The number on Rebecca's screen had no name. Rebecca answered on speaker because Marcus pointed at the phone and then at the table — one gesture, no argument — and the room heard river water and a car engine and then a woman's voice, far away and ragged with pain.
"Rebecca?" A wet, catching breath. "Rebecca, is she there? Is my baby— tell me she's—"
"Sarah." Rebecca's composure cracked for the first and only time that day. "She's here. She's safe. Emily's right here, sweetheart, she's perfect, she did everything Daniel told her to do."
A sound came through the speaker that was half laugh, half sob. "Of course she did. She's his." Then the voice sharpened, forcing itself together the way a person forces a dislocated joint back into place — by will and agony. "Marcus. Marcus, can you hear me? I know you're there. Say something so I know it's really—"
"I'm here, Sarah." Marcus leaned over the phone so hard his chair creaked. "God in heaven, Sarah, I'm here. Where are you? Who has you? Talk to me."
"Marcus." Fourteen years collapsed into his name. "Daniel's alive. You have to hear me say it and believe it, because I don't know how long I have. Daniel is alive. He's been alive the whole time. He came home to me three years after the fire — after the funeral, after the grave, Marcus, I buried an empty box and he stood in my kitchen doorway three years later with a scar through his eyebrow and he said, don't scream, Sarah, please don't scream—"
"Sarah, slow down—"
"No! Listen!" A crash somewhere near her, metal on concrete, and her voice dropped to a hiss. "The explosion was not an accident. Say it back to me. It was not an accident, Marcus. Somebody rigged his motorcycle to kill him because of what he found in the charity books. Fourteen years, and it's the same people, and they've got him — they came last night, they knew the house, Marcus, they knew — nobody knew that house but us and Travis, and I swear to you on my daughter's life it wasn't Travis, it was the one who's been selling us since before Emily was born—"
"Sarah! Who?"
A man's voice, distant, in whatever room she was hidden in: "...check that one. Check everything. She had a phone—"
Sarah's voice went to a whisper so fast it was like a candle pinched out. "The garage. The old garage. It starts and ends at the old garage, and Danny's under—" Then a shout, very close, a scuffle, the phone striking something hard — and the line did not go dead so much as it went underwater, muffled, a fabric sound, a drawer or a bag closing over the mouth of the world. Through it, faintly, Sarah screamed one more thing that nobody at the table could make out, and then there was nothing but the hiss of an open line in a dark place.
The call stayed connected for eleven more seconds. Travis timed it on the wall clock with his jaw clenched so hard a muscle jumped in his cheek. Then it ended.
Nobody spoke.
Richard Collins was the first to move. He stood up so abruptly his chair scraped, and he pointed at Travis with the hand that bore the eagle. "You hear that? Nobody knew that house but us and Travis. Her words. And by God, she's right. Fourteen years of lies — if Daniel Sullivan is alive, and this man" — the finger shook — "this man has known it, has been running money and messages to a dead man while the rest of us stood at a grave and wept — then I want to know what else he's been selling, and to who. President. Brother or not. I move we strip his patch at this table, tonight, and put him outside the wire until we know what he is."
"Seconded," said a voice from the far end, miserable and angry. "Seconded," said another.
Marcus hadn't moved. He sat with both hands flat on the oak on either side of the photograph, looking at his brother's face, thinking about a phone going underwater in a dark room, thinking about a widow who'd been told to scream silently in her own kitchen, thinking about the word under — Danny's under—
"Travis Bennett," he said at last, and the whole table stilled at the formal name, the church name, the name on the patch. "The motion's on the table. Before it moves another inch—" Marcus stood, and Bear Sullivan standing in church was a thing men rearranged their loyalties around. "You will tell this club what happened the night Daniel died. All of it. The things you've held for fourteen years. And if any man here wants your patch after that, he'll have to reach across me to take it."
He looked around the table, slow, letting every gaze meet his.
"Speak, Hawk. From the night of the Founder's Day ride. From the beginning of the end."