CHAPTER TWENTY
I'm still sitting with the closed bag, Gilda's question still turning over in my mind, when Gunnar's voice carries down the hallway, sharper and more urgent than I've heard it since the night he called me about Everhart, and something in the register of it has me on my feet before I've fully processed the words.
"Niamh. You need to hear this."
I find him in the garage bay, phone still in hand, a handful of members gathered around him with the specific, coiled tension of people bracing for bad news. His face, when he turns to me, confirms it before he says a single word.
"Odric had another stroke about an hour ago.
Bigger this time. He's alive, but he's not going to be making decisions for that charter again, not for a long while, maybe not ever.
" Gunnar's jaw is tight, his eyes shadowed with exhaustion that goes beyond just this morning.
"Ravinia's people are scrambling. Some of the older members are already arguing about who steps up, and there's a faction that never liked the idea of a woman running things even in an emergency. It's getting ugly fast."
"Where's Thane," I ask, the question arriving before I've fully thought through why it matters most right now.
Gunnar's expression shifts, something careful entering it.
"He got the call about twenty minutes before I found you.
Took his bike out to Kestrel territory alone, said he needed to get out there before things fractured any further, try to broker some kind of stability before the situation gets completely out of hand. "
"Alone." The word comes out flat, cold dread already pooling low in my stomach. "He rode out to a fracturing rival charter, in the middle of a leadership crisis, by himself."
"That's Thane." Gunnar says it like an old, familiar complaint, though I can see the worry underneath it, matching my own. "Man's been solving everyone else's problems solo since he was twenty three years old. Never learned how to ask for backup, not really, not even when he probably should."
Around us, the handful of members who'd gathered are already dispersing into their own low, urgent conversations, someone reaching for a radio, someone else pulling on a jacket, the whole clubhouse shifting into the particular, efficient motion of people bracing for a crisis they've weathered before, even if never quite this one.
The observation lands somewhere sharp and immediate, an echo of everything I confronted him about last night, the same instinct to carry things alone instead of trusting someone else to help carry them, and I feel the anger I've been sitting with since three in the morning transform, almost instantly, into something far more urgent and far less complicated.
"How long ago did he leave."
"Half hour, maybe forty minutes." Gunnar studies my face, something shifting in his expression as he reads whatever's written there.
"Niamh, it's a volatile situation over there right now.
Grieving, frightened people looking for someone to blame, and a lot of them aren't going to care that Thane's trying to help. "
"I know exactly what a room like that looks like." My voice comes out steadier than I expect, the old clinical calm settling over me even as my heart pounds against my ribs. "I need to get out there."
"That's not exactly a safe drive in this weather, and even if it was, I don't know that you riding in changes anything useful."
"I'm not asking whether it's safe, Gunnar.
I'm asking you to take me, because you know that territory and I don't, and because if this goes as badly as you're implying it might, someone with medical training being in the room could actually matter.
" I look at him directly, refusing to let the fear in my chest translate into hesitation in my voice.
"You said yourself he never learned to ask for backup.
I'm done watching people I love do dangerous things alone because nobody showed up to stand beside them. "
Gunnar holds my gaze for a long moment, something calculating behind his eyes, weighing the risk against the plain, stubborn certainty on my face, the same certainty, I suspect, that used to make Eldin trust me on runs most fathers wouldn't have allowed their daughters anywhere near.
"You realize you're describing yourself too," he says finally, not unkindly. "The whole 'nobody showed up to stand beside them' thing. That's been you for three years, same as him."
"I know." The admission costs me something, standing here in this cold garage bay with adrenaline already building in my chest. "That's exactly why I can't sit here and let it happen to somebody else while I've got the chance to do something different."
Something in Gunnar's face shifts, a decision visibly settling into place. "Get a real coat. It's going to be a cold ride, and it's snowing harder out there than it looks from this window."
I don't waste time arguing or overthinking it, moving fast in a way that feels different from this morning's aborted packing, purposeful instead of fleeing, moving toward something instead of away from it.
I grab the heaviest jacket I own, gloves, and I'm back in the garage bay within three minutes, Gunnar already straddling his bike, engine idling low and steady in the cold.
"You remember how to ride backup?" he asks, handing me a spare helmet, something almost gentle underneath the practical question.
"I remember." My voice catches slightly on the words, the specific, loaded weight of them landing somewhere I don't have time to fully feel right now. "I haven't forgotten anything, Gunnar. I just stopped letting myself use it."
He doesn't comment on that, just waits while I swing up behind him, arms finding their place around his waist with a muscle memory that's apparently been patiently waiting three years for exactly this moment, and then we're moving, out of the garage bay and onto the road, snow coming down harder now, fat white flakes catching in the headlight beam and disappearing into the dark grey afternoon.
The ride to Kestrel territory takes the better part of an hour, cold biting through every layer despite my jacket, the road increasingly slick under a thin, treacherous layer of accumulating snow, and I spend every mile of it running the same silent prayer I ran three years ago on a different road in different weather, please, please, please, except this time it isn't followed by guilt over where I wasn't. This time it's followed by a fierce, uncomplicated certainty about exactly where I need to be, and exactly who I refuse to let face danger alone, not this time, not ever again if I have any say in it.
Somewhere around the halfway mark, the highway narrowing into a two lane road I don't recognize, Gunnar shouts something back over his shoulder, half lost to the wind, and I lean forward to catch it.
"You doing okay back there?"
"I'm fine." I am, in a way that surprises me, the cold and the fear somehow clarifying rather than paralyzing, the specific, focused calm I usually only find in a trauma bay settling over me instead on the back of a moving bike in a snowstorm. "Just get us there."
He doesn't ask again, and I hold on tighter as the road curves, trusting his handling of the bike the way I used to trust Everhart's, an old faith I didn't realize I still carried until this exact moment, wind and snow and the specific, terrifying clarity of finally choosing to move toward danger instead of away from it.
We crest a hill somewhere past the county line, and below us, spread out along a stretch of industrial road I don't recognize, the Kestrel charter's clubhouse comes into view, a cluster of buildings and parked bikes half obscured by falling snow, tension visible even from this distance in the way people are clustered outside instead of gathered warmly within.
Gunnar doesn't slow down as we approach.
If anything, he opens the throttle further, both of us leaning into the cold, into the snow, into whatever's waiting for us in that yard, and I hold on tighter, watching the clubhouse grow closer, searching the scattered figures for the one silhouette I'd recognize anywhere, in any weather, after any number of years apart.