Eamon entered the carriage house through the side door at five-thirty. The duffel bags were stacked at the foot of the stairs. Wiley’s box of files sat on top. Samuel’s fern was on the hall console. Köhler’s coat, a navy wool overcoat Reed gave him, was folded across the arm of a chair.
“Pereira’s at the head of the drive,” he said. “We leave at six. Pereira takes you, Wiley, Samuel, and Köhler straight in. Reed drives an empty SUV. Collins brings Cabot and Dane straight in from the Vineyard.”
Pereira was tall, with dark hair in a low knot and a black coat over jeans. She nodded once and got the bags loaded in three minutes. Köhler carried his own coat. Samuel carried the fern. Wiley carried the box of files himself and refused to let me take it.
I put my hand on Köhler’s shoulder.
“Cambridge. Forty minutes. Reed has water and almonds in the front car. There will be more in ours.”
A small breath. “You are going to feed me until I die.”
“That’s the plan.”
The sky had gone full dark. Pereira’s headlights were off, parking lights on. We were in the SUV in twenty seconds—Wiley up front, Samuel and Köhler in back with me between them, the fern on Köhler’s lap, and the box of files in the footwell at Wiley’s feet.
Wiley watched the house through the side mirror until the bend cut it off.
“Pereira.”
“Yes.”
“Just Wiley.”
“Wiley.”
“Thank you for the ride.”
I tapped the comm.
“Dane. In the car. Three principals intact. Plant intact.”
“We’re on the ferry. Brattle by seven.”
A black sedan came up behind us at the second light and held three lengths back for two blocks. It peeled off at Charlesgate. Pereira took the entrance ramp onto Storrow without changing speed.
The Charles opened on our left. Cambridge was a low scatter of lights across the river.
Samuel spoke quietly beside me. “Köhler. The fern is shaking.”
“It’s not the fern..”
Samuel put his hand over Köhler’s and left it there.
Pereira pulled into the driveway in Cambridge at six-twenty-six.
The Brattle house was a yellow Greek Revival behind a low iron fence. Reed’s SUV—the decoy—would come up Allston in twenty minutes. Collins’s vehicle, with Cabot and Dane, was an hour out.
Pereira killed the engine. “Out my side.”
We went in through the side door, into a mudroom, and then into the kitchen.
Samuel set the fern on the kitchen counter where the light from the window would reach it. He turned and pulled Wiley against him for a count of three.
Köhler stood in the kitchen doorway with his coat folded over his arm. “Where do I go?” he asked.
“Library, second on the right. There’s a fireplace.”
Wiley sat at the kitchen table. He put both hands flat on the wood and didn’t move them.