Chapter 4: What Her Mother Left Behind
They moved off the road before dark.
Cole knew a place — a farmhouse two miles east that belonged to a man named Rudy, who had owed Cole a favor for six years and had never once been asked to pay it.
Cole called ahead.
Rudy said come.
No questions.
By the time they pulled in, Lila had stopped crying.
She sat behind Cole on the bike, arms around his waist, face pressed against the back of his jacket.
She didn't speak.
He didn't push her.
Rudy's wife, a broad-shouldered woman named June, took one look at Lila and brought her inside without a word.
Within ten minutes the girl was at the kitchen table with a bowl of soup in front of her and a blanket around her shoulders.
Cole sat across from her.
The envelope was on the table between them.
"You said your mom told you everything," he said.
"Before she what?"
Lila looked at the soup.
Her spoon moved in slow circles.
"Before she went to the hospital," she said.
"Three days ago.
She was sick for a long time.
She didn't want me to know how sick." She paused.
"I knew anyway."
"Where is she now?"
"Still there.
I think." Lila's voice went careful and thin.
"She made me leave.
She said I had to go before he came.
She said if he found me at the hospital he'd just take me and nobody would stop him because he has lawyers and papers and—" She stopped.
Swallowed.
"She said find you.
She said you were the only one."
"She said my name?"
Lila shook her head.
"She showed me a picture.
She said find the man in the picture.
She said he rides with a group and they're good people even if they don't look it." A small pause.
"She said he has your eyes.
My eyes."
Cole was quiet for a moment.
"What was her name?" he asked.
"Your mother."
"Rennie," Lila said.
"Rennie Marsh."
The name went through him like cold water.
He didn't move.
He didn't let it show.
But June, standing at the stove with her back to them, went very still.
"How old are you, Lila?" Cole asked.
"Seven," she said.
"Eight in November."
Cole looked at the envelope.
Seven years old.
Eight in November.
He picked it up and broke the seal.
The letter inside was handwritten on two pages, the ink uneven in places, the handwriting of someone who had been writing through pain or exhaustion or both.
He read it slowly.
He read it twice.
June appeared at his shoulder.
She read it with him.
When she finished she walked back to the stove and didn't say anything for a long time.
The letter said this:
Rennie had met Decker eight years ago when she was desperate and alone and he had offered her money she couldn't refuse.
She hadn't understood what she was agreeing to.
By the time she did, she was already in too deep.
Decker ran a network — Cole didn't let himself think too hard about the word Rennie used — and Rennie had carried things across state lines three times before she found out what was in the packages.
She had stopped.
She had run.
She had changed her name and moved twice and thought she was finally safe.
Then she got sick.
And Decker found her.
The document he had shown Cole on the road — the notarized agreement — was real.
Rennie had signed it.
But not willingly.
She described in the letter exactly how it had happened: two men in her hospital room at two in the morning, a pen placed in her hand, a quiet voice explaining what would happen to Lila if she didn't sign.
She had signed.
Then she had called the one person she believed might actually do something.
The last paragraph of the letter was short.
*Cole, I know I have no right to ask you anything.
I know what I took from you when I left.
I know you never got an explanation and I know sorry doesn't cover eight years of silence.
But she is yours.
I should have told you the day I found out.
I was scared and I was stupid and I am so sorry.
Please keep her safe.
Please don't let him take her.
She has your eyes and your stubbornness and she deserves a chance at a life that isn't this.*
*— Rennie*
Cole set the letter down on the table.
Lila was watching him.
"What does it say?" she asked.
He looked at her.
At the shape of her face.
At the particular way she held her chin up even when she was frightened.
"It says your mom loves you very much," he said.
Lila nodded slowly, like she already knew that part.
"And the other thing?" she said.
"The thing that made your hands do that?"
He looked down.
His hands were flat on the table.
He hadn't noticed.
"We'll talk about it," he said.
"When you're ready."
"I'm ready now."
June set down her dish towel and came to stand in the kitchen doorway.
Cole looked at his daughter for the first time knowing she was his daughter.
"Lila," he said.
"Your mom and I knew each other a long time ago.
Before you were born."
She studied him.
"I know," she said quietly.
"She told me that part too."
He hadn't expected that.
He didn't know what to do with it, so he just nodded.
"Okay," he said.
"Are you going to help her?" Lila asked.
"My mom.
Are you going to get her out of that hospital before he goes back?"
Cole picked up the letter again.
He read the last paragraph one more time.
Then he folded it carefully and put it in his inside pocket, close to his chest.
"Yeah," he said.
"I am."
From the front of the house, one of his men knocked twice on the door frame.
"Cole." It was Priest — the oldest of them, the steadiest.
"We've got a problem."
Cole stood up.
"What kind?"
Priest's expression didn't change.
That was how Cole knew it was bad.
"Decker didn't drive away," Priest said.
May you like
"He's parked at the end of Rudy's road.
And he's not alone anymore."
