The Inner Circle

84

It was something that the one with the ungroomed beard-Dallas-it was something Dallas had said.

Squinting through the front windshield as the morning sun pinged off the piles of soot-capped snow, the barber couldn’t help but notice the sudden increase in the number of the neighborhood’s liquor stores and laundromats. Of course, there was a barbershop. There was always a barbershop, he knew, spying the hand-painted sign with the words Fades To Braids in big red letters.

Kicking the brakes as he approached a red light, he didn’t regret holding back at the cemetery. He was ready. He’d made his peace. But when he heard those words leave Dallas’s lips, he knew there was still one box that needed to be checked.

Twenty-six years ago, he’d acted in haste. Looking back at it, though, he didn’t regret that either. He did the best he could in the moment.

Just as he was doing now.

As the light winked green, he twisted the wheel into a sharp left turn, fishtailing for a split second in a mass of gray slush. As the car found traction, Laurent knew he was close.

This was it.

He knew it from the moment he saw the building in the distance.

He knew it as he felt the straight-edge razor that still called to him from his pocket.

He knew it as he saw-parked at the top of the hill-the silver car that Beecher had been driving.

And he knew it when he spotted, just next to the main gate, the thin black letters that spelled out those same two words that had left Dallas’s lips back in the cemetery.

St. Elizabeths.

The greater good would finally be served.