Chapter 7
Natalie
Morning comes before I know it. The knowledge that my brother and his friend took turns staying awake so I could rest without worry is almost enough to wash away the humiliation of my ham-handed attempt to get Bear to see me as more than his best friend’s sister.
I don’t know what I was thinking by talking to him that way.
I dress quickly and step back into the main room, expecting Bear and my brother to be waiting there so we can get some breakfast. My brother’s nowhere to be found.
But Bear is looking out the window with a phone to his ear.
He looks magnificent in his tight jeans and black leather cut.
I know last night he said he wasn’t interested, but his body said otherwise.
He’s got his hair pulled back at the nape of his neck and twists his torso around to look at me when he hears me shut the bedroom door behind me.
He glances at me when he hears my steps, gestures towards the extra cup of coffee
on the table, and goes back to his call.
“Yes,” he says into the phone. “I understand. Keep it professional. If anyone asks, you send them to me.”
He ends the call and looks at me fully, eyes sharp and a little weary.
“Rick has gate duty this morning. Do you want to take the day off? It would probably be safer for you. I can get one of the brothers to stand outside your door.”
“I know you and Rick trust all the brothers. So why are you taking turns standing watch?”
Bear shrugs. “The risk is low but not zero. You’re important to us. It makes sense to go the extra mile for you.”
“I don’t want some guy wasting his day standing outside my door. If you don’t mind, I’d rather just go to work with one of you. I passed the police check, right?”
He nods.
“And it’s not like my foster father knows where I am at every minute of the day. I’ll go crazy cooped up here. At least let me help you both.”
Bear looks resigned. I think he’s softening.
I move closer to the table and reach for the clipboard. “We have quite a few deliveries scheduled for today. You actually need my help, right?”
Bear’s shoulders fly up in an easy shrug. “We always need help, but we manage. It’s important that you feel safe.”
“I feel safe. I really do. My foster parents would hardly get off the sofa to answer the door and feed themselves. They aren’t gonna come all the way to Las Salinas to say the exact same things they’re already texting me.”
“You mean Mattie,” he corrects me in a polite tone of voice.
My face creases into a confused frown. “What?”
“Mattie took your phone, so they are technically texting her, thinking it’s you.”
I pick up the coffee cup and down the contents in one long drink. “Yeah, I suppose you’re right.”
We head out, grabbing an egg and bacon sandwich on the way out the door.
We don’t talk about our awkward conversation from last night.
We keep the discussion to job-related tasks.
He explains which routes he’ll adjust, which clients can be pushed back by an hour, and which ones simply cannot wait.
I listen, absorbing it all, already slotting pickups and deliveries into place in my mind.
This job is my saving grace. Having something productive to do takes my mind off all the things normally pressing in on me from every direction.
The first pharmacy has all their orders ready to go.
I’m already familiar with the bell that rings when we open the door.
The same woman is behind the same counter, smiling away.
Everything about this job feels very run of the mill.
I log temperatures, sign their forms, and accept a small correction without embarrassment.
If she notices the way Bear positions himself slightly closer to me than yesterday, she doesn’t comment.
At the third stop, our regular run-of-the-mill day shifts into something darker. We’re loading several smaller packages when the pharmacist hesitates with the handoff. “Someone came by yesterday,” he says, casual but curious. “They were asking about your new driver. Whether they’d started yet.”
My pen pauses midline and I freeze. It feels like my whole body goes numb.
Bear doesn’t react. He simply prompts him for more information. “And?”
“It was a middle-aged man with dark hair and round silver metal glasses. His hair was slicked back with hair gel, and he was dressed like a farmer, you know in pinstripe overalls,” the pharmacist continues.
“He wanted to know your route information, when you arrived, and what days. I didn’t give him anything, obviously.
He was sketchy if you know what I mean.”
Bear nods. “You did the right thing. You never can be too careful about strangers.”
When we’re back in the truck, a long silence spins out between us. I finish the log entry with neat, deliberate strokes and set the clipboard down before I speak. “Do you think they really got off their sofa and came all the way to Las Salinas?”
“Maybe,” he says. “That’s why I’m taking a minute to report it to Siege.”
Waiting quietly for him to finish, I try to imagine my foster dad showing up here.
The messages scrawled on my bedroom are pretty much proof he did.
Unless he persuaded someone else to do his dirty work for him.
That’s more likely, I honestly can’t see him making the journey.
I look out the window as he pulls the truck out of the parking lot and heads towards the interstate.
“What happens if they show up here?”
“They won’t,” Bear says. “If they’ve been asking about you, they know your brother is with the Savage Legion. They wouldn’t dare wrangle with the club.”
“And what if they do?” I ask, feeling myself start to spiral.
“If they are foolish enough to show their faces here, they won’t go home in the same condition they arrived in.”
I can tell by the tone of his voice that he’s not even making a threat.
He’s saying if they keep harassing me, the natural consequence is someone here pulling them up hard.
He’s implying if they come here to fuck around, they’re not going to like the find out part when it comes flying their way.
It makes a certain kind of sense, if I’m being honest.
While I’m deep in thought about that, Bear asks the question that I never thought to consider.
“Did the description match your foster father?”
“Not really. He always looked more like your typical preacher, but he could be trying to change his appearance, you know?”
“That’s possible. I want you to think back to everyone in your foster parents’ orbit. Did they associate with farmers, anyone who came close to fitting the description? Anyone who wore pinstripe overalls?”
My head snaps up. “Yeah, there was this guy from our church. He isn’t a farmer though. He’s a train operator. The ones from his company wear pinstripe denim overalls.” I can’t believe I didn’t recognize the description.
Bear is saying something about this being a stroke of good luck. But I’m staring out the window as an image of the man’s face rises in my mind. “My foster father never likes to get his hands dirty, he always uses people. He manipulates them into believing they’re doing a good deed.”
Bear’s grip tightens on the wheel. “You’d think a goddamn train operator would be smarter than to take their bullshit at face value.”
“I used to think the same thing. Then one day, I realized it isn’t about intelligence. It’s about his parishioners wanting desperately to please him so they will be seen as good people. They’re true believers who don’t know they are being lied to and manipulated.”
We finish the rest of the urgent deliveries and Bear decides to take me back to the clubhouse. I don’t even argue the point because he’s right to get me out of the way so he can concentrate on making his deliveries.
I’m focused on making sure the information on our clipboard is correct, checking times against the route Bear adjusted earlier. We got a lot done in a couple of hours and are on the home stretch. The clubhouse is about ten miles away.
That’s when I see Bear’s hands tighten on the wheel.
He doesn’t say anything at first, just eases off the gas slightly, eyes flicking to the side mirror and then the rearview. The change is subtle enough that I might have missed it if I wasn’t sitting so close, if I hadn’t learned to read people so well.
“Bear,” I say quietly. “What’s going on?”
He glances quickly in his rearview mirror. “We’ve got a tail.”
My stomach drops, and I have to force myself not to turn around. “How sure are you that someone is following us?”
“He’s turned with us for the last three lights,” he says. “He’s keeping his distance but changes lanes every time I do.”
I glance in the side view mirror. The car behind us is unremarkable, a dull sedan that blends too easily, which is exactly the point. My pulse picks up anyway, old instincts lighting up all at once. “Do you think they followed us from the pharmacy?”
“From there or somewhere nearby.”
“Are we going back to the clubhouse?”
“No,” he says, already turning his signal on. “I’m taking care of this fucker right goddamn now.”
My fear spikes because I don’t know what that means.
Taking care of something in my world means something totally different than in his world.
I can’t imagine Bear just killing him. He’s a good man, not a killer.
I know that much all the way down to my bones.
I take a deep breath and decide that I have to trust Bear to know what he’s doing.
He takes a sudden turn onto a less crowded secondary road. It’s industrial and quiet. It looks like the kind of place where businesses close early, and sidewalks go empty right before dusk. The sedan follows without hesitation, and that’s when I brace myself for a confrontation.