Page 94 of Agency

“Shit, you think that’d help much?” Morgan snapped back, overly accentuating his South Boston accent. “You know how many Paddy McFuckSticks we got in Southie? Enough to serve all the whiskey this corn could make, that’s for damn sure.”

We all laughed as Morgan kept trucking into the night. About five minutes later, Jericho was leaning forward in his seat, saying, “Here. Pull over.”

“You sure?” Morgan asked, that Boston accent still coming through hard and turning “sure” into “shore.”

“I know my own front gate.”

“Yeah yeah, sure sure.” Morgan pulled over and Jericho threw open the door, letting in a blast of near-freezing air that sent a shiver through me and immediately had me struggling back into my hoodie.

Still showing off that limp from his tumble down the stairs as he jumped down from the seat, he waved Andrew back into the car, saying, “Nah, I got it.” Jericho slammed shut the passenger’s side door behind him.

“Well…” Andrew said, trailing off. “He’s in a good mood.”

“Can’t imagine why not. It’s not like he’s spent his entire adult life avoiding coming back here, or anything.”

Out within the pool of the headlights, Jericho, still limping, had already unlocked and begun pulling back the gate far enough for Morgan to enter.

“What is this place, anyways?” I asked as we pulled through.

“His grandfather’s farm on his mother’s side,” Morgan said, glancing up to the rearview mirror to lock eyes with me. “Old man put it into a trust for him when he passed, and they lease out the land and pay the property taxes and everything with the proceeds so he can keep it.”

“His parents didn’t get it in the will?”

“His parents were already dead, I think,” Andrew said.

I glanced to the rear of the Durango. Highlighted in the brake’s crimson glows, Jericho limped along as he shut the gate, looking for all the world like a caretaker of the damned. The gate’s bottom edge ground against dirt and gravel, making the scene even more forlorn and foreboding.

“No, just his mother,” said Morgan, drawing my attention back to the front of the SUV. “Cancer. When he was just a kid.”

“What about his father?” I asked.

“Prison,” Morgan replied. “Biker, drug dealer, wife-beater. Not exactly a good man.”

“Oh,” I said, simply. “That…”

I allowed myself to trail off mid-thought. After all, what exactly had I intended say to that kind of thing?

“That sucks?”

“That sounds great?”

Or, maybe…

“That makes sense?”

After all, during our first interaction he’d said that his father wasn’t a good man, and that Jericho had been his mother’s maiden name. Which kind of got me thinking…

“Hey,” I said. “I have a question.”

“Yeah?”

“What’s Jericho’s real name?” I asked. “His first name, I mean.”

“I dunno.” Morgan, twisting in his seat and looking back to Andrew, kind of shrugged. “He ever tell you?”

“Nope,” Andrew said, then looked to me.

“Neither of you? Neither of you bothered to ask, ever? Seriously?”