The bigger man looks like the oldest. He scoops up whatever he’s dropped in front of the boy. He reaches into his back pocket, adds something to it, and then shakes it all in his fist. Tom strains his ears, trying to hear better.

  “Every time!” one of the younger brothers says. “Every goddamn time! How’s he doing it?”

  The bigger, older brother doesn’t answer. He drops whatever he’s shaking onto the desk in front of the boy again. Tom catches just a glimpse as they land. They’re coins. The boy glances down, just briefly, and almost instantly says, “Two dollars, seven cents.”

  The brothers laugh again. One of them leans forward and counts up the coins to make sure the boy is correct. “Right on the money,” he says.

  “I’m running outta coins,” the oldest brother says. “Anyone got more? Pitch it in – let’s make it a big one. Let’s make it difficult.”

  The brother who spoke earlier eagerly pulls coins from his pockets and hands them over. “He’ll get it,” he says. “I’ll bet anything. He’s never got it wrong yet.”

  Tom realises there are two other men in the cabin. They’re not partaking in the guessing games going on at the desk. One of them stands close, his face set, grim, staring like he’s waiting for them to get bored and wrap up. His arms are folded. He wears dark jeans and a khaki shirt. There’s a handgun on his hip. It’s the only gun Tom has seen on show in the cabin. There could be more, but they’re not in the living area. Everything about this man’s demeanour screams of impatience. It’s hard for Tom to tell at this distance, but he sees a likeness in the profile of this man’s face as with the brothers, though he’s younger and slimmer and better dressed than they are.

  This man clears his throat. “You all aren’t bored yet?”

  The bigger brother turns to him. Glares at him. The man stands his ground, but he withers a little. Tom notices it, and he thinks the bigger brother does, too.

  The man has to swallow before he speaks again. “Deke, I’m just saying, we’ve been trusted with this. There’s more to do. We can’t get hung up on some savant kid guessing at the outcome of some dropped coins.”

  Tom has a name now. The oldest brother – Deke. He remembers he heard names at the roadside, too. They’re coming back to him, his memory jogged now. Tyrus was the one he beat down. Billy-Ray grabbed Ella. The one he didn’t see must be Cyril.

  He remembers something else, too. Something that Ella said. She wasn’t able to finish her sentence before Tyrus cut her off. She said that they’d killed someone.

  “We got time,” Deke says. “What’s that stuck-up prick you work for gonna do? Bitch and moan that we took our time?” Deke sucks his teeth. “Fuck him. By the time he gets back out here, there’s gonna be nothing for him to complain about. And you ain’t gonna talk any shit about your cousins, are you, Jake?”

  Another name – Jake. A cousin. Explains the similarities, and slight difference, in their faces.

  “You all are trying to get work with that stuck-up prick,” Jake says. “And I vouched for you. Don’t let me down on this.”

  Billy-Ray speaks up, but it has nothing to do with Deke and Jake’s conversation. “Hey, I think we’ve got a load of dice in the game closet,” he says. “Should I grab it? Maybe the kid can do the same with dice?”

  Deke slaps him on the back, staring at Jake while he does so. “That’s a great idea, Billy-Ray,” he says. “You go on and get that dice. Many as you can find. We wanna challenge the boy, don’t we?”

  Jake bites his lip. He takes a step back. He doesn’t argue. It’s clear he’s already lost.

  The other man in the cabin, the sixth, doesn’t look anything like the others. He stays away from them, too, sticking to the other end of the cabin. He watches them, worrying at his bottom lip. His face doesn’t betray frustration – instead, he looks concerned. He looks down at his watch, worried about the passage of time.

  Billy-Ray hurries off to find the dice. He passes by the annexe. He glances in. He looks straight at Tom. Tom doesn’t move. Keeps his eyes half-closed. Billy-Ray doesn’t see that he’s awake. Billy-Ray turns his attention to Ella, grinning at her. “Don’t you worry,” he says. “We haven’t forgotten about you.”

  “Please don’t hurt Kit,” she says. Kit must be her son. The boy at the table, guessing the sums of the dropped coins.

  Billy-Ray doesn’t respond to this. He laughs in the back of his throat and continues on.

  He passes by the sixth man. The man avoiding the others. There’s a whiteboard close to him. It’s covered in writing – they look like squiggles. Tom risks opening his eyes a little, to see if they start to make sense. They don’t. He sees letters, numbers, dashes. It’s a formula of some kind. Mathematical, maybe. Tom doesn’t know what it means. Math was never his strong point, especially not once letters got involved.

  However, on the ground behind the whiteboard, he spots canisters. He sees them marked up with warning symbols – toxic, corrosive, and others like this. Billy-Ray runs back by the annexe, hurrying to the desk, his hands laden with dice now. Tom stays very still. He continues to look behind the whiteboard. In front of the canisters, propped against them, are some bags. About a dozen of them. They look like flour bags. Their contents are written across the front. Sodium fluoride.

  Tom thinks about this. Sodium fluoride goes into toothpaste. He stares at the canisters behind it.

  Before he can fully register what they are, what they contain, he hears another burst of laughter at the desk with Kit.

  “He just don’t miss!” Cyril says.

  “We should’ve started with dice,” Billy-Ray says. “Roll them again.”

  Jake reaches into his pocket suddenly and starts waving for them to be quiet. “I’m getting a call,” he says. “It’s Lincoln.”

  Deke shrugs. “So?”

  “So I need you all to shut the fuck up for a few minutes,” Jake says. “You think you can do that?”

  “A few minutes, sure,” Deke says. He grins at his cousin. “You’d best just hope it’s a quick phone call, because in a few minutes, I’m gonna start rolling dice again.”

  3

  Jake Underhill breathes deeply before he answers the call. He steps away from the brothers, and the kid, and crosses the cabin until he’s closer to Ian. He exchanges a quick glance with Ian. Neither of them is happy with how things are right now, but neither of them is in a position to say or do anything about it. They’re outnumbered.

  He stares at the screen. At Lincoln’s name. He glances at Ella, who is staring at her son. He looks at Kit, too, and the new arrival, whoever he is. There wasn’t any ID on him. He’s a complication that Jake doesn’t need. This whole day and night has turned into a complication that Jake doesn’t need. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. It was supposed to be an easy trip. An easy task. An easy way for him to prove himself.

  It was supposed to be an easy way for his cousins to prove themselves, too. To step up and show themselves capable of being a part of Lincoln’s organisation. And then, suddenly, there’s a tiny complication in the form of an attractive blonde, and Deke and his clan lose their fucking minds. They stop listening to reason. They won’t listen.

  And now they’re entertaining themselves with some kid doing quick mental math, like it’s the best and funniest thing they’ve ever seen in their lives. Jake supposes his cousins live in the backwoods of Vermont – maybe it is the best and funniest thing they’ve ever seen. They don’t get out much.

  One thing that this night has made very clear to Jake, however, is that his cousins are not professional. They’re not reliable. They can’t be counted on, not even for him, and he’s their blood. They’re a backwoods clan, and they’re always going to be just that. Nothing more. Without admitting to how much of a mess things have become, Jake is going to have to make it clear to Lincoln that Deke and the others are not a right fit.

  He answers the call. “Sir,” he says.

  He hears Lincoln’s familiar London accent. “Took you a while to answer there, Jacob.”

  “Sorry, sir. I was – I was dealing with something else.”

  “Mm. How are things going out there, sweetheart? Everything sorted? Nice and neat with a bow on top?”

  Jake hesitates.

  Lincoln seizes on it immediately. “Oh dear,” he says. “That pause is alarming, Jacob. What’s going on?”

  “Everything is…in hand. Things are being dealt with.”

  “In progress?” Lincoln tuts. “It’s been hours, Jacob. This isn’t what I was expecting to hear.”

  “The boy doesn’t really speak,” he says, not mentioning how he’s only spoken to answer the dropped coins and dice. “He’s pretty much nonverbal, most of the time. I don’t think we have anything to worry about from him.”

  “Pretty much isn’t completely,” Lincoln says. “And you’re missing an important point, Jacob – I don’t care. I don’t care if he’s mute. They saw too much. I want him dealt with. And I want his mother dealt with, too. They already should be. Explain to me why they’re not.”

  Jake looks around the cabin. He sees his cousins looking back at him. The boy sits very still at the desk. He stares at the mix of coins and dice before him. Jake turns away from them.

  “My cousins,” he says. “Uh, they don’t get much female company out here, if you catch my meaning. They, uh, they wanted to have a little fun with the mother. She’s, y’know, she’s an attractive woman, and they want to take their time.”

  Lincoln is silent for a moment. Jake doesn’t like it. Lincoln isn’t happy, and nothing good can come from this silence.

  “Did I hear you correctly?” Lincoln says.

  This time, Jake is silent. There’s no right answer.

  “I’m not a bloody pimp, Jake,” Lincoln says. “This wasn’t arranged for them. I don’t care what they want, and I don’t care how they spend the rest of their time – right now, they’re on my payroll. They have one job left to do – I want the woman and her kid taken care of.”

  “Yes, sir,” Jake says.

  “What about at the woods? Were the bodies properly disposed of?”

  Deke told Jake that they were. At the time, Jake was preoccupied with Ella and Kit, and was still inclined to believe what his eldest cousin told him. “Yes, sir,” he says. He has to believe that his cousins would at least do this one thing correctly, but now he has some doubts. Doubts he can’t share with Lincoln. He’ll have to go back out there and check for himself, just to be absolutely sure, once everything in the cabin has been dealt with.

  “And how’s Ian?”

  Jake glances at Ian. Ian is looking back at him. “Ian’s fine,” Jake says. “He’s ready to begin.”

  “He hasn’t started yet?”

  Jake realises he’s said the wrong thing. “Uh, we’ve just all been a little preoccupied with things out here –”

  “That shouldn’t be the case,” Lincoln says, and Jake can hear that he’s speaking through his teeth.

  “I know, sir. I’m sorry. I’ll make sure things are wrapped up here and that Ian gets to work.”

  Lincoln lets out a long exhale, calming himself. “Are there any other issues I need to be made aware of?”

  Jake looks toward the man in the annexe close to Ella. “No, sir,” he says. “And I promise – everything will be resolved soon.”

  “I certainly hope so, sweetheart,” Lincoln says. “For your sake. Otherwise, I may have to put you in a small room with dear Arthur and you can explain to him what went wrong and how things took so long out there.”

  The call ends. Jake closes his eyes and breathes deeply. He swallows. The last thing he wants is to be alone in a room with Arthur Langstrom, Lincoln’s right-hand man. He’s bigger than Deke, and far more dangerous.

  Jake can feel eyes upon him. His cousins, watching his back. Ella too, probably. When he opens his eyes, he sees Ian looking expectantly back at him. The two men exchange a glance. Jake nods.

  He turns to his cousins. He needs to be strong. His whole life, he’s backed down to Deke. Not only is Deke bigger, he always had the numbers on his side, too. His brothers back him up. Always have.

  But things have changed. Jake isn’t a kid. Hasn’t been for a long time. He’s a man. He was in the Air Force. He’s proven himself. Now, he needs to handle this situation. He needs to be careful, but at the same time he has to assert himself.

  He faces each of the four brothers, eyes settling finally on Deke. “That was Lincoln,” he says.

  “We guessed,” Deke says, smirking.

  Jake ignores him. “It’s time to get serious. We need to wrap things up here.”

  “Is that so?”

  “Yeah, that’s so.” Jake stands his ground. He stares back at his oldest cousin. He doesn’t back down. Doesn’t blink. He’s more scared of Lincoln – and Arthur – than he is of Deke. “So if you wanna play dice with the kid, go ahead and waste your time, but you haven’t got much longer to fuck around. I’m in charge here, and you all need to remember it.”

  Deke chuckles. “What’d he say to you on your little call there?”

  “It’s nothing to do with what he said,” Jake says. “It’s what he reminded me. We ain’t backwoods dwellers with nothing better to do than piss off the local town. We’re professionals. I’ve let you have your fun, and it’s gone on long enough. Now, I need to work. Ian needs to work. The four of you can’t handle that…” Jake shrugs, holding out his hands.

  Deke eyes him. He almost looks impressed, or at least as close as he’ll ever get. “All right,” he says. “But our fun ain’t over.” He flicks his head toward Ella. His tongue wets his lips.

  “Fine,” Jake says. “There’s time for that, if you’re quick. But right now, that’s not your priority.” Jake points to the mystery man. “He is. I need to know where he’s come from, and where he was going. I need to know who’s going to miss him, and if they’re gonna come looking. Pick him up.”

  Deke cocks his head.

  Before he can speak, Jake cuts him off. “Unless you think Cyril might be better suited?” Cyril is the second-oldest of the brothers. Only slightly smaller in stature than Deke.

  Deke narrows his eyes at this, as Jake knew he would. “I’ve got him,” he says, moving away from the desk and heading to the annexe.

  Jake smiles, pleased with himself. “Take him into your bedroom. Cyril, you should probably join us on this, too.” He wants the two biggest brothers with him. The intimidation factor will help loosen the stranger’s tongue. “Billy-Ray, Tyrus, the two of you stay here, keep an eye on things.”

  “What should we do with the boy?” Billy-Ray says.

  “Keep throwing him the dice, or tie him up.” Jake shrugs. “The boy’s not a concern. It’s his mom I want you to watch.”

  “Should I get started?” Ian says.

  Jake turns to him. “Not yet. Let’s deal with things here first. You’re gonna make enough of a mess. We don’t need this chaos going on behind you.”

  “I could start prepping the area?”

  “Sure,” Jake says.

  Deke has hauled the mystery man from the ground. He’s carrying him over his shoulder. He carries him toward his bedroom. Jake follows. It’s the biggest of the bedrooms. More space for the four of them to fit in.

  4

  Tom is sat in a chair. The rope around his chest has been loosened and retied, this time around the back of the chair so that he’s pinned to the seat. He lets his head loll, his chin hanging down to his chest. He’s heard everything. He knows why he’s here. Knows what they want from him.

  Jake pulls his head up with a handful of hair and starts slapping his cheek. “Hey,” he says. “Hey, wake up.”

  Tom blinks like he’s only just regaining consciousness, wincing against the blows. He swallows, looking around, taking in the three men standing before him. His back is to the wall in the corner. Behind the men and to the right is a chest of drawers with a television on top. A couple of the drawers aren’t closed all the way and socks and underwear poke out. On the left is a king-size bed, unmade, the blanket dishevelled and the sheet has come away from the top corner, exposing the stained mattress beneath. Above the bed, taped to the exposed wooden beams, is a poster of two naked women pressing up against each other, staring into the camera with their best fuck-me eyes. The top right corner of the poster has come loose and hangs down. The room smells of sweat and the underlying stink of a few open beer bottles down the side of the bed.

  The three men don’t speak, not straight away. They stare down at Tom, giving him a moment to fully wake up and take in his surroundings.

  Tom thinks how best to handle this. He can be belligerent, try to piss them off, make them sloppy. He’s already beaten up Tyrus, so they know he’s capable of handling himself. Or, he can play it scared, try to put them at ease, make them careless that way. Up close, he can see that it’s a Heckler & Koch VP9 on Jake’s hip. If Tom pisses them off too much, there’s nothing stopping Jake from just pulling his handgun and putting a bullet through Tom’s head. The ropes are tight, and he can’t get free. He’s at their mercy, for now. Subtly, trying his best not to move his body too much and give himself away, he works at the knots at his wrists.

  He plays it scared, and confused from the strike to the head. “Where am I?” he says. “Who are you?”

  Jake starts to smile. He stands closest to Tom. “I think, given our current positions, that I should be the one asking the questions.”

  Tom notices that the brothers don’t speak. They’re too busy trying to intimidate him. They stare at him, eyes narrowed and mean. Cyril pops his knuckles.

  “Okay,” Tom says.

  “Do you remember how you got here?” Jake says.

 

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