Chapter Eight
Evan
The cafe door swings shut behind me, and I’m spit out onto the sidewalk, beneath the halogen streetlights that make the parking lot puddles look radioactive.
The night’s cold gnaws into me, all needles and damp, riding on the Ironwood Falls current of pine and wet river rock — a smell that’s supposed to remind me of childhood summers and hot engines.
It’s a joke now; all it does is dial up the ache.
I walk to my car and every step feels wrong.
Because it’s not a bike waiting for me. It’s a sedan. The color is the worst kind of beige, a color that offends nothing and no one, a color that erases itself as it exists. It might as well be invisible.
I hate it, but I hate what it means more.
I open the door. The dome light flickers like it’s as tired of bullshit as I am, and the interior smells of cheap soap, worn seat foam, and a little sweat that isn’t mine.
The seat tries to swallow me, but won’t succeed.
I grip the wheel, and my hands whisper to my brain that they should be wrapped around rubber grips, that the only thing worth steering is a machine that could buck you off if you dared let your guard down.
A bike demands honesty, even if everything else in life is a lie.
Instead, I’m caged in a car that feels like a lie. Just like the rest of my life at the moment.
I start it anyway.
The engine purrs like it’s proud of itself.
“Yeah,” I mutter to the dashboard. “You would.”
My phone buzzes halfway home.
Unknown number. Constant threat.
My spine tightens.
I answer without saying hello. “What.”
Midnight’s voice slides through the speaker — low, amused, cold enough to frost glass. “That’s not how you answer me, Gator.”
I have to pinch the phone tighter or else I’d throw it. I force my voice into neutral, keep my eyes on the empty street ahead.
“I’m driving.”
“Do you have anything worth telling me, or should I let you listen while I cut your sister’s ear off?”
The way he says it is so casual, so transactional, that it lands too fast. I feel my knuckles pop, white around the wheel.
“I’m making progress,” I say, trying not to sound like I’m begging.
“Oh?” He makes the word a knife. “Tell me about your progress.”
I swallow. “I got her to meet me. Cafe. Studying. She showed up.”
“Studying,” he repeats, and I hear the smile in his voice. “That’s your big move? Fucking studying?”
I take a turn too hard, tires whispering on damp pavement. “She’s guarded. I’m not forcing it.”
Midnight is silent for a breath, and it’s like the world goes on pause. Then a soft laugh, almost gentle, leaks through the speaker.
“You don’t get to decide what you force,” he says. “You do what I say, when I say it. Got it?”
“I’m doing my job.”
“No.” His voice turns sharper. “You’re wasting time. You’re getting distracted. I can smell it.”
I pull into my apartment complex, parking in the dead space at the far edge where the security light flickers and the asphalt is cracked. The apartment windows all look the same from here — rows of rectangles, some glowing orange, some cold and dark. I keep the engine running.
“You know what happens if you disappoint me?” Midnight asks. He almost sounds bored.
I close my eyes for a split second. “Don’t.”
“Oh, I will.” His tone drops, velvet over steel. “You want proof-of-life tonight? You want something sweet to help you sleep?”
“Midnight,” I grind out, “don’t—”
“Hold, please.” His voice is cheerful now, like he’s ordering takeout.
There’s a rustle on the line. A muffled sound. Then, a whimper, so small and broken it doesn't sound like my sister at all; it doesn’t sound human.
I’m upright in my seat now, every muscle locked, my heart a stone bouncing around inside me. “Junebug, I’m here — don’t let go, okay?”
The line goes silent for a second, then there’s a thud, a scrape, and June’s voice comes sharp, “Evan, help me,” she screams before it’s snatched away again. Then there’s a thud, followed by a muffled moan. I want to put my fist through the dashboard.
Midnight comes back on, a calm menace in his voice. “There you go. She’s breathing. For now.”
My hands shake so badly I have to jam my phone against my ear to keep from dropping it. “If you hurt her…”
He cuts me off, laughing a little, like I’m a toddler making demands. “You don’t get to threaten me, Gator. If you could, you wouldn’t be in this mess to begin with.”
My throat burns.
“What do you want?” I say, and the words are sandpaper in my throat.
“I want you to stop pretending you’re smarter than me.
You are not smarter than me. You are not more ruthless.
You are a tool, and you’d better be a sharp one.
Tomorrow morning I want something real. Something that gets me inside those walls.
” His voice drops to a whisper. “Or I start with her fingers and work my way up.”
I can’t swallow. “Fuck you,” I hiss. But he just laughs, a sound with no warmth.
“You were chosen for this, Evan. Don’t insult us both by pretending to be a martyr. Get close to the girl. Get her talking.”
Chosen. What a fucking joke of a word.
I was chosen because my sister is an easy target and I was a fucking nomad with useful connections and no club to back me up.
“I am doing that.”
“You’re playing nice.” Midnight tuts. “Nice doesn’t get you into the Devils’ guts. Nice doesn’t get you keys and codes and schedules. Nice doesn’t get you your sister back. Molly Rogers is a locked box. It’s time you crack her open.”
Something ugly churns in my stomach. “She’s not—”
“She’s a means to an end,” he cuts in, sharp. “You want your sister alive? You bring me something useful by tomorrow. Something I can feel. Or I get creative with your sister’s anatomy.”
My throat closes. “Tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow.”
The call ends. Click. No warning, no time to brace.
I’m left in the car, staring at nothing, the blood pounding so loud in my head I almost miss the fact that I’m shaking. My whole body’s buzzing and cold and hot at the same time. I want to vomit. Instead, I just sit. The car’s cabin shrinks around me, until I’m a bug in a jar, fighting for air.
I hurl the phone into the passenger seat hard enough that it bounces off, clatters to the floor mats, and slides beneath the empty coffee cups and stray receipts at my feet. My hand stays suspended in the air for a second, the bones buzzing.
“Fuck,” I whisper. “Fuck.”
I should go inside. I should sleep. I should do a hundred things that resemble sanity.
Instead, I climb out and stand there in the parking lot, staring up at the apartment building like it has answers.
My sister’s voice still echoes in my ear.
Evan…
I go upstairs on autopilot. I flick on the light and the kitchen snaps into harsh relief.
The countertops are bare except for a chipped coffee mug and a pile of unopened mail.
I drop my keys into the bowl and they rattle against the loose change.
I crack a tallboy the second I’m inside because my hands won’t stop shaking and I need something to steady them.
The first swallow tastes like bitter water.
I don’t sit. I can’t. The adrenaline is still in my system, and the apartment is too small for it.
I pace the length of the living room and back, counting the steps, listening to the sound of my boots on the laminate.
I picture June, wherever she is right now, and try to project calm and hope and some kind of cosmic reassurance.
But it’s a one-way transmission. All I can do is keep moving and not let myself think too long about what happens if I don’t deliver.
The building hums with normal life — pipes, footsteps, a distant TV, someone laughing on a balcony like the world isn’t a knife pressed to my throat.
Minutes pass. Maybe an hour. I lose track. The only thing that snaps me out of it is the sound from the hallway — a door down the hall, then footsteps, then the unmistakable jingle of keys and the thud of a bag hitting a wall.
She’s home.
My chest tightens. My mind runs through options, through lies, through pleas, through every way I could earn more time with her without breaking her. Without making her hate me.
But Midnight’s voice is still in my skull.
Crack her open.
I set the beer down, then I go to the closet and pull out my toolbox. It’s heavier than it should be, like it knows what I’m about to do.
I hesitate with my hand on the handle, because this is the moment where I decide what kind of man I am. Am I the kind who lets her live a normal life? Or the man who protects his family?
My jaw locks.
“I’m sorry,” I murmur to an empty room, and I don’t know if I’m talking to Molly or June or the part of myself that used to believe I could get out of this clean.
I take the toolbox and head downstairs.
The parking lot is colder now. Darker. Empty except for a few cars and Molly’s pickup sitting under the light like it’s waiting. I walk to it and crouch beside the front tire.
My breath fogs and lingers in the chill night air.
By the time I'm opening my toolbox, the shaking has stopped. That's the worst part — how easy it is once the decision's made.
Because I don’t have to pretend that I’m anything other than who I really am: a desperate man doing whatever it takes to keep his little sister safe.
I reach into the toolbox and take out a wrench. Then I lower myself onto the pavement, slide under her truck, and stare up at the underbelly, my eyes running over pipes and bolts.
Wrench in hand, heart in my throat, the last good part of me whispers: don’t.
I whisper back, so quiet no one but me can hear it.
“I have to.”