Page 113 of South of Nowhere

After his “crime scene” work at Annie Coyne’s, Shaw would return to the camper and rest up briefly.

Shaw’s phone sounded. He glanced at the number on the screen and told his sister, “It’s Tony.”

Together they walked outside, away from the others.

“Tony. I’m here with Dorion.”

“Is Mary Dove there yet?”

Dorion explained that she’d left the Compound but was spending the night at a motel on Route 44, until a mudslide was cleared.

The lawyer then said, “Good, so she’s safe.”

His tone was one of relief. It was curious and Shaw looked to his sister.

Tony continued, “Now, I found something you should know.”

“Go on.”

“In another letter I found, Sarah’s sounding more and more unhinged. I’ll read some of it. ‘They’re after me. They want to put me in the hospital. They want to erase my mind, cut off my tongue. And people are helping them. People I thought I could trust. But you can’t trust anybody, only fools trust. And what do they get? They get betrayed. But I’m ready. Yes, Eddy Street. You told me not to, but I had to go there—and buy a gun. I heard all your arguments against it. But there has to be a reckoning for betrayal. There has to be justice.”

Tony said, “Eddy Street? Gangs?”

“That’s right,” Shaw said.

So Sarah had been armed.

From now on, they would have to assume that mother had passed down to her daughter not only a searing resentment of the Shaw family.

But a firearm as well.

49.

Colter Shaw cycled up to theCoyne Farmsign.

The Yamaha’s bright beam caught the trencher. It sat idle. Shaw could see why.

Annie Coyne had dug dozens of channels as deep as the machine was capable of and the troughs now covered the entire front area of the land. It was like a diorama of the First World War, the Germans and the Allies facing each other across no-man’s-land, in their protective burrows.

Which reminded him of the rivalry between the Coynes and the Reddings.

A conflict that fate—in the form of high explosives—had just resolved.

He rode over the plank drawbridge at the front gate and on to the farmhouse, parked and walked toward the doorway.

Annie Coyne had heard him coming and opened the door just as he got to it.

“Colter. The levee?” Her face was wary, though she was also likely thinking that if disaster was imminent, a phone call would have been more appropriate.

“No. Hasn’t collapsed. Still at risk, though.”

They stood on the front porch—the level plane of old wood that sat on the west side of the house, from which you could see marvelous sunsets, Shaw was sure, though it was hard to imagine any sun whatsoever on a day like this.

“Come in.”

They walked inside the scented, frilly living room.

Bordello…

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