“What do you think?” I stand slowly and move toward him, bending as far as I can to see what he’s doing. There’s nothing inside. When I straighten, a jab of pain hits my back. “They’re thick as thieves.”

He slams the cupboard door shut, strides to the bedroom, and begins rifling through the dresser. Apparently when the shit hits the fan, Chase is all about action. I follow and sit on the bed. After twenty minutes, the entire contents of their room are heaped all over the floor.

“Nothing’s here,” Chase says.

“Thank you for trying.” I smile sadly. “But she’s keeping secrets, just like she did before, when she was a kid. Maybe you should just have a glass of whiskey or something. You’ve had a bad night.”

“When she was a kid,” Chase echoes, then lifts his head. “When you lived on the farm in Horizon, would she ever hide things?”

The rock, I think suddenly. The basalt stone from school.

“She had a hidey-hole behind the vent in our bedroom,” I say.

Chase is already up, moving toward the wall across from us, to the grate there. It looks innocuous enough, but the screws unwind easily. I move closer. Chase loosens the last screw and lowers the front plate, and there—in horrible triumph—is the tin. The proof of my sister’s deception hits me hard, and I stagger. How many times has she denied the tin was real?

Chase peels off the lid.

“Holy cow,” he says, taking in the bags of coke, the rolls of money. “This is it, isn’t it?”

I nod. The contents look like they’ve been rifled through, so it’s hard to know if everything’s there. Has Alex helped herself to the cash? Or worse, used some of the drugs? It would explain her skittishness.

“Why would she hide it?” Chase asks finally.

“I don’t know.” I really don’t.

The one thing about Alex is that she always has a plan. She’s purposeful; she’s always about the finish line. What that is in this case, I’m not sure. Something doesn’t feel right. I reach for the tin. “I’m taking it back to Eli,” I say. “At ten o’clock tomorrow morning. I’m going to end this.”

“I’m coming, too,” Chase says confidently. “We’ll go together, drop the damn thing off, get out of there as quickly as possible. Okay?”

“Okay,” I say.

He gets up then and heads into the kitchen, where he finds a half-empty bottle of Scotch and takes a swig, straight from the mouth.