of nowhere he said, “Scooter’s a government plant.”
“Huh?”
“You don’t think?”
I set down the roll of solder and the gun. “Of course not. How would he be a plant? He didn’t just pop up out of no place. He’s local. And he just got out of high school, like, a year ago.”
“Sure seems like one to me. Never takes any initiative of his own. Always just does what we tell him.”
“That’s because he’s not too bright.”
“He helped Randy’s wife that one day. Didn’t bat an eye.”
I gave him a dirty look. “He helped get my dad to the hospital when Candy decided she was going to act like a small-minded bat-shit moron and let him die in his bed. That’s the only reason Jill brought Lucia over. Because your wife wouldn’t help her.”
“What’s Jill doing consorting with Randy, anyway? How does she even know him?”
“From the funeral.”
“So she says. I ran into her at the U-Store-It, all alone, making a phone call from the office. Said she was calling the kid’s doctor. What do you figure the odds are of that?”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake.” I picked up the soldering tools again. “Jill’s not a plant either, all right? That I’m sure about.”
“You don’t think people sell out when somebody makes them an offer, huh?”
“Not Jill and not Scooter. Get a grip.”
Dodge was quiet for a couple of minutes. He stood there watching me work. Then he said, “One of these days you’re gonna work up the respect due to me. Once you grow up some and come to see things my way.”
“Whatever.”
“There you go again. Fact is, even when you know I’m right you won’t admit it. Too goddamn arrogant.”
“The problem’s not that I’m arrogant. It’s that you shove your nose into my business way too often. You’ve got to meddle in everything, whether it involves you or not.”
He was leaning on his arms against the bench, but at that he looked up at me with a gleam in his eye beneath his trucker cap. “Oh, I get it. You’re still sore about my cabinet project in here, all those years ago. When you were using this place as your little love nest.”
I kept soldering and didn’t say anything.
“Yep,” he said. “Cade sees it Cade’s way, through Cadey’s big blue eyes. Tell you what, I got tired of seeing the look on your brother’s face every time he knew you were in here messing around with that girl. You wouldn’t have seen that, though, would you?”
He waited to see if I’d reply, but I stayed silent. All I could think was I hated him more for saying that than I ever had for running me and Piper out of the shed.
“If I were Elias,” he went on, “I wouldn’t have been able to tolerate that shit. The way you treated him over that—I’d have had a mind to put a stop to it once and for all, any way it took. But nobody ever could get a rage out of Elias, and don’t ask me why. God knows I tried. Would have done him good, and God knows you had it coming, Cade.”
He held me in a kind of stare-down until I pulled the soldering gun’s plug out of the outlet without breaking eye contact. Then he shrugged and straightened up.
“You’ll think what you want to think, even when you’re wrong and you know you’re wrong,” he said.
Where Scooter and Jill were concerned I didn’t give it a second thought after that, not for a while anyway. Where Piper came in, I put it out of my mind. The project was consuming all my spare time and needed to be my priority. Sitting watch during those long, lonesome hours, watching the night through the window glass and perking up my ears at every sound—all of that made me feel paranoid enough without casting my own people as suspect. Every time I left the house to go anyplace, I felt jumpy. All of this was Dodge’s fault. New Hampshire had felt like its own kingdom to me, far apart from the spy-versus-spy political crap in Washington. It’s funny how the power of suggestion works like that. Just float the idea that somebody might be watching me, and I’m skittering away from my own shadow.
It wasn’t going to slow me down, though, as far as the project went. When I ventured out to the hardware store in Henderson, I made sure nothing about my appearance would attract attention. Grimy Levi’s worn soft and