60

60
By the time I got back from Boone’s house, the sky had the color of a bruise.

I killed the engine and just sat there with my forehead on the steering wheel breathing against the ache in my ribs.

Damien opened the door before I climbed the steps. He filled the frame with his broad shoulders and faded T-shirt.

“You left the house without notifying me....again.” He said.

“Sorry. Just coming back from Boone’s house. He is alive,” I said, stepping past him. The house smelled like broth and lemon. “and he finally talked.”

Damien’s mouth moved as if trying out the shape of a smile and then forgetting why. “That’s good.”

I dropped my bag on the chair and put both hands on the back of it to keep them from shaking. “He said Ivy’s case was buried by LAPD, off-the-books orders. Something called Project Shepherd.”

For a heartbeat he looked like Damien....a quick, flaring focus with all edges and momentum but then it slipped, whatever was behind his eyes shuttered back into fog. He set a mug on the counter.

“Drink,” he said. “You haven’t slept well for two weeks.”

“What is it?” I asked.

“Chamomile,” he said. “And something for the nausea.”

“I’m not nauseous,” I said.

“You will be,” he answered, like he knew the future.

I didn’t touch the mug. “Did you hear me? Shepherd. LAPD. It’s not just St. Augustine and others.”

“I heard you,” he said, then. “but you need to rest. You spiral when you don’t rest.”

“Don’t,” I said.

Something flickered in his expression but was gone and replaced with a calm, placid surface. “Don’t what?”

“Don’t talk to me like a case file.” I said.

He looked down at his hands as if they’d just appeared. A tiny tremor ran through them, there and gone. “I’m trying to help.”

“I know,” I said softly.

I did know but there was a hitch in his voice I couldn’t name, and the room seemed to warp at the edges.

He moved to the stove, lifted the lid on the pot and stirred. “Soup,” he said. “I read somewhere warm food grounds you better than cold.”

“Where?” I asked.

He blinked like the answer had been on his tongue and then dissolved. “An article,” he said finally. “Or a handbook, doesn't matter.”

He ladled broth into a bowl and set it in front of me with a spoon placed exactly parallel to the bowl’s lip, handle aligned with the table seam. He stood there waiting.

I sat. My hands remembered how to move. I took a spoonful and swallowed.

“Boone said Shepherd wasn’t a youth program but a cover. It's a program for girls like Ivy and girls like me.”

“Don’t say it like that,” he said.

“Like what?” I asked.

“Like you were a property.” He answered.

I set the spoon down and clutched the edge of the table. “Maybe I was,” I said. “Maybe I still am.”

He went very still. The clock on the microwave ticked in my ears like something alive.

"We take their language out of our mouth, that’s first. Then we cut their hands off what they think they own.”

It should have comforted me, it almost did but then his gaze slid sideways to the mug he’d poured as if the next step was making sure I drank it. The prickle along my spine sharpened.

“I’ll drink it later,” I said.

“Now is better,” he said but there was heat in his tone....insistence.

I met his eyes. “Later,” I repeated.

A pause stretched between us then he nodded, too smoothly. “Later,” he echoed.

He turned away and started rinsing a clean spoon in the sink. He left the water running longer than necessary, staring at nothing. The muscles in his forearm jumped and released in a rhythm that was almost a count.

“Damien,” I said. He didn’t look. “Where were you this morning while I was gone?”

“Here,” he said.

“But you smell like something else I can't rasp my head on.” I said.

He finally looked at me and for a split-second, something raw appeared in his eyes...fear or fury..... then shuttered. “The wind’s wrong today,” he said. “Brings the salt in.”

I nodded as if that made sense. Maybe it did or maybe there was dried sea on the cuffs of his jeans, a tiny pale crystals like frost, I couldn’t tell if I truly saw them or if my mind wanted to.

“I need to work,” I said, pushing up from the chair. “Before the edges blur again.”

He stepped aside. “I’ll clean up.”

I carried Boone’s files to the coffee table and spread them like I was laying cards. Intake forms, transfer receipts and a map of our town spidered with red lines to state agencies and private ‘partners’....Augustine Youth Partnership, Shepherd Community Services, innocuous names covering something surgical.

I placed Elise’s journal beside the files so I opened to the back where she’d write the codes Asher was trying to decode.

At the heading, I saw Shepherd’s Code.

In the margin she’d scrawled a column of numbers beside Psalm 23, underlined twice...23:1, 23:4, 23:6. The lines was tight with haste.

Next to it she’d written assign letters to verse numbers, key... S-H-E-P-H-E-R-D.

My breath snagged. Elise was closer than any of us realized but died for it.

I slid my finger down Boone’s ledger.

Code strings popped...PS-23/4...Beta/Green...Reborn.... N.R. (audio).

My pulse thudded in my throat. The couch dipped.

I looked up expecting Damien to come and see but he stood in the kitchen exactly where I’d left him, staring at the running faucet. He hadn’t moved.

“Asher,” I muttered to myself and reached for my phone. I hesitated at first because he might still be struggling with his wife and family but I called him anyway, it's been two weeks already.

He picked up on the second ring, breathless. I heard a child laughing in the background, the sound, so clean and bright it hurt.

“Cam?” he said. “You okay?” A door thudded shut on his end... the laughter muffled. “I can talk for a minute.”

“I’m....” My voice broke. I swallowed hard then continue. “I saw Boone. He is still alive after the incident. He is even at home now. When I visited him today, he confessed to me about Shepherd. It's real.”

He did a long exhale then said. “Thank God he is alive. Though, I figured, the money trail was too clean to be an accident.” He pause then continue. “You sound… far away.”

“I’m here,” I said. “and I heard everything you said but listen. Boone’s ledger is full of PS-23 tags while Elise had Psalm 23 flagged in her
journal. I think the code assigns letters to verse numbers. I need another pair of eyes. That's why I called you to help"