Chapter 6: Asheville
Reid was already standing.
"That wasn't Miles alone," I said.
"No."
"Someone was with him."
"I heard it."
He was pulling up Carver's number before I finished the sentence.
I picked up Theo from the bassinet because my arms needed something to hold.
June appeared in the doorway.
She had heard Reid's voice change.
"What happened?" she asked.
"Nothing yet," I said.
"Come sit with me."
She came and climbed onto the couch beside me, tucking her feet under herself the way children do when they want to be small.
She looked at Theo in my arms.
"He makes funny faces," she said.
"He does."
"My daddy makes funny faces too."
I looked at her.
"I know we're going to find him, June."
She nodded.
She had been told this before.
She was deciding whether to believe it again.
Reid was in the kitchen, voice low, talking to Carver.
I caught fragments.
*Motel.
Second voice.
How quickly can you—*
He came back in ten minutes.
"Carver thinks Foss sent someone to find Miles.
Not to hurt him — not yet.
To remind him the clock is still running." He sat down.
"Miles is still at the motel.
Carver confirmed movement on the car twenty minutes ago."
"So he's still there."
"For now."
I looked at June.
Then at Reid.
"Call your mother," I said.
He blinked.
"Why?"
"Because we need someone to stay with June and Theo while we drive to Asheville.
And because your mother has been waiting for something useful to do since yesterday morning."
Reid looked at me for a long moment.
"You want to come."
"He's going to need both of us in that room.
Not just you."
He didn't argue.
He called Diane.
She arrived within the hour.
She came in without ceremony, set her bag by the door, and looked at June.
"Hello," she said.
June looked at her carefully.
"Are you the grandma?"
Diane's expression did something complicated.
"I suppose I am."
"Okay," June said.
And went back to her drawing.
Diane looked at me over June's head.
There was something in her face I had not seen before — not warmth exactly, but the beginning of it.
The place where warmth starts before it knows what to do with itself.
"Drive carefully," she said.
We left at noon.
The drive to Asheville was three and a half hours.
Reid drove.
I sat with Miles's letter in my lap, reading it again — not the first page this time, but the second.
The part I hadn't read aloud in the hospital room.
*I know I don't deserve to ask this.
I know I've made a mess of everything.
But June is the one good thing I've done in four years, and I need her to be somewhere safe while I figure out how to fix what I broke.
Reid — you're the only person I've ever trusted completely.
I'm sorry I made you carry this.
I'm sorry I always make you carry things.*
I folded it back along its creases.
"He knows he's wrong," I said.
"He's always known," Reid said.
"Knowing and doing are different things for Miles."
"What was he like?
Before."
Reid was quiet for a moment.
"Funny.
Genuinely funny — not trying-to-be-funny, but the kind of person who says one thing and the whole room shifts.
He was good with people.
Everyone liked him immediately." A pause.
"He just never learned how to say no to a bad idea.
Or a bad person."
"How long has he been in trouble?
Really."
"On and off since he was twenty-two.
Small things at first.
Debts.
Bad investments.
A business that collapsed.
He always found a way out." Reid's hands adjusted on the wheel.
"This time he found a way out that led somewhere worse."
We pulled into the motel parking lot at three-forty.
It was a low building, single story, the kind of place with exterior doors and vending machines at each end.
Carver had texted the room number.
Twelve.
We sat in the car for a moment.
"If Foss's man is still in there—" I started.
"Then we talk to him too," Reid said.
"We tell him we're family.
We tell him we want to settle the debt.
We don't threaten.
We don't make it complicated."
"And if he doesn't want to talk?"
"Then we call Carver and he handles the next step."
I nodded.
We got out of the car.
Room twelve was near the far end.
The curtain was drawn.
A light was on behind it.
Reid knocked.
Silence.
He knocked again.
"Miles.
It's Reid.
Open the door."
A long pause.
Then the sound of a chain being removed.
The door opened.
Miles Shaw looked like a man who had not slept in four days.
He was thinner than I remembered.
His eyes went to Reid first, then to me, and something in them — relief, shame, exhaustion — collapsed all at once.
"Maren," he said.
"I didn't think you'd—"
"Is anyone else in there?" Reid asked.
Miles shook his head.
"He left an hour ago.
He'll be back tomorrow."
Reid looked past him into the room.
One bed.
A duffel bag.
A takeout container on the desk.
"Then we have tonight," Reid said.
"Let us in."
Miles stepped back.
We went inside.
He sat on the edge of the bed.
Reid took the desk chair.
I stood near the door — not blocking it, but close enough that I could see his face clearly.
"June is safe," I said.
"She's with your mother and Theo at our house."
Miles looked at the floor.
His throat moved.
"How is she?"
"She asked if her daddy was coming back," I said.
"She said you promised."
He pressed both hands over his face.
"Miles," Reid said.
"Look at me."
He looked up.
"Tell me everything.
From the beginning.
All of it.
No version — the truth."
Miles was quiet for a moment.
May you like
Then he started talking.
And what he said next was worse than anything Reid had told me.
