The Tideflats King Claimed the Surveyor Who Trusts No One, and My Signature Was His Brother's Alibi novel · Chapter 23 of 24

Chapter 23: The Gate at Shelton

Davor Matkovic walked out of the gate at Shelton on a gray Tuesday in the second week of January.

I was standing beside the car.

I had not expected to be, and I had told Niko so in his kitchen, with a mug of coffee in my hands.

"It is your signature," Niko had said.

"It is your finding.

"I will drive, and I will wait in the lot.

"If you want to go in and meet him at the door, you will."

I had said I would think about it.

I had thought about it for two weeks.

The marshal's office had taken my mother's ledger and my corrected survey in the same week, and a judge had set the sentence aside on a Monday.

I had read the order twice in my kitchen.

The wind came across the lot from the Olympic foothills, wet and cold.

Katarina stood beside me in her good black coat with a Tupperware of burek held in both hands.

She had stood so still for twenty minutes that a gull had landed on the hood of the car and looked at her.

"He will be thin," she said.

"I made enough."

"Mama," Niko said, from the other side of the car.

"Quiet," Katarina said.

"He is coming."

The gate buzzed.

A door in the fence slid back on its track.

A thin young man in a borrowed jacket stepped out into the wet daylight with a clear plastic bag in his hand.

He had dark curly hair, cropped short, and hazel eyes.

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