Neither spoke until they were back inside the SUV with the doors closed.
"Beau," Cyrus said.
"I heard him."
"He could be lying."
"He could."
"He could be trying to buy time."
"He could."
Beau looked through the window at the gray river, gray sky, gray warehouses.
His face was the face of a man beginning to consider something he desperately did not want to consider.
"The scar," he said.
"The voice."
"The way of moving."
Cyrus did not answer.
"Tell me I'm wrong."
Cyrus did not answer.
"Cyrus."
"Beau, there are a lot of men in this life with scars."
"It doesn't have to be him."
"It doesn't have to be."
"But..."
They sat in silence.
The heater hummed.
Snow began again, softer this time as the second front moved in.
"Do not say his name," Beau said.
"Not yet."
"Not until we know."
"If we're wrong and the whisper gets out, we tear the charter apart for nothing."
"Yes, Beau."
"Drive."
While Beau Whitlock was beginning to suspect something that would become a knife in the soft underside of the brotherhood he had built, Eli Carter was waking up.
He woke because someone was kicking his foot.
He surfaced from the dark like a man coming up through water.
The first thing he saw was a pair of work boots about four inches from his face.
He flinched.
He tried to scramble backward.
His back was already against the pawn-shop door.
His body refused to move the way bodies refuse after they have been cold for too long.
He made a small animal sound he did not recognize as his own.
"Easy, kid."
A low voice.
Gravelly.
Old.
Eli looked up.
The man crouching in front of him was maybe 65.
White hair to his shoulders.
A beard reaching his sternum.
A long army-surplus coat patched at the elbows.
His eyes were faded blue.
They were not unkind.
"Easy, kid," the old man said again. "I'm not going to hurt you."
"You know me."
"I sleep under the Eighth Street bridge."
"You gave me half a sandwich in October."
"You remember?"
Eli remembered vaguely.
A man with a beard.
"Sully," the old man said. "My name's Sully."
"You need to come with me, son."
"You're going to die in this doorway."
Eli tried to speak.
His lips were too cold to form words properly.
"Can't," he managed.
"Men looking for me."
"I know," Sully said. "I know about the men."
"Come on now. I've got a fire."
Sully half lifted, half supported the boy out of the doorway.
Eli's legs would not hold him.