Arthur Sterling did not fight.
He lay on the braided rug that Clara had washed two days ago, his cheek pressed into the wool, weeping with the wet, pathetic, sniveling sobs of an old man who had finally discovered that fifty years of handsome military titles cannot purchase ten seconds of mercy from an honest family:
“Eleanor…” Arthur wept into the floorboards:
“Eleanor, please… I’m your brother… we played on the beach in Bar Harbor… you can’t let them put me in Florence ADX… I have a heart condition! I can’t survive in a federal cage!”
Eleanor Vance-Sterling stood over him.
She did not spit on his head.
She did not raise her hickory stick.
She slowly reached into her coat pocket, pulled out the fifty-thousand-dollar cashier’s check that Carter Holbrook had dropped through my car window three hours ago—the check that was supposed to buy my silence and send me to Wyoming—and let it flutter down onto the back of Arthur’s neck:
