Chapter Seven #2
Deb's already on the phone with Silas by the time I've got my breathing mostly under control, relaying details in a low, efficient voice, gray shirt, mid-thirties, unremarkable, walked south on Main, and some small, exhausted part of me is grateful, so grateful, that I don't have to be the one making calls right now, that there are people in this room capable of taking some of the weight off my shoulders without taking the choice away from me entirely.
Silas and Preacher arrive together twenty minutes later, having apparently been close enough at the clubhouse to make the drive in record time, and the shop suddenly feels very small with three large men filling it, all of them radiating the particular contained fury of people who've decided violence is on the table but are disciplined enough not to let it show on their faces in front of the woman they're trying to protect.
"You're safe," Silas says first, direct, no preamble, crouching slightly to bring himself down to where I'm still sitting. "That's the only thing that matters right this second. Everything else, we handle."
"He was in my shop." My voice comes out steadier now, some of the shock burning off into something closer to anger. "He stood right there and threatened me with a smile on his face."
"I know. And I promise you, that's not a mistake Dax Cole gets to make twice without consequences.
" Something hard moves behind Silas's eyes, quickly controlled, the look of a president doing careful math about exactly how far he's willing to let this go.
"Preacher's already got Deuce running the plate on any vehicle that matches what we can see on the footage. We'll know who this man is by tonight."
Preacher hangs back near the door, arms crossed, watching the street with the particular vigilance of a man who's spent twenty years anticipating threats before they fully arrive.
"This changes things," he says, quiet, mostly to Silas.
"Vandalism's one thing. A man walking into her shop, in daylight, naming names, that's an escalation we can't treat the same way we treated the window. "
"Agreed." Silas straightens, looks between Wyatt and me, weighing something.
"Wyatt stays on nights like before. I want Deuce's alley coverage moved up to start today instead of tomorrow.
And I want a second man on daytime hours too, starting now, whether you're comfortable with that or not, Rowan, because comfortable isn't the priority anymore. Safe is."
I don't argue. Some old, stubborn part of me wants to, wants to insist I can handle my own shop the way I've handled everything else these eight months, but the shake still working its way out of my hands tells a different story than my pride wants to tell, and I'm tired, suddenly, of pretending otherwise in front of people who are clearly trying to help.
"I need to see the footage," Wyatt says, once Deb's off the phone, still crouched at my level, still not crowding me. "The camera over the register catches the door. If we can get a clear shot of his face, Silas can run it against what Denise sent up."
"Do it." My voice comes back steadier now, some of the old control reasserting itself, and I appreciate, distantly, that he waited for me to say it instead of just moving toward the register himself. "I want to see it too. I want to know exactly what he looks like."
We pull the footage together, the three of us crowded around the little monitor behind the counter, and there he is, unremarkable and precise, every gesture calculated to read as harmless right up until the moment he wasn't. I watch myself on the screen, watch my own careful composure holding right up until the bell rings and he's gone, and I feel something harden in my chest watching it, some resolve settling into place underneath the fear.
"I'm not running," I say, to nobody in particular, to all of them at once. "Whatever this turns into, I built this place with my own hands, and I'm not letting some coward in a plain gray shirt scare me out of it."
"Nobody's asking you to run," Wyatt says.
"I know. I'm telling you anyway, so it's clear.
" I stand, steadier now, and start closing down my station for the day, hands only shaking a little now, mostly steady, mostly mine again.
"I want extra cameras. I want the alley door reinforced, not just the hinge fixed.
And I want to know everything Silas finds out the second he finds it, not the edited version, not the version somebody thinks I can handle. All of it."
"You'll get all of it," Wyatt says, and something in the way he says it, direct, no hedging, tells me he means it completely.
Silas and Preacher stay another twenty minutes, working through logistics with Wyatt in low, efficient voices while Deb finally gets me to drink some water and eat half a protein bar she produces from somewhere behind the counter, mothering me in the brisk, no-nonsense way she's always mothered me, more action than sympathy, which is exactly what I need right now and exactly why I love her.
Before they leave, Preacher pauses in front of me, something almost gentle in the set of his weathered face.
"Your father would be proud of how you're handling this," he says, quiet enough that it's just between us.
"I rode with him fifteen years. He used to say the measure of a person isn't whether they get scared.
Everybody gets scared. It's whether they let the fear make the decisions, or whether they make the decisions anyway, scared or not.
You're doing the second one. That's all any of us can ask of ourselves. "
I don't trust my voice to answer that, so I just nod, and he claps a hand briefly on my shoulder, the same rough, brief gesture I remember from childhood, from a dozen barbecues and charity rides where Preacher was just one more familiar face in my father's world, and then he's gone, following Silas out to the bikes.
I nod, and I finish closing, and if my hands still tremble slightly around the register drawer, if some small, humiliated part of me still can't quite believe I let myself crack that badly in front of the one person I swore I'd never need to see me like that again, at least I'm doing it on my feet, moving forward, exactly the way I've done every hard thing for the last eight months.
Cracking once doesn't undo that. I have to believe that, or none of the rest of it means anything.
Deb walks me up to the apartment before she heads home herself, waits until I've got both locks thrown before she calls down a goodnight, and I sit on the edge of my bed a long while after, phone in my hand, not calling anyone, not texting anyone, just sitting with the strange, unsteady quiet of a day that started ordinary and ended with a stranger's voice telling me the clock's still running.
Somewhere below, I know Wyatt's already back at his post, and for once I don't examine too closely why knowing that lets me finally close my eyes.