CHAPTER FOUR
The Wall
Cade
He had Lev against the east wall of the garage by nine-fifteen.
It was not going to occur. That was not the point.
“The relocation suggestion,” Cade said, at the volume he used when he wanted to be heard only by the man in front of him. “Don’t make it again.”
“That was a tactical observation,” Lev said. He was not rattled. Lev was never rattled, which was one of the things Cade had always respected about him and was currently finding intolerable. “Based on the situation as it exists.”
“The situation as it exists includes a child,” Cade said. “My child. You made a suggestion about the mother of my child in front of the mother of my child at a table I was present at. Don’t do it again.”
“Your child.” Lev’s tone was neutral in the way that neutral could be its own form of commentary. “Is that what we’re calling this now?”
“It’s what I’m calling it.”
“Calibrated timing on the claim, Wreck.”
Cade stepped back. Not because of what Lev said — because staying in contact was no longer productive and he knew it and he knew that Lev knew it. He smoothed the front of Lev’s cut with both hands, a specific gesture that was simultaneously respectful and clear about what the gesture was covering.
“We’re going to neutralize the Iron Reign incursion,” Cade said. “Nadia’s intelligence will help us do that. When it’s done, whatever comes next is between her and me. Not the club.”
“Everything inside this compound is the club’s business. That’s the code.”
“Then we might need to have a conversation about the code.”
He left Lev at the wall.
* * *
The yard was empty at this hour except for Trey Walsh, who was doing the south fence check with the particular posture of a man trying to make himself invisible through industriousness.
Trey was thorough on the fence check, had always been thorough, which was one of the things that had made Cade vote for his patch six months ago.
Industry, attention, the specific quality of someone who wanted to be reliable because reliability was something he needed to prove to himself rather than to the club.
Cade crossed the yard.
Trey heard him coming and stopped at the fence.
“Sarge.”
“Trey.” Cade stood beside him. They both looked at the fence. “She knows it was you who told her.”
Silence. The desert wind doing its work on the scrubland beyond the fence.
“I know she knows,” Trey said. His voice had the flatness of someone who had been carrying a specific shame for a specific amount of time and had stopped trying to cover it. “I didn’t know she didn’t know. I thought she already—”
“I know.”
“I’m sorry, Sarge. I’ve been sorry for—”
“Trey.” Cade turned to look at him. Trey was twenty years old with an earnest face that had not yet learned how to be anything other than readable.
“You told her a true thing. You didn’t do that to me.
I did that to me. The only reason you’re carrying any of this is because I put it where you could find it. ”
Trey looked at him.
“That’s… I didn’t expect you to say that.”
“I’ve had fourteen months to work out what I expected to say,” Cade said. “I’m still working on it. But that part I know.”
He left Trey at the fence and walked back toward the garage.
Cal was in the doorway.
Cal had the particular stillness of a man who had seen the interaction with Lev and had decided not to address it in the moment, which was Cal’s specific form of leadership: letting a thing develop its own pressure before he applied the counterpressure.
He had been doing this for thirty years.
He was very good at it. It had cost him things Cade had only started understanding when he was old enough to count the costs.
“You put Ghost against the wall,” Cal said.
“Yes.”
“In the yard. In front of Trey and whoever else had eyes on the east side.”
“Yes.”
“You want to tell me what that was about?”
“No,” Cade said. “But I think you know.”
Cal looked at him for a long moment. Then he looked at the yard — the bikes, the fence, Trey still at his post doing his check with his too-straight back.
“You’ve been holding rank in this club for six years without a vote against you,” Cal said. “You’ve held it clean. That means something here. Don’t burn it over a woman you’ve already damaged your credibility about.”
“She’s not the reason I damaged my credibility,” Cade said. “I am.”
Cal said nothing.
His silence was not absence. It was thirty years of the same compromises looking back at a younger version of themselves and finding no comfortable distance.
“Ten o’clock briefing,” Cade said. “I’ll have the Elko intelligence from Nadia by noon.”
He walked past his uncle into the garage.
He did not look back at Cal’s face.
He was not ready yet to see what it was doing.