Chapter 20
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— Holden —
D utch called me in two days after I booked the Larkin appointment. Just me and Glitch in his office, door closed. No agenda written anywhere.
“Sit,” Dutch said.
I sat. Glitch had his laptop open, which meant he’d brought something for show and tell.
Dutch set a bottle of water in front of me. Not whiskey. I noticed that.
“Glitch found something,” Dutch said when he was ready. “About the run.”
Not about the footage. Not about Bea or the room or whatever had happened while I was blacked out. About the run. “Tell me,” I said.
Glitch turned the laptop toward me. A series of transaction records, names I didn’t recognize, timestamps.
He gave me a moment to look, then pulled it back.
“The ambush was coordinated,” he said. “Not opportunistic. We’ve known that since it happened — the positioning, the timing, the equipment.
Someone knew exactly where you’d be and when. ”
“We knew that.”
“We now know who told them.” He met my eyes. “Reyes.”
My hands went flat on the table before I knew they’d moved.
Reyes. Twenty-two years old. Good instincts on the road. Showed up early, stayed late. I’d personally approved his advancement to the last stage of his prospect period. I’d stood in this room and told Dutch he was solid — that he’d earned the next step.
The last time I’d seen him before the run, he’d been in the garage helping Danny with a tire change. The two of them shoulder to shoulder, Danny showing him the technique I’d taught him. I’d watched from the doorway and thought: good prospects. Both of them.
“How.” My voice didn’t sound right.
“Spokane crew. Not one of the established operations — new outfit, trying to make a name.” Glitch’s voice was flat and precise. “They paid him fourteen thousand dollars.”
Fourteen thousand dollars. That was what Danny’s life had cost. Less than a used truck.
“He gave them the route, the formation, the timing,” Glitch said.
I was gripping the edge of the table. I made myself let go. “When did you find this?”
“A few days ago. It took time. They were careful. He was careful. But the money had to move somewhere.” He glanced at Dutch. “We brought you in as soon as we had it confirmed.”
The room was very quiet. I could hear the clock on Dutch’s wall. I could hear my own breathing, too fast, and I couldn’t make it slow down.
“He didn’t know what they’d do with it,” Glitch started, and then stopped himself. “No. That’s not something you can claim when you hand someone the location of your brothers on a live run. He knew enough.”
I looked at Dutch. “Reyes?”
“It’s been handled,” Dutch said.
He said it the way you said things that were closed, that were over, that you wouldn’t be returning to. I sat with what handled meant. I didn’t need him to draw it out.
“The Spokane crew?”
“Also handled. They won’t be creating openings in our territory again.”
Nobody spoke for a while. I stared at the water bottle. Cap unbroken. My reflection warped in the plastic.
Eight months. Reyes had been with us for eight months.
He’d ridden in the follow van on the run — fifteen minutes behind me and Danny, close enough to help if things went wrong, far enough to stay clear if we were compromised.
That was my positioning. I’d put him there because I thought he’d earned it.
And the whole time, the Spokane crew had already known exactly where we’d be.
Dutch let the silence hold for as long as it needed to. Then he leaned forward.
“There’s more you should know. The follow van — Handful picked up a tail after the ambush. We’d loaded Danny into the cargo van and were heading back to the clubhouse when he clocked it. Couldn’t shake them. He turned back early.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“You weren’t in a state to know much of anything.” Just fact. No judgment. “The tail dropped off once it was clear Handful was heading home, not to the pickup. They weren’t interested in a fight — they just wanted to make sure we didn’t complete the trip.”
“So the shipment—”
“The other party handled it. Drove right up to the clubhouse in broad daylight, furniture delivery van.” Dutch almost smiled. “They’d heard about Danny and the ambush. Wanted to make sure we knew it wasn’t them, that they had nothing to do with it. Walked the cargo in themselves.”
I stared at him. All of this — the tail, the delivery, the other party showing up at the clubhouse — had happened while I was in my room, drinking myself through the days. The club had kept working the problem. The world had kept turning. I just hadn’t been in it.
He held my eyes. “It’s done, Holden.”
I sat with that.
“Does this change your guilt about Danny?” Dutch asked. Blunt, the way Dutch was sometimes blunt — not cruel, just direct, treating me like someone who could handle the real version of the question instead of a softer shape of it.
I thought about it honestly. “I don’t know yet,” I said. “He’s still dead. I still put him on that run.”
“Yes.”
“I still put him directly behind me. I still told him he was ready when I couldn’t know for certain that he was.” I looked at the table. “This doesn’t change that.”
“No,” Dutch agreed. “It doesn’t.”
“But it changes something.” I stopped. The words were hard to find because they meant rearranging the story I’d been telling myself for weeks — the one where I was the reason Danny was dead. “What I’ve been telling myself — that if I’d been better at my job, he’d be alive. That’s not the story.”
“No,” Dutch said. “It’s not.”
“The story is that someone in our house sold us,” I said. “And Danny died because of it. I couldn’t have prevented that with better planning, because you can’t plan around someone selling your position to people who want you dead.”
Dutch exhaled slow through his nose and leaned forward, forearms on the table. He didn’t say anything. Just looked at me the way he did when something had finally landed where he’d been waiting for it to land. Then he nodded — once, deliberate, like he was signing off on something.
“We can improve security protocols,” Glitch said.
“We’re doing that. Different channels for different pieces of intel, compartmentalization, better background work on prospects before they get near anything sensitive.
I’ve been putting it together.” He glanced at me.
“You would have done the same thing when you’re operational again. ”
There was a specific kindness in that. Not pity. Just: there’s still a job for you here. We still need what you do.
“Yeah,” I said. “I’ll do that.”
Dutch looked at me for a moment. “You’re not off the hook for the bottle,” he said. “That’s still yours. The grief, the Bea situation — none of this makes any of that shit not yours.”
“I know.”
“But this piece—” He nodded once. “This one isn’t on you.”
I sat in the office for a while after Glitch and Dutch left. The water bottle was still in front of me, cap unbroken.
Fourteen thousand dollars. Eight months of trust. Twenty-two years old with instincts I’d admired.
Danny: nineteen years old, almost twenty, with that smile asking if he’d proved himself.
I took the water with me and walked out into the afternoon.
My bike was where it had been since the day of Danny’s funeral — in my parking spot next to Colt’s, right where I’d left it.
I’d wandered out a few times myself, polishing the same spot for hours at a time.
But the real work had been Handful. He’d been out there with a rag and a bucket on days I couldn’t get off the couch, keeping the chrome from going dull, keeping the leather from cracking.
I hadn’t asked him to. I hadn’t ridden since the funeral procession.
I stood next to it for a while. Put my hand on the seat. The leather was warm from the sun.
I thought about riding. Just out to the road and back, nothing far. See if the engine still felt the same under me, if the weight of it still made sense.
But then I remembered. Danny was dead. I pulled my hand back and walked inside.