“They sent a location where we’ll meet,” Anse said into the silence. After an uncomfortable wait, he placed a hand-drawn paper map on the table and slid it to Jagger. Jagger slid it to me. Anse’s eyes flickered over me, remembering that the skinny brown girl was in charge, not the muscle-bound white National Enforcer for the OMW.
He said, “It’s at the Freewill Baptist Church off the old Mount Gay Road, not far from where the drugstore used to be. Ways in and out through Mount Gay, Mud Fork, Old Highway 119, what’s left of Enterprise Drive, Highway 44, and West Virginia POW MIA Highway. Plus, roads like a warren off and in between them. There’s no way to cover them all.”
I studied the map of twisting streets, Island Creek, bridges here and there, some still standing, some not evensuitable for foot traffic, though I figured kids still played on them. Anse had marked them all. I handed the sheet of paper to Jagger.
I’d been making deals for years. I knew what this was. “They won’t be there anyway,” I said.
Anse looked up.
“They’ll meet you, maybe with your daughter, maybe not. They’ll take what you give them, shoot you, and then disappear.”
Martha gripped her husband’s arm. I could see in their eyes they knew I spoke the truth. A truth they didn’t want to hear.
“It’s happened twice now, and both times they were after advanced military tech. So,” I said, “if you want your girl back, you’ll give me all your resources and do what we tell you, when we tell you.”
Anse’s eyes skimmed to the Weapons Room and back to me. “I can’t do that.”
I ignored him. “You know Jagger?”
He gave a brief nod.
“Your second-in-command and all of your men will report directly to Jagger. He’ll correlate with me and our people via the comms you’ll give us. We’ll dress one of your men to look like you. Pick the most skinny so the armor he wears under his clothes won’t show. Send him home with your wife tonight. He’ll go with us tomorrow evening.”
“I can’t.”
“Why?”
“The men voted. It’s a personal matter. Not a militia matter.”
I laughed, the sound sour. “They attacked you here, on your home turf?”
“Yes. Opened fire at the junkyard and my home simultaneously. While they used a battering ram to knock their way into the pawnshop where my daughter was working.”
“Only those three places?”
“Yes. I was at the scrapyard. Martha and the children were home. Eloise was at the shop. The members on duty were at the diner. They routed out and showed up inside of twenty seconds. By then the riders were leaving. Fast. Eloise on the back of one bike, riding pillion, preventing the men from firing.”
“They had inside help,” I said.
“No way.” Anse shook his head. “My people are loyal.”
“No,” Jagger said. “They knew where you were, where your wife was, and which kids were working. Did your daughter turn down one of the militia members for—” he glanced at Martha and said politely, “—for romantic interests.”
Anse, said, “No.”
Martha tensed, her eyes sliding back and forth beneath her lowered lids, then they opened and slid sightlessly across her clasped hands on the tabletop. “Yes.”
Anse turned in his chair, the legs scraping on the old flooring.
Martha shook her head, fast as her eyes, almost a quiver. “I never thought about it. But Beckett asked her to the Thanksgiving dance a month ago. She told him he was too old for her. He laughed it off, but I could tell it stung.”
“Beckett?” Anse turned to us, fire in his eyes. “My number two. The man who will be—would have been—reporting to you.”
“Let me guess,” I said. “Beckett was the leader of the men who voted this to a non-militia fight.”
Anse’s face went hard as stone.
Jagger said, “We’ll have to separate him, and any people loyal to him, and confine them. “An empty shipping container would do.” Scrapyards always had empty containers.
