Page 18 of Lord Have Mercy Part Four: Big Son

“You know what! You’re – Tucker said – he saw you–” Colin wasn’t just angry; he wasfuming. “Are you a fucking Lean Dog?”

Lean Dog. The nauseating tension in Harlan’s stomach intensified. He was drawn to them for the same reasons he was drawn to the boys in the clearing, but with a healthy dose of abject terror thrown in. When he heard their bikes out on the road, glimpsed them riding past through the window, his heart lurched and skipped so abruptly he felt like he was havingsome sort of attack. The nearest he’d ever been to one was at the grocery store. He’d rounded the cereal aisle and saw one debating Frosted Flakes versus Apple Jacks, and had clapped a hand over his mouth to squelch his gasp. The man had been tall, and bearded, and his sun-browned, bare arms dark with full sleeve tattoos too intricate and overlaid for him to make any details out from a distance. He shifted his weight from one foot to the other, and his wallet chain shifted and danced against his thigh.

Harlan wasn’t bold enough to walk down to the clubhouse and loiter outside the chain-link fence, hoping for a closer glimpse, hoping – acutely, breathlessly – for one of them to spot him, and speak to him, and invite him inside. The idea of becoming a prospect was as far-fetched and dream-inspiring as the idea of becoming an astronaut or a submarine captain.

Wait. Was Felix prospecting?

“No,” Felix said, staring up at Colin, unbothered.

“Tucker saw you!” Colin exploded, arms flying out to the sides. “He saw you at the clubhouse. In their yard. Talking to them! They don’t let peoplehang out. What were you doing there?”

Felix stretched his legs out in front of him. Rolled his ankles until they cracked sharply inside his boots, the way an old man’s might. “I went to talk to Bob about some things.”

“Bob?”

“The president.”

“Felix, you stupid–”

“He wants me to prospect. Daddy thinks I should, too.” He shrugged. “I’m mulling it over.”

Colin swore, and paced away, and then turned back, sneering. “So you are a Lean Dog, you lying sack of shit.”

“No. I said I’mconsidering.” He studied Colin the way Harlan always imagined a hunter must study a deer through a rifle scope. Or a gator, in Felix’s case. “Why does it bother you?”

Colin swore again and stomped off without answering.

Crouched in the bushes, Harlan couldn’t say why it bothered him, either.

Seven

They left Barbara’s armed with a piece of information that both electrified and sickened Ava. For the first time, her numbness was pierced, and pierced sharply. She felt as if she’d been hauled up into a boat at last, able to ride on top of the dark, lapping waves that had threatened to drown her for days. But also as though, between one surge and the next, she could glimpse something mammoth and sinister below the surface, finned and sharp-toothed, and waiting not for her, but for Mercy. The sort of information that could close its jaws on him, and sink its teeth.

Reese insisted they meet up with the others before they went further, and Ava reluctantly agreed. They would need all the muscle they could get, where they were headed next.

They convened at a picnic table beneath the shade of a live oak at Audubon Park. Alex and Tenny showed up with coffee and wrapped deli sandwiches, and despite the churning uncertainty in her stomach, Ava found that she was starving.

“Babe,” Tenny said, with a pout that Ava thought was mostly for show. “We talked about this. You were supposed to stay with them at the hotel.”

Reese shrugged and pulled a pickle off his sandwich; folded it into his mouth. “I stayed with them. At Barbara’s house. It saves time if we split up.”

Tenny didn’t answer, which was as good as a concession.

Ava looked across the table at Alex. “What did Dandridge say?”

“He agreed to look into old school records to see if he ever got in trouble for something. Or if he can track down friends from his class. Speaking of…” He sent Colin a meaningful look.

Colin, mouth full of sandwich, paused chewing and said, “Whuff?”

“He went to public school here, genius,” Tenny said, “and so did you, and you’re, what, a year younger than him?” Tenny held up both hands, and slowly drew the points of his index fingers together. “Connect some dots.”

Colin’s brows flew up, and he choked on his sandwich in his sudden attempt to swallow. Maggie patted him on the back until he could suck in a breath and say, “I didn’tknowhim. I never saw him before!”

“It was more than twenty years ago,” Alex said. “I’m sure he looked a little different.”

“I would know if I was friends with someone named Harlan Boyle.”

“Maybe not friends, then,” Alex pressed, and his face and his voice screamedcop. “But you could have passed each other in the halls. Had a class together. Been lab partners.”

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