Chapter 30: The Gray Band on the Pillow

By ten past midnight Abel had every light in Ridge Hall burning and six men walking the fence.

Anselm sat on the edge of his bed in the downstairs room with his cane across his knees.

The blanket drawer hung open.

"It was there when I went to sleep," he said. "I'd have heard a mouse."

"You sleep like the dead, Anselm," the oldest aunt said, not unkindly. "You always did."

"I do not."

Ronan went down on one knee and ran his hand along the underside of the bed frame.

I turned over the pillow.

A steel band lay under it, opened flat.

It was the same gray steel as the bands at Larkspur, but this one had no letter and no number stamped on it.

It had been made for a thin wrist.

"That wasn't there when I lay down," Anselm whispered.

I wrapped it in a dish towel with my fingers shaking.

"She sent a gift," Ronan said. "A spare."

"She's not allowed in this house under the terms."

"Her hands aren't in it. Somebody else's were."

We went through the Hall room by room until three.

We found the open window in the pantry and the scrape of a boot on the sill, and we found no knife.

At dawn Ronan stood on the porch with his shirt buttoned wrong, watching the gate.

I stood behind him and put my forehead between his shoulder blades.

He reached back without turning and found my hand.

"It was nine years of that room," he said quietly. "And now it's this."

"We find it."

"We find all of it."

At six, one of the fence men shouted.

A man was coming up the dirt road on foot, bare to the waist, stumbling over the ruts.

His hair was dark brown and gray at the temples.

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