I Set the Sheets on Fire, Then the Clubhouse novel · Chapter 14 of 24

Chapter 14: Blood

Boone got out of the truck first, and I got out after him with the shoebox under my arm.

Six of Dario's patches fanned out across the gravel.

The deputy stayed beside his cruiser with a folded paper in his hand and his eyes on his shoes.

"Boone," Dario said, warm as a church usher. "I'm only here as a husband. My wife set a building on fire and ran. The county has a warrant, and I'd like her to go quietly."

"Deputy," Boone said.

The deputy looked up.

"Who owns the lot on Route 9?"

"The club does, sir. In your name."

"Then I'm the owner," Boone said. "Wednesday I told the fire chief it was kitchen grease, and I told him I was at fault. Nobody set that fire on purpose. If a man says different, he's calling me a liar in front of an officer."

Dario's smile stayed in place, but it stopped moving.

"Boone, that's the sort of thing a president says when he's protecting a girl who burned his clubhouse."

"I am protecting a girl," Boone said. "She's my daughter."

Nobody on that gravel breathed.

I felt it go through Dario's six patches.

"Rebecca Pellam is my blood," Boone said, loud enough for every man there. "Her mother was Carol, from the front desk, summer of ninety-six. Anyone who touches her answers to me and to the law that's older than all of us."

One of the patches took off his sunglasses.

Cade stood by the door of room four, and he did not look surprised, only like he'd been given something heavy to carry.

Dario had wanted to say it himself.

I saw that plainly.

He had wanted to read it out at the table, with the book in his hand and the room hushed.

"Blood can't be claimed as debt," I said. "I looked it up."

"You did not," said Dario.

"No. But he told me, and you didn't deny it."

The deputy folded the paper again, slowly, and tucked it in his shirt.

"Owner says no fire, no complaint," he said. "I can't serve a warrant on that, Mr. Rangel."

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