Page 74 of Prodigal Son

“What…” Eden started, but then she heard it.Felt it, more like. A faint vibration, moving up through the soles of her Docs, into her joints. It buzzed in the back of her teeth. “All the lights are off, but something’s drawing a lot of power.”

A flashlight beam fell amongst them, sun-bright, blinding. “That’d be us,” a man’s voice said, calm and smooth.

Familiar.

Eden whipped around, leading with her gun.

The light blasted her in the face, and she was forced to shut her eyes.

“Agent Adkins?” the voice said again, and then she knew it.

She peeled a sweaty hand off her gun and used it to shield her eyes. “Captain Harlowe?”

“Shit, Morgan, kill the light,” Devin said, and nothing made sense.

~*~

Morgan was, from initial appearances, more like Abe than Dad. Fox considered that one for the win column. Trim and compact, with iron gray hair trimmed to an appropriate style, and a tidy beard. He wore jeans and a shawl-collared sweater, and in addition to his high-power flashlight carried an old-fashioned oil lantern, its sides shuttered until he locked the heavy barn doors behind them. Then he opened it and let the warm light spill across the dirt floor, illuminating stalls and sleepy, startled horses.

He knelt and pulled up a trapdoor, which offered more light. “We live down here for now,” he said. “It’s all set up. Come on.” And started down a wooden staircase.

Fox had the sense of entering a dream. He marveled at his lack of response earlier, out on the driveway. When the light fell across them, Eden and Evan had both been drawn tight, ready to bolt or shoot. But Dad, and Abe, and Fox himself had just stood there. He’d like to say that he’d known the light belonged to Morgan, and that they hadn’t been in danger, but that would have been a lie. He didn’t know how to explain the numbness that kept creeping, and creeping, and creeping over him. It had started early, he guessed, that day in Dad’s apartment, but he hadn’t realized it. This whole thing felt like a movie he’d stepped into, and nothing real or plausible. He was disconnecting. Emotionally. And all the while his brain was moving at double-time.

For starters, he wanted to know why Eden had called Morgan “Captain Harlowe,” and why she looked like she’d seen a ghost.

But first they went down a narrow flight of stairs and landed in a narrow, wood-walled hallway, the floor laid with red brick, a lamp on a table providing the light. Morgan pulled the hatch down after them, and latched it, then set off down the hall.

“This way.”

The hallway led into a lounge that radiated cozy from every corner. Low whitewashed ceiling beams, a brick fireplace with a flickering ventless stove at its center. Worn leather couches and chairs, knitted throws draped over their backs, and a thick rope rug under a steamer trunk coffee table. Table lamps provided warm light.

The lounge adjoined a kitchen through a wide cased opening, a room full of white cabinets, stone counters, and antique appliances. A hallway led deeper in, doubtless to bedrooms and washrooms.

It was a wonder.

“This is all under the barn?” Devin asked with an appreciative whistle.

“No, it’s underground,” Morgan said. “The barn’s over there.” He gestured toward the kitchen. “The whole thing would collapse on our heads if we’d dug underneath it.”

A woman appeared in the doorway, wiry and spare, graying hair tied back in a braid. She wore a flannel shirt and jeans; held a revolver down low, against her thigh, her grip on the weapon familiar.

“It’s alright, Nora,” Morgan said. “These are old friends.”

She surveyed them with an iron gaze, chin raised to a defiant angle. Finally, she snorted and turned away. Over her shoulder: “I thought you said you’d shoot Devin Green on the spot if he ever showed his ugly face around here?”

“Hey, now,” Devin protested. And then: “And, hey, I’m not ugly! I’ve got nine children to prove it!”

“Dad,” Fox said. The word left his mouth an airless plea. He didn’t have the energy to properly chastise him.

How did Eden know this man?

What the hell was going on?

Morgan set his lantern down in the center of the coffee table and turned to them, expression grim. “You found me.” He didn’t sound happy about it.

“You’re the one who told me about this place,” Abe said.

“Yeah, but I didn’t think you’d actually come here. That’s not what we do, Abe. We don’t congregate.”

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