4. Flint
FLINT
Itell Rook about the six missing cases and fresh tracks from Beth's side of the airstrip. I leave out what happened on the desk because it has nothing to do with Knell's weapons exchange. It has a hell of a lot to do with everything else.
Rook gives me three men for Saturday. Dare handles the strip, Vandal takes the service road and I stay at Sundown Court. Switch watches the radios from the clubhouse. The rest of Dead Lucky stays out of sight unless we call.
“Knell wants you to come running,” Rook says through the phone. “Don't fucking do it until we're ready.”
“Yeah.”
“And Flint?”
“What?”
“Ash has been dead nine years. Quit letting him make your worst decisions.”
He ends the call before I can answer.
Beth is in the laundry room replacing the drive belt on a dryer when I find her. She has the machine unplugged and the access panel open. I sit on the folding table and wait until she tightens the last bolt.
“You promised the whole story,” she says.
“I did.”
She closes the panel, washes the black residue from her hands and leans against the deep sink. “Go ahead.”
I know the story in pieces. The morning Ash found us kissing behind the roadhouse. The week he said nothing. The final conversation beside the freight depot before a run south.
“The club was new and thin,” I say. “We had enemies from the chapter we left, and a weapons route that paid enough to keep Desert Steel open. Ash expected trouble on the next run. He knew you and I had been seeing each other for four months.”
“Five.”
“Five. He asked whether I planned to bring you into this life.”
“I was already in it. He was my brother.”
“I told him that. He said being related to one patched man was dangerous enough. If I loved you, I'd let you build something beyond the club.”
Beth folds her arms over the edge of the sink. “So you obeyed him.”
“I believed the run could kill me. I thought ending it first would hurt less than leaving you waiting for a body.”
“You told me you were bored.”
“I lied badly.”
“You lied well enough.”
She's right. I picked words cruel enough to make her stop asking.
“Ash was killed on that run,” I continue. “I survived. After the funeral, I couldn't tell you he had asked me to end us. You'd lost your brother, and I couldn't dump part of that blame on him.”
“You could've told me the rest. You could've said you lied because you were scared.”
“Yes.”
“Instead, you left Dry River.”
“The club sent me north to keep a route alive. I volunteered because I couldn't face you. When Rook called me back three years ago, I kept waiting for some good reason to explain. There isn't one.”
Beth looks toward the open laundry door. Sheets lift on the courtyard line, clean and bright after the storm.
“Did Ash make you promise?” she asks.
“He asked. I said yes.”
“And every year afterward?”
“Those were mine too.”
She turns back to me. Tears shine in her eyes, though none fall.
“I spent a long time angry with him. He died, and I was furious because he'd left me to arrange a funeral and sell his half-finished house and answer questions from men wearing his patch. Then I felt guilty because grief was supposed to be cleaner than that.”
I want to cross the room. I stay where I am.
“You had every right to be pissed at him,” I say.
“I know that now. What I didn't know was that he had reached into my relationship and broken it before he died.”
“I broke it.”
“You had help.”
Fair enough. Ash loved both of us and still made a shit call.
Beth wipes beneath one eye with the heel of her hand. “I wish you'd told me sooner.”
“So do I.”
“This morning doesn't make the years disappear.”
“I won't ask it to.”
“You say all the right things now.”
“Then watch what I do.”
She holds my gaze for a long moment. “Fine. Start with the motion lights.”
We spend the afternoon installing two battery-powered fixtures along the back wall.
Beth chooses the angles so the light covers the service gate and the dip near Room Sixteen without shining into guest windows.
Dare delivers radios and a contact alarm, then leaves after accepting iced tea from Beth.
He doesn't mention the dust on my cut or the fact that my shirt buttons are wrong.
Good man.
At five, Switch calls with the pickup registration. The truck belongs to a rental company in Tucson, hired under a false address. Camera footage shows two men collecting it. Knell is one. The other has prior arrests for armed robbery and weapons possession.
“No buyers identified?” Beth asks when I repeat it.
“Not yet. Switch is checking faces from the rental counter and asking our contacts who's shopping for that volume.”
“Good. I don't want this turning into a month-long investigation.”
“It ends Saturday.”
She looks at me. “How?”
“Knell thinks he controls the time and place. We let him bring the weapons and buyers into a courtyard we know better than he does. Then we close both exits.”
“My guests leave first.”
“Yes.”
“And you don't start shooting around sixteen rooms full of propane water heaters.”
“Also yes.”
“What happens to the weapons?”
“Dead Lucky takes them. The buyers leave without their money or leverage. Knell answers for threatening you and using our territory.”
“Answers how?”
I could soften the truth. I promised I wouldn't.
“If he puts the gun down, he walks away from Dry River hurting. If he fires, I stop him.”
Beth considers it. “You mean kill him.”
“If that's what keeps him from killing us.”
“Thank you for saying it plainly.”
At dusk, a courier van stops beneath the motel arch. The driver places a long cardboard flower box on the office counter and leaves before Beth can sign. There are no flowers inside. A single brass key rests on black tissue.
The number stamped into it is sixteen.
Beth brings the box to me in the courtyard. “This was Ash's room when he stayed here.”
“Knell remembers.”
“Room Sixteen has been empty since yesterday.”
We check it together. The lock shows no damage. Freshly laundered sheets remain tight across the bed, and the bathroom window is secured. Knell sent the key to prove he once had access or could get it again.
Beth tests the key in the lock. It doesn't turn.
“Old copy,” she says. “I changed every cylinder after I bought the place.”
Pride puts a little edge in her voice. Knell meant to scare her and gave us information instead.
“He expects Sixteen to matter to you,” I say.
“It does. That doesn't mean he knows how.”
“How does it matter?”
She steps inside. “Ash slept here after he left the old chapter and before Dead Lucky took the freight depot. We ate takeout on the floor because he didn't trust the chairs. The old owner let him pay late.”
I remember those weeks, though I slept at Desert Steel and kept my distance from Ash's family. “He brought half the club through this room.”
“That's why I keep it available for riders who are stranded. Ash got help here before he could return it.”
That sounds like Beth too. Take the useful part and build something better with it.
“The rally overflow,” I say. “We put riders who can't afford town rates in Sixteen through Twelve.”
“At cost.”
“Dead Lucky covers the difference.”
“Half the difference.”
“Two-thirds.”
“Half, and your prospects help with parking.”
“Done.”
She smiles, and for a minute Knell can go fuck himself.
Then the motion light behind the room comes on.
I draw my pistol and move through the bathroom toward the rear window. Beth takes the radio from her belt and calls Dare, who is patrolling beyond the strip. A coyote slips through the gap beneath the fence and freezes in the white light before loping into the wash.
I lower the weapon.
Beth exhales. “Our first intruder has four legs.”
“I'll question him in the morning.”
“Patiently?”
“I'm socially capable.”
Her laugh catches me off guard. It follows us out of the room and back into the courtyard.
I don't try to kiss her again. I just dropped nine years of ugly truth in her lap. Sex isn't going to fix that.
At her apartment door, Beth studies me. “You can come in for dinner.”
“Are you sure?”
“There's chili. You're staying in Fifteen afterward.”
“Got it.”
She unlocks the door and lets me into the small kitchen Knell tried to use as a threat.
We eat at her table and talk about the broken ice machine. Somehow the ordinary shit feels more intimate than the storm did.
Beth serves chili from a pot scarred along one side and puts shredded cheese between us. The kitchen is small enough that my knee nearly touches hers beneath the table. Ash appears in the framed photographs on the wall, younger than me now and grinning beside a motorcycle that never ran properly.
“He hated that picture,” I say.
“Because the motorcycle stalled after the camera clicked.”
“He blamed the carburetor.”
“You installed it.”
“Explains the blame.”
We share a smile. Beth gets up and removes the photograph from the wall. For a second, I think she's putting it away. She wipes dust from the top edge and hangs it back up.
“I kept expecting grief to finish,” she says. “People talk about stages as if you graduate.”
“Mine didn't finish. It just changed.”
“You had the club.”
“I had men who missed him and didn't know how to talk about it. We drank too much, repaired his bike and argued about who'd take his old runs. We were fucking terrible at grief.”
“Who has the bike?”
“Latch. It starts now.”
“Of course it does.”
She asks whether the club still tells the story about Ash stealing a road sign outside Bisbee.
I give her the accurate version, where he tried to steal it, dropped the wrench and spent twenty minutes hiding from a deputy behind a bush too small to cover him.
Beth laughs until she has to put down her spoon.
I haven't heard her laugh about Ash in years. I didn't know how badly I missed it, or how tired I was of remembering him only through the day we lost him.
“I resented you for leaving the funeral early,” she says once the laughter eases.
“I know.”
“How?”
“You didn't look at me when I came back for the wake.”
“I thought you couldn't stand being around grief.”
“Rook sent me to collect the men who killed him.”
Her spoon becomes still. “Did you?”
“We found two. The third died before we reached him.”
“Did you kill them?”
I promised plain truth. “One. Rook killed the other after he drew.”
Beth absorbs the answer. “Was it revenge?”
“Partly. They also planned to hit another run. Stopping them protected the club, and I wanted them dead. Both were true.”
“Did it help?”
“For about an hour. Then Ash was still gone.”
She reaches across the table and puts her hand over mine. I close my fingers around hers.
“He would've hated us turning him into a saint,” she says.
“He cheated at cards.”
“Badly.”
“He stole my boots once.”
“He wore a larger size.”
“Made the theft especially fucking stupid.”
We finish dinner trading the memories that make Ash a pain in the ass again instead of a dead man nobody knows how to mention. Afterward, I wash the bowls and Beth dries them. She points me toward the right cabinets because this is still her kitchen.
At the back door, I pause. “Thank you for dinner.”
“You worked for it.”
“I'll install the gate shield tomorrow.”
“After breakfast. Guests don't need power tools at dawn.”
“House rules.”
“Exactly.”
I return to Fifteen and hear her lock engage on the other side of the wall.
Not tonight. I can live with that.