Rise of the Phoenix novel · Chapter 14 of 24

Chapter 14: Seven Degrees

Hedda read page forty-one at her kitchen table with her glasses on the end of her nose.

The nine sat around her in their borrowed flannel, pretending not to listen.

She finished, folded the page, and set it down very gently.

"That son of a bitch," she said. "He didn't even pick the cell by luck."

"Neither did I, apparently."

"So what are you doing about it?"

"Finding out," I said.

"Finding out what?"

"If he'd crawl back to me. If that's what they made him for."

Hedda's face did something complicated.

"You put him in my barn with no stove and no fire and a thermometer."

"I put him where he can walk to me any time he wants."

"And if he's too proud to walk?"

"Then he's not a leash," I said. "He's a man."

Nobody at the table breathed.

The woman put down her coffee and left the room.

"I'm not saying you're wrong," Hedda said. "I'm saying he's at eighty-eight, and I have a rule."

"Eighty-five."

"Eighty-five, I put him in the truck."

"Then we have until eighty-five."

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