Ride Or Die: The Prez's Claim

Chapter 3: House Rules

Knox lived ten minutes from the shop, at the end of a road that didn't have a name.

I know because I counted. Ten minutes on the back of his truck's passenger seat, in silence, while the sun bled out behind the trees and Rook followed in a second vehicle with my luggage. Nobody had asked if I wanted to go. Somewhere around minute six I realized I had stopped asking myself if I did.

The house was old and made of stone, a farmhouse that had been added to by people who never agreed on a plan. A porch light burned over the door. A dog I hadn't been warned about lifted its head from the steps, looked at me, and lay back down.

"That's Judge," Knox said. "He doesn't like anyone."

"Good to know I'm in the right place."

He almost smiled. Almost.

Inside, it was warmer than I expected. Wood floors, a couch worn soft in one corner, books stacked on every flat surface, actual books, paperbacks with cracked spines, a biography of a general propped open on the arm of a chair. It didn't look like a criminal's house. It looked like a house where someone had been quietly lonely for a long time.

"Guest room's upstairs. Second door." He dropped my bag at the foot of the stairs. "Bathroom's next to it. Kitchen's through there. Eat whatever you want."

"That's generous, for a man who told his whole club I'm his property."

He went very still.

"I said you were *mine*," he said. "I did not say you were property. If anyone at that shop uses that word about you, tell me."

"You said it in front of thirty men."

"I said what would keep you breathing." His voice stayed low and level, which somehow made it worse. "If you want to hate me for it, do it. But do it alive."

I opened my mouth and found I had nothing to put in it.

He turned away, pulled off his vest, and hung it on a hook by the door. Under his shirt, the tattoo I'd glimpsed in the office curled up his forearm and disappeared: a saint's halo, cracked down the middle.

"Rules," he said, without looking at me.

"Of course there are rules."

"Three. One: you don't leave this property without me or Rook. Two: you don't talk about the audit to anyone but me, and I mean anyone. Not the guys in the shop, not the lawyer, not your own reflection."

"And three?"

He finally turned. In the lamplight his eyes looked less like ice and more like something underneath the ice, dark and tired.

"Three: you don't lie to me again. I told you, you're a bad liar. It's going to get you killed."

"I didn't lie."

"You said *nothing's wrong* with your finger still on Eli's signature."

The name hit me like a slap.

He'd said it. Just like that, quiet, like it was any name.

"You know where he is," I said. My voice shook. I hated that it shook. "You *know*. He's been gone two years and someone signed his name three months ago. He's alive, Knox. He's alive, and you knew when I walked in that door."

Something moved in his face. Something quick and terrible, gone before I could hold it.

"I don't know where your brother is," he said.

"That's not the same as saying you don't know if he's alive."

The silence went on a long time. Judge sighed in the doorway. Somewhere upstairs the old house creaked as it settled.

"Get some sleep, Marlowe," Knox said at last. "Tomorrow you'll tell me everything you found. And then I'll tell you everything I can."

"Everything you *can*."

"It's what I've got."

He went into the kitchen, and I heard the tap run, and I understood the conversation was over.

The guest room was small, with a quilt on the bed and a window that looked out on nothing but trees. I sat on the edge of the mattress with my laptop bag on my knees and didn't cry, because I don't, and because he was somewhere downstairs and I would not give him that.

Instead I did the one thing I'd promised myself I would.

I took out my phone.

Three hours in that office, and I'd done more than read. When Knox stepped out to deal with something in the shop, I had photographed every page of that ledger. Every skimmed invoice. Every entry in Eli's hand. And that last page, the blue ink, the impossible date.

*Approved. E. Quinn.*

I enlarged it, and the ink looked the same. The sharp E. The little sword through the Q.

My throat closed.

Two years of silence. Two years of police who shrugged and told me adults leave, that's what adults do. And here, in a stranger's house, in the dark, was proof my brother had been breathing three months ago.

Then my phone buzzed in my hand.

I nearly dropped it.

A text. No name. A number I didn't know, from an area code I didn't recognize.

Four lines.

*Mar. Don't panic. Don't answer.*

*Delete the photos. He's watching your phone.*

*Trust nobody at the shop. Not even the ones who seem kind.*

*I'm sorry. — E*

I stared at the screen until the letters blurred, until the phone went dark, until I could hear my own heart in the silence.

And then, from the bottom of the stairs, slow and unhurried, I heard a floorboard creak.

Someone was standing outside my door.