Page 134 of Shatter

At the junction where the highway splits, Tor leads us left, toward Apalachicola, and the column follows him through the curve like one long animal.

My hands are steady on the grips.

My pulse runs slow and cold.

It's the calm again, the one from the parking lot and the smokehouse, rising up from somewhere under my ribs and spreading out into my hands.

My father's calm.

For the first time in my life, I'm grateful for it.

Aren meets us at a pull-off a mile from the turn, in the shade of a stand of live oaks, leaning against his Charger with a pair of binoculars around his neck.

He doesn't say hello.

He hands the binoculars to Tor and points.

Across a stretch of marsh grass and brown water, Sawgrass Point sits on its spit of land in the hard morning light.

A long metal building with docks running off it, shrimp boats tied up along them.

Four white reefer trailers backed up to the loading bays, engines humming, and a black Escalade parked beside a red F-250 in the crushed-shell lot.

Tor studies it for a long time.

Then he hands the binoculars to me.

I find the loading bays, then a row of small high windows along the back wall.

Cold storage.

She's behind one of those walls, in the cold, with frost on her lashes.

"Still there?" My voice comes out low.

"Nobody's moved her." Aren takes the binoculars back. "Desmond came out once and stood on the dock and made a call. Went back in."

He looks at me for a second longer than he needs to.

His dark eyes don't give anything away.

"She was fighting when they took her in." His voice doesn't change. "Hard."

Something cracks open in my chest.

Good girl.

I walk up the crushed-shell road alone.

The bikes are gone behind me, spread out through the marsh and the trees, and the only sound is my boots crunching on the shell and the gulls screaming over the water.

The sun burns down on the back of my neck.

Sweat runs down my spine under my cut.

My hands are empty, held away from my sides where anybody watching from those windows can see them.

Halfway up the road, the front door of the building opens.