said. "He wanted the whole pack to watch."

"He wanted it to look like the law, not a murder," Torsten said.

Garrick set the phone down and laid his palm flat over his eyes.

"I held the men down," he said. "For twenty-four years I told myself I did that to save her."

"You did save her," I said. "You drove her to the state line."

"I handed her to a man who was following us in a truck."

"You don't know that."

"No." He lowered his hand. "I don't know anything. That's what I've lived with."

I looked at the old man who had made me tea, and I did not know what I felt.

Linnea stood up and walked the length of the table with a plate in her hands.

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