Carter's Echo - 2. Chapter 2

Act III: The Frankenstein Enigma

Grady’s Repair Garage sat on the outskirts of Merrickville like a fortress of rusted iron and spilled oil. It was a sprawling, chaotic acreage of corrugated metal buildings and a "back forty" that was essentially an elephant’s graveyard for the automotive industry. The air here didn’t just carry the scent of summer; it was thick with the coppery tang of welding sparks, the sweet rot of old upholstery, and the omnipresent, heavy musk of 80-weight gear oil—the perfume of Andrew Highmore’s childhood.

Andrew led the way in the yellow Volvo, the "Banana" wheezing as it climbed the slight incline of the gravel driveway, each crunch of stone under the tires a drumbeat of dread and déjà vu. Behind him, Bobby’s F-150 groaned under the weight of the flatbed trailer, the raw aluminum MULE gleaming like a surgical instrument against the backdrop of junk.

Peter watched Andrew from the passenger seat of the truck. He saw the way his shoulders were rigid, the way his knuckles were white on the Volvo’s steering wheel. This wasn’t just a trip to a garage. It was a pilgrimage to a shrine Andrew had avoided for years.

“The Holy Land,” Bobby muttered as he killed the engine. The sudden silence that followed was punctuated by the *tink-tink-tink* of the truck’s cooling metal and the distant, rhythmic *thud* of someone hammering in the far bay.

Andrew was out of the Volvo before the dust had settled. He stood staring at the main bay doors—two massive, green, paint-peeling slabs that had swallowed his father whole for decades. Thomas Highmore had bled transmission fluid and exhaled exhaust fumes. This place was his cathedral. Andrew’s last memory of his dad alive was in this yard, laughing with Walter over the stubborn header bolts on a ‘67 Camaro. His last memory of his dad *period* was in a sterile hospital room, his own sixteen-year-old hand signing a form with words like “non-viable” and “neurological cessation.” *Death by misadventure*. A phrase so vague it could mean anything and therefore meant everything. A tractor. A moment of distraction. A life, switched off.

The smell hit him—degreaser, gasoline, old concrete. It was the smell of before. The smell of a world that made sense, where problems were bolted down and could be solved with the right tool and enough swear words. It hollowed him out and filled him up all at once.

“You okay, Andy?” Peter asked softly, coming to stand beside him.

“Fine,” Andrew said, his voice tight, scraped raw. “Just… memories have a way of smelling like degreaser in this town. They get in your clothes and never come out.”

A man emerged from the shadows of the main bay, silhouetted against the fluorescent light. Walter Grady was a mountain of a man who seemed to have been carved out of a hickory stump and left to weather in a hundred winters. His skin was the color and texture of a well-worn baseball glove, and his grey coveralls were a topographical map of every engine he’d ever loved and cursed. He took one long, slow look at Andrew, his gaze missing nothing—the lost weight, the shadows under the eyes, the way he stood like a man braced for a blow. Then Walter’s eyes flicked to the flatbed. He spat a stream of tobacco juice into the gravel, a brown star exploding in the dust.

“Thomas’s boy,” Walter rumbled, his voice like two stones grinding together at the bottom of a deep well. He closed the distance, his boots heavy on the ground. He didn’t offer a hand. He just stood there, looking Andrew up and down. “You look like hell warmed over and left in the sink. You’re all angles and eyes. Your old man would’ve force-fed you a three-inch T-bone and then made you do push-ups on the shop floor until you puked. Said it built grit.”

“Law school, Uncle Walter,” Andrew said, the ghost of a smile touching his lips. It was painful, like stretching a long-unused muscle. “It’s a calorie-neutral existence. They trade steak for case law. It’s a bad deal.”

“Always was a talker, not a doer,” Walter grunted, but there was no malice in it. Finally, he extended a hand. Andrew took it. Walter’s grip was immense, crushing, and somehow exactly what Andrew needed—a solid, undeniable anchor to the real, physical world. “Sorry about Will. He was a good kid. Too smart for his own good, but he had a good heart. This town has a way of spitting out the good ones. Heard he’s off to Toronto, eh?”

Andrew just nodded, unable to speak around the sudden knot in his throat. Walter saw it and let his hand drop. He turned his squinting gaze to the trailer. He walked over, his gait a slow, considered roll. He circled the MULE twice, three times, his eyes like calipers measuring every seam, every exposed bolt.

“A MULE,” Walter pronounced, the word landing with the finality of a judge’s gavel. “Pre-production prototype. A rolling experiment. Never meant to see the light of day, let alone public roads. It’s a ghost, Andrew. A scrap-heap special with a death wish. Where’d you dig up this suicidal piece of hardware?”

“Police auction,” Bobby chirped, stepping forward, unable to contain himself. “Confiscated from a design engineer in Oshawa who decided the 401 was his personal test track.”

Walter didn’t even glance at Bobby. His world had narrowed to Andrew and the car. “No VIN the Ministry will recognize. No safety certifications. It’s got a racing fuel cell that’ll make the inspectors have a stroke. This thing is a lawsuit with a steering wheel. You want to make it street-legal? You’re not talking about a restoration. You’re talking about a *transplant*. A Frankenstein job.”

“I need a nightmare, Uncle Walter,” Andrew said, his voice dropping to that low, intense register that used to silence a locker room between periods. It was the voice of a man who had reached his limit with the abstract, with grief, with things that couldn’t be fixed. “I need a problem I can see. One I can put my hands on. One that doesn’t… talk back and doesn’t get on a train to Toronto.”

Walter studied him for a long, silent minute. The only sounds were the buzz of flies and the distant highway. He saw the raw need in Andrew’s eyes, the desperate craving for order, for a puzzle whose solution was torque and timing, not heartbreak. Then Walter’s gaze shifted past him, to the two younger boys hanging back.

Peter stood with his arms crossed, trying to look nonchalant but failing, his artist’s eyes wide at the scale of the mechanical graveyard. Beside him, trying to vanish into Peter’s shadow, was the Jensen kid. Walter knew the story. The whole valley knew the story. He saw the kid holding his cast like a shield, his eyes darting, tracking exits, his whole body vibrating with a low-grade terror that had nothing to do with the present moment.

Walter took a step toward them. Jason flinched, a minute, instinctive recoil he tried to mask by looking at the ground.

“Jensen, right?” Walter’s voice wasn’t softer, but it was different. It had lost its grinding edge, becoming merely flat, factual.

Jason forced his head up, his grey eyes wide. He gave a tiny, terrified nod.

Walter nodded back, as if they’d just concluded a business transaction. “Heard what happened. Your old man was a piece of work, kid. A real son of a bitch. Glad you’re out.” He said it the same way he’d comment on the weather or a bad rotor. A simple, unvarnished truth. Then he turned back to Andrew. “Your dad always said the best way to clean a slate wasn’t with soap. It was with grease. Gets under your nails, into your skin. You can’t think about yesterday’s mess when you’re up to your elbows in today’s.” He jerked a thumb toward the main bay. “I’ll give you the Thomas Highmore discount. Bay Three. You use my tools, you scavenge the yard back there for parts, you buy your own fluids. But you listen to me, and you teach these two sprats how to turn a wrench so they don’t lose a finger. That’s the deal.”

Jason stood frozen. The words echoed in the hollow places inside him. *Glad you’re out.* Not ‘sorry,’ not ‘that’s terrible,’ not the whispered pity he’d grown to hate. A statement of approval. From Walter Grady. A man whose name was spoken in his own house only with a snarl of contempt for his “union-loving, liberal ideas.” To Jason’s father, Walter was everything wrong with the world—kind, competent, and utterly unimpressed by bullies.

There was history there, of Thomas Highmore, Walter Grady, and old man Jensen, written in blood but not forgotten. Two good men standing up to Jensen and his own particular brand of hate, Jason had caught some of the story, his father had cursed, and raved when drunk. Threatening retribution, and reprisal, but that was all they were, threats. His old man was too shit scared of Walter to do anything about it beyond snarl.

Walter was *glad* Jason was out. It wasn’t affection. It was something better: recognition. An acknowledgment that he’d survived a known evil. It was a seismic shift, a tectonic plate of his reality grinding into a new, stable position. He felt dizzy.

“Deal,” Andrew said, the word sounding like a vow.

“DAD! IS THAT THE PONY?”

A younger, wider version of Walter erupted from the side office like a ginger-haired comet. Fitzy Grady was nineteen, a golden retriever of a human being poured into oil-stained coveralls. He had his father’s build—broad, powerful—but none of the weathered solemnity. His smile was a force of nature, a thing that seemed to actively fight against gloom.

He skidded to a halt in a spray of gravel, his eyes popping. “Oh man! It’s naked! It’s actually, totally naked!” He beelined for the trailer, his hands hovering over the MULE’s flanks as if it were a skittish horse. “Coach! Bobby! Peter! This is the most insane thing I’ve ever seen!”

Then his trajectory changed. He’d seen Jason.

Peter tensed, preparing to step in, to deflect. He expected the smile to falter, the energy to dim into awkwardness.

It didn’t. Fitzy’s grin, if anything, got wider. He changed course and marched right up to Jason.

“Jensen! Holy crap, man!” Fitzy boomed, and before Jason could react, he clapped him on his good shoulder—a solid, hearty *thwack* that was more celebration than assault. “Rumor at the Tim’s was you were in the ICU or, like, witness protection! Glad you’re not dead! We need all the hands we can get on this beast!” He leaned in, conspiratorial. “You still got that yellow Volvo? That thing is a classic piece of Scandinavian junk, I love it! The B23 engine is basically unkillable. It’ll outlive us all!”

Jason blinked, his brain short-circuiting. The touch hadn’t been a threat. The words weren’t probing or pitying. They were about *cars*. About something he *had*, not what had been done to him. “It… it still runs,” he managed, his voice a dry croak.

“Damn right it does!” Fitzy laughed, the sound pure and undiluted. “Nothing with soul ever really dies, it just gets harder to start!”

“Focus, Fitzy,” came a drawling, feminine voice from the office door.

Charlene Doucet stood in the doorway, leaning against the frame with a bored, practiced elegance that was at odds with the greasy chaos around her. She was the garage secretary, accountant, and resident philosopher. She had late-90s “bubble-gum” hair—a high, teased-up blonde mane that defied both gravity and logic—and was snapping a piece of pink gum. She’d been a year behind Andrew and Will, and she looked at the current gathering with the weary fondness of someone watching a familiar, slightly tragic play.

She and her two sisters, Jenny-Lynn and Sarah were considered to be three of the most beautiful young women in the valley. Truly beautiful in a beauty-queen meets elfin princess kind of way, the Doucet sisters held a power over the boys of the town.

“Hi, Charlene,” Andrew said, offering a genuine, small smile. She’d been a friend. A neutral one.

“Andrew,” she replied, her sharp eyes softening for a millisecond. “Sorry about Will. He was always too pretty for this town. Had to go where the polish was.” Her gaze swept over him. “You, on the other hand… the garage grime suits you better than the law-student khakis ever did. Looks honest.”

She turned her forensic attention to Peter and Bobby. “The McCormick twins. One’s a cop,” she pointed at Bobby with her chin. “One’s a florist.” She pointed at Peter.

“*Artist*,” Peter corrected, his cheeks flushing.

“Same diff, sweetie,” Charlene popped her gum. “You make pretty things out of a mess. Walter’s right, Andrew. That car is a rolling death sentence. But,” she added, a smirk touching her lips, “at least it’ll look interesting in the rear-view mirror of the ambulance that’s hauling your carcass away from it to hospital.”

Walter clapped his massive hands together. The sound was a crack that shattered the moment. “Enough jaw music! Fitzy, get the forklift. We’re putting this aluminum coffin on the center lift in Bay 3. Andrew, you’re with me. We’re going dumpster diving. We need a donor car. Something with a street-legal heart to put in this monster.”

As the diesel forklift rumbled to life, Bobby drifted over to Peter, who was watching Jason. Jason was still standing where Fitzy had left him, but he was watching Fitzy operate the forklift with a look of intense, curious fascination.

Bobby leaned in, his cadet-issue shirt crisp against Peter’s dirty sleeve. His voice was a low, tactical whisper. “See? Fitzy’s a good guy. He’s, like, gay-adjacent. He’s dating Charlene, which, okay, but his vibes are pure, unadulterated marshmallow. And look at you and Jason. The unresolved sexual tension is so thick in here you could choke on it. You should just ask him out, Pete. Put us all out of our misery.”

Peter stiffened, his whole body going rigid. “Bobby, I will sell your beloved truck for parts if you don’t shut up. I am not into Jason Jensen. He is a roommate. He is a trauma case. He is *not* a potential date. My life is not a rom-com you’re directing from the front seat of your F-150.”

Bobby snorted, crossing his arms. “Peter, you’re a lot of things. A walking neurosis? Check. A surprisingly good mechanic for a garden monkey? Sure. But you are a world-class, Olympian-calibre liar. You’ve been looking at him like he’s a complicated sketch you can’t get right. And not in a ‘I want to fix you’ way. In a ‘I want to memorize the way the light hits your stupid, broken cheekbone’ way. It’s pathetic. And obvious.”

“Just… go find a siren to polish, would you?” Peter snapped, turning his back.

“Proximity! Orientation!” Bobby singsonged as he sauntered away.

The group moved to the back lot—the “Elephant’s Graveyard.” It was a surreal, silent city of deceased automobiles, stacked two and three high, skeletons picked clean by time and scavengers. Weeds grew through empty engine bays. Walter led them to a 1999 Mustang V6, once Torch Red, now a faded pink carcass. It had been T-boned on the passenger side, the door punched inward in a permanent, violent scream. The front end was twisted, the airbags a ghostly fungal bloom from the dash.

“There’s your donor,” Walter announced, pointing a grease-blackened finger. “The drivetrain’s toast, but the vitals you need are mostly intact. The dashboard, the main wiring harness for lights and signals, the brake lines, the fuel tank and pump. That MULE’s got a racing fuel cell. It’ll fail a safety inspection faster than you can say ‘fireball.’ You strip the ‘99. You graft its organs into the MULE. You make a hybrid.” He fixed Andrew with a stare. “It’s a butcher’s job, not a surgeon’s. You up for it?”

Andrew looked from the wreck, a monument to a single violent mistake, to the MULE on the lift in the bay—a blank slate awaiting its stolen life. He looked at Peter, at Jason, at Bobby and Fitzy hovering nearby. He was no longer a law student grieving a lost future. He was a foreman. A coach.

“I’m up for it,” Andrew said, and for the first time in weeks, he believed it.

“Alright then,” Walter said, turning to the boys. “Peter, you and Jensen are on dumpster duty. You get in that ‘99 and you pull the dash assembly. Every screw, every clip, every wire connector. You label nothing, you’ll curse your own names for a week. You break a clip, you owe me a beer. Fitzy, you supervise, make sure they don’t electrocute themselves or set the upholstery on fire. Andrew, you’re with me. We’re gonna see what kind of animal Ford bred in that aluminum belly.”

The afternoon dissolved into a symphony of purposeful violence. Peter and Jason were squeezed into the cramped, oven-like interior of the wrecked Mustang. The smell was a cocktail of decay: stale cigarettes, mildewed carpet, and the weird, acrid-sweet scent of long-deployed airbags.

Peter wriggled under the steering column, a set of ratchets and screwdrivers scattered around him. He worked with a focused, furious energy, his slight but wiry frame contorting into impossible angles. Sweat plastered his t-shirt to his back within minutes, and grease from the collapsed floorboard smeared across his cheek like war paint.

Jason sat crammed in the destroyed passenger seat, his legs bent awkwardly. His job was to hold the droplight and hand tools. But mostly, he watched. He watched the play of muscle in Peter’s arms as he wrestled with a stubborn bolt. He watched the concentration that furrowed Peter’s brow, the tip of his tongue poking out between his lips. The angry, grieving boy from the garden was gone, replaced by someone competent, precise, and utterly in his element. It was mesmerizing.

“You’re really good at this,” Jason said, his voice barely audible over the sound of Walter and Andrew arguing about torque specs in the bay.

Peter paused, a Torx bit between his teeth. He spat it into his greasy palm. “It’s just puzzles, Jason. Taking things apart is easy. It’s satisfying. Everything has a logic, a sequence. It’s putting it all back together so it works, so it doesn’t rattle when you hit a bump… that’s the trick. That’s where you find out if you really understood it.”

“I liked it,” Jason said suddenly, the words escaping before he could cage them. He wasn’t looking at Peter now; he was staring at a crack in the windshield. “At school. When everyone just thought I was a weasel. A nobody. It was… safe. Being invisible. It was the only way to breathe.”

Peter stopped completely. He slowly extricated himself from under the dash and sat up, his back against the shattered door panel. He looked at Jason, really looked at him, in the close, dusty gloom of the car. The droplight cast dramatic shadows across Jason’s face, highlighting the fading bruises, the sharp line of his jaw.

“Being invisible,” Peter said, his voice low and serious, “is just a slow, quiet way to die, Jason. I tried it for about five minutes in ninth grade. Before I figured out the ‘high-velocity irritation’ defense. It felt like suffocating. Like I was erasing myself so other people could be more comfortable. Fuck that.”

Jason absorbed this like a physical blow. He’d never considered it as a choice. It had just been survival. “I was with Blake,” he whispered, the confession dragged from a deeper, darker place. “It wasn’t invisible with him. It was… it was loud. In my head. In my chest. But then the fear would come back. Worse. Because now I had something to lose.” He swallowed, his throat clicking. “And now he’s with Matt. And Matt’s… he’s Matt. He’s gross. He’s loud in the wrong ways. How… how does Blake choose *him*?”

Peter picked up a discarded plastic clip, turning it over in his fingers. He thought of West’s easy confidence, his own tangled fear of being left behind. He thought of the terrifying noise of caring for someone.

“Maybe,” Peter said carefully, “Blake isn’t choosing Matt over you. Maybe he’s just choosing the path of least resistance to being seen. Matt isn’t gay, he’s just a horn dog but he loves Blake, Jason. He’s obnoxiously, unapologetically *present*. And Blake… he lives in a world of ghosts and stories. Maybe he needs someone who shouts to pull him out of the quiet.” He met Jason’s confused, hurt gaze. “You were trying to hide him to keep him safe. To keep *you* safe. Matt wants to parade him around. It’s not about who’s better. It’s about who’s ready to be… seen together.”

*Ready.* The word hung between them in the hot, metallic air.

Jason’s grey eyes searched Peter’s face. “Are you ready?” he asked, the question so blunt it stole the breath from Peter’s lungs.

Peter thought of West. Of the letters he couldn’t bring himself to write, the words stuck in his throat like stones. He thought of his own heart, a misfiring engine in the “House of Static.” He looked at Jason—broken, sharp, watching him with an unnerving clarity.

“I’m working on it,” Peter breathed, the admission feeling more vulnerable than anything he’d done all day.

“HEY! LOVEBIRDS!” Bobby’s grinning face suddenly filled the shattered window frame, blotting out the light. “Walter says if the dash isn’t coming out in the next five minutes, he’s charging you by the hour for therapy! Also, Peter, Mom called my cell. Wants to know if you’re coming for dinner Sunday. I told her you were busy performing open-heart surgery on a car with a teenager who’s making goo-goo eyes at you.”

“BOBBY!” Peter roared, grabbing a rubber mallet and swinging it at the window. Bobby cackled and ducked away.

“Told you!” his voice echoed across the yard. “High-velocity irritation! It’s the McCormick family brand!”

As the sun began its descent, painting the junkyard in long, melancholic shadows of orange and deep blue, the work wound down. They had the dash mostly freed, a grotesque, wire-veined organ ready for extraction. They had a plan sketched on the back of a napkin by Walter. They had a donor car picked clean of its useful parts.

The four of them—Andrew, Peter, Jason, and Bobby—stood around the MULE on the lift. It was no longer just a bizarre eyesore. It was a patient on the table. Andrew placed a hand on its raw aluminum flank, the metal now cool to the touch.

“Tomorrow,” Andrew announced, his voice ringing with a quiet authority that had been absent since spring. “We start the harvest. We take the heart, the nerves, the veins out of the ‘99. And we give them to this.” He patted the car. “We’re not fixing it. We’re making something new. Something that shouldn’t exist.”

Fitzy whooped. Walter gave a grunt that might have been approval. Charlene, watching from the office door, just shook her head and smiled, popping her gum.

And Peter looked at Jason. Jason was no longer looking at the ground. He was looking at the MULE, then at Andrew, then, finally, at Peter. His expression was unreadable, but the constant, hunted-animal panic in his eyes had receded, replaced by a weary, focused curiosity. He was here. He was part of the “we.”

The Frankenstein Protocol was officially underway.

The ride back to Merrickville in the yellow Volvo was conducted in a thick, contemplative silence. Andrew drove, his eyes keen on the road, his mind clearly already back in Bay 3. Jason was in the back, staring out at the darkening fields, his forehead resting against the cool glass. Peter rode shotgun, his hands resting on his knees, the embedded grease a badge of the day’s work.

They were halfway home when Andrew spoke, his voice quiet, almost lost in the Volvo’s wheeze.

“He likes you, you know.”

Peter closed his eyes. “Not you too.”

“I’m serious,” Andrew said, a faint, knowing smile in his voice. He glanced in the rear-view mirror at Jason, who seemed lost in his own world. “I saw him today. Watching you work. He’s never looked at anyone like that. Not even Blake. With Blake, it was always… frantic. Scared. This is different. It’s quiet. It’s just… looking.”

Peter watched the dashed yellow lines stream past in the headlights. “He’s just bored. And I’m the only thing that’s not a wall.”

“He’s not bored, Pete,” Andrew said, his tone gentle but firm. “He’s waking up. That scrapyard… Walter… it’s the first place he’s been since it all happened where he’s been treated like a person, not a victim or a problem. It’s giving him room. And you’re in that room with him.” He paused. “Just… be careful with him. And with yourself.”

The “Banana” coughed to a stop in the driveway of Brody’s house. The place was dark, but the motion-sensitive porch light flicked on, a lonely beacon. Across the driveway, the garage door was a black rectangle, a waiting mouth.

Andrew killed the engine. The silence that followed was profound. But it wasn’t the old, hungry silence of the house. It was the silence of potential. Of a task waiting.

Peter could almost hear it—not the silence of Merrickville, but the low, imagined hum of the MULE on its lift in Bay 3, a patient, metal heart waiting for its transplant. They were no longer just three lost boys drowning in a too-big house. They were a crew. They had a monster to build.

They filed inside, the scent of oil and sweat and summer night clinging to them. The House of Mending had expanded its borders. It now included a bay at Grady’s Garage, and a shared, impossible dream held together by bolts and borrowed hope.

***

The humidity of the Rideau Valley didn't just hang in the air; it fermented. Down at the end of Compata Way, where the asphalt surrendered to the encroaching scrub of the wetlands, a blacked-out Chevy pickup sat idling in the long shadows of a stand of dying elms. Inside, the air smelled of stale wintergreen chew and the hot, metallic tang of a cooling engine.

Gary ‘Brick’ MacReady squinted through a pair of sun-cracked binoculars, his thick fingers adjusting the focus with a slow, predatory patience. He wasn't looking at the manicured lawns of the newer builds. He was looking at the sprawling, vaulted monument of the house at the end of the cul-de-sac.

"There," Brick grunted, his voice a low, gravelly vibration. He handed the binoculars to the younger man in the passenger seat, a kid named Freddy whose Northern Cross ink was still a fresh, angry red on his forearm. "Behind the oak. That yellow piece of Scandinavian shit. That’s the Jensen kid's car."

Freddy adjusted the lenses, whistling low through his teeth. "The Banana. He actually drove it right into town? Brave for a kid who’s supposed to be hiding from his old man."

"He ain't hiding," Brick spat, a dark stream of tobacco juice hitting a Styrofoam cup. "He’s nesting. Look who just stepped out onto the porch."

Freddy adjusted the focus. A man had emerged into the afternoon light—Andrew Highmore. He was carrying a crate of tools, moving with a focused, athletic grace that Freddy recognized from a dozen fading team photos in the South Carleton Storm’s home arena.

"Highmore?" Freddy’s brow furrowed. "The lawyer? Who is he?"

"Tom Highmore’s kid," Brick replied, the name tasting like copper in his mouth. "The little weasel ran straight to him. Should’ve known. Like calls to like."

"Who is he?" Freddy asked. "I mean, I know the name, but..."

Brick turned, his pale eyes narrow and full of a cold, historical loathing. "He was the Golden Boy. Captain of the Storm back in ’95. Local hero. The kind of kid who was supposed to own this valley. Then he went and turned into a goddamn circus act. Came out in the middle of a winning season. Started sucking the dick of that British immigrant filth, Will Carter. Some book-learned ponce with an accent that made my skin crawl. It was a scandal that rotted the town’s pride right through."

Brick leaned back, his knuckles white on the steering wheel. "And now Denton’s kid—the boy who turned on the Cross to protect that Harding fairy—is living under his roof. Think about the logic, kid. Denton’s boy is being 'educated' by a queer hockey coach and the flower-arranging McCormick twin. If Denton finds out his blood is being corrupted by fucking Tom Highmore’s son, he’s going to go nuclear. He’ll burn that house to the ground with them inside."

Freddy looked back at the house, a dark intent flickering in his eyes. "Why don't we just go in now? Grab the kid, bring him to the woodlot for a 'chat' before the trial? Denton’s sitting in a cell in Ottawa waiting for word."

Brick reached out and grabbed Freddy’s wrist, his grip like an industrial vice. "Because you don’t know whose porch you’re looking at, you green shit. You know who owns that house?"

"Brody?" Freddy stammered. "He was some local player right?"

"Brody Levesque," Brick corrected, his voice dropping to a cautious, fearful murmur. "Charlie Levesque’s little brother."

The name hit the interior of the truck like a lead weight. Freddy went still. In Lanark County, the name Levesque wasn't just a name; it was a geography of power. Charlie Levesque ran the high-yield operations—the real weight, the real muscle. Denton Jensen was a king in the trailers and the bars, but Charlie Levesque was the ocean Denton swam in.

"Charlie’s brother?" Freddy whispered.

"Charlie treats that boy like a saint," Brick said, letting go of the kid’s wrist. "Brody’s his 'conscience.' You touch a hair on that house, you’re not answering to the O.P.P. or Denton. You’re answering to the boys in the black SUVs who don't bother with trials. We don't fuck with the Levesques. Not for a runaway kid. Not for Denton’s pride."

Freddy stared at the house, the "Mausoleum" now looking like a fortress with invisible, lethal walls. "So we just... watch?"

"We watch," Brick said, reaching for his cell phone. "We map the patterns. We see who comes, who goes. We build a ledger. Denton’s about to go on trial for beating the boy—we tell him his son is living in a den of iniquity with a Highmore, he’d probably try to kill him right there in the courtroom and blow the whole defense. Merrick’s paying for a shark like Gable to keep the boss out of prison; we don't jeopardize the investment."

Brick watched as Peter McCormick emerged from the house, handing a bottle of water to Andrew. They stood close, their rapport easy and familiar—a display of belonging that made Brick’s blood boil.

"We stay quiet till after the gavel falls," Brick decided, his voice a low, threatening promise. "We figure out the weak spots. We wait for Dent to walk. And then? Then we show the Highmore kid that his daddy’s perimeter is dead and gone. We show 'em all what happens to stains that won't wash out."

He put the truck in gear, the tires crunching slowly on the gravel as he backed away into the shadows. The House of Hissing Shadows remained silent, the boys inside unaware that the map of their sanctuary was already being drawn in the ink of an old, deep-seated hate.