Chapter 42. A Door You Can Close

Ronan's POV

We wrote the answer in the records room, four of us around a cheap phone on the table like it was a live snake.

Garrick. Wade, gray and sweating, with his mother's eyes on the back of his neck from the doorway. June. Me.

"Short," June said. "He's always short?"

Wade nodded jerkily. "Never more than a line. Never names."

"Then a line." She chewed her lip. Then she shook her head. "No. Not this time."

Garrick looked up.

"Forty wolves stood in that yard at noon," she said. "Ines has traders at the gate by the end of the week. One of them talks, and in ten days Varne hears that Wade confessed. If he hears it from a stranger first, Wade's dead and the channel's dead with him." She put her finger on the phone. "So he hears it from Wade. Tonight. And it has to sound worse for Wade than for Varne."

"Tell him I got ca