Blake Pitch's Arc

Chapter 6 of 8

Blake had a builder and a Tuesday. He did not have a way to gather the twelve families without Christian Howard hearing about it first. A public notice would leak by lunch. A City Hall meeting would show up in Leakton Hills before the coffee cooled. Howard had people in every clerk's office and every reporter's inbox. Blake needed a room no one would think to watch. He drove out past the last stoplight to a farm he had visited only once, during his first campaign. Samuel Peterson met him at the porch in a red plaid shirt, boots caked from the pen. Samuel had walked Blake's flyers door to door back when nobody knew Blake's name. He had never asked for anything after. "Mayor." "Sam. I need a favor that stays off paper." Samuel nodded once and opened the door. In the kitchen, Blake laid it out. Twelve families. One builder. A rival mayor who would burn the meeting down if he found the time and place. Blake needed the farm for a Tuesday evening, and he needed the invitations carried by hand. Samuel poured coffee. "Why me." "Because your name isn't on any list of mine. Christian's people aren't watching your driveway." "And the families?" "They won't come for a card from City Hall. They might come for something that looks like nothing." Samuel went to the mudroom and came back with a paper sack. Inside was a bundle of raw wool, soft and uneven, tied with twine. Katherine sold them at the November festival. Every family in the county had seen one on a neighbor's porch. "Twelve of these," Samuel said. "With a card. My handwriting, not yours. Festival preview. Tuesday, six. No mayor's seal." "They'll know it's me when they walk in." "Then they walked in on their own." Blake called Jordin from the truck. "I need you to drive with him. He doesn't know the block. You do." "I'm not sleeping anyway." Jordin's voice was flat. "Give me the list." They ran the deliveries Monday, before dawn. Samuel drove. Jordin walked each bundle to each porch and set it down without knocking. Twelve stops. No phone calls. No texts. No trace on any city server. By noon Jordin sent Blake one word. Done. Tuesday at six, Blake stood in the Peterson barn between hay bales and a stack of folding chairs. The builder waited by the door in his canvas jacket. Eleven families filed in. Then the twelfth. Keith Andrews came in last and shut the barn door behind them. No cameras. No leak. Howard had learned nothing. The oldest woman in the front row set her wool bundle on her lap and looked at Blake. "Talk," she said. Blake stepped forward. The builder opened a notebook. The families had come, and now they wanted to hear what he owed them, out loud, in a room Christian Howard could not reach.