Chapter 6

The electrical room smelled like hot metal and wet dirt.

Eli found Roy with a flashlight in his teeth, yanking at the generator's control panel. The floor was slick with water seeping under the door. Wires hung loose from an open junction box, and something in the corner was smoking-a thin curl of gray that Eli smelled before he saw it.

"Roy."

Roy spun around. The flashlight dropped out of his mouth and cracked on the concrete.

"What are you doing in here?"

"Your sister sent you to fix the generator," Eli said. "You're not fixing it."

"The panel's flooded. I need to shut it down."

"Then shut it down. Why is the breaker still on?"

Roy didn't answer. He was standing between Eli and a gray metal file cabinet in the corner. His eyes kept cutting toward it.

Eli took a step sideways. Roy moved to block him.

"Get out," Roy said. "This isn't your property."

"I used to work here."

"That was a long time ago."

Eli looked at the smoking junction box. "If you don't cut that breaker, this whole wall is going to catch. There are twenty people in the next room."

Roy's hands were shaking. "I know what I'm doing."

"You never knew what you were doing," Eli said. "That's why Daniel died."

Roy went very still.

For a second neither of them moved. Rain roared on the roof. The smoke thickened.

Then Roy lunged-not at Eli, but at the file cabinet. He yanked open the top drawer, pulled out a stained green ledger, and shoved it into the smoking junction box.

Eli caught his wrist before the paper caught. The heat seared his palm. He held on anyway, twisted the ledger free, and threw it across the room. It hit the far wall and fell open on the floor, pages splayed.

Roy swung at him. Eli took the punch on the shoulder-his bad shoulder-and staggered back into the generator housing. Pain went up his neck like a wire pulled tight.

"Eighteen years," Roy said, breathing hard. "Eighteen years I've kept my mouth shut, and you walk in here like you're the wronged man."

"You are the wronged man's brother," Eli said. "I'm just the one who went to prison for you."

Roy's face crumpled. "I didn't mean for him to die."

The words landed in the room like a dropped tool.

Eli straightened up slowly, holding his burned hand against his chest. "Say that again."

"I just wanted him to ground the plane. One flight. I needed time to move the money before the audit. I didn't know the line would fail." Roy's voice cracked. "Delphine said if I kept quiet, she'd handle it. She said you'd take the deal. You did."

The door to the electrical room opened.

Mari stood in the doorway with a flashlight, rain dripping off her jacket. Behind her, Delphine stood under an umbrella, her face lit from below by the storm.

"How much of that did you hear?" Roy asked.

Mari looked at her uncle, then at her grandmother.

"All of it," she said.