Chapter 35 Tex #2
Or I can wait until I know more. Until Ron actually shows up or doesn't show up. Until the threat is real and present.
I'll tell him tonight. When the bar is closed and we're upstairs, and I can hold him while I say it. That's not a lie. That's just better timing.
"Brisket's resting," I say. "Should be ready to slice by seven."
"I figured," he says without looking up. "I can smell it from here. You nailed it on that one."
"I always nail it."
"You burned two racks of ribs last Saturday."
"Those were sacrificial ribs. Offered to the grill gods for a good season.
Don't you know the grill gods require tribute, Stormy?
This is ancient barbecue tradition. You burn the first offering, you say a prayer, and in return Big Bertha gives you perfect bark for the rest of the month.
It's in the Bible. Barbecue Leviticus. Look it up. "
"They burned because you were arguing with a man about motorcycle oil and forgot what you were doing."
"It was an important argument. He was wrong. The man said conventional oil was fine for a Twin Cam 88 and I said those words in that order should be a felony and things escalated from there. The ribs were collateral damage. They died in the service of mechanical truth. I regret nothing."
He grins at me. I want to put my arms around him and swear I will stand between him and everything dark in this world for as long as I'm breathing.
Instead, I steal a bottle of Alabama white sauce and go back to the grill, because that's what we do.
We work. We keep the routine. We hold the shape of normal life in place with our hands even when the ground underneath is shifting.
The evening comes fast and the bikers come with it.
By seven the lot has a dozen bikes. By eight, at least thirty.
By nine, the lot is full and the overflow is parked along the beach road.
The music is playing through the outdoor speakers and Big Bertha is producing the kind of smoke that you can see from three blocks away.
I'm behind the grill doing what I do, what my dad did, what this bar has always done—feeding people and showing them a good time.
Stormy is working the crowd. Not hiding.
Not inside. Out here, in the lot, carrying plates of brisket and ribs and coleslaw to the tables we've set up near the serving station.
He moves through the crowd quietly with a competence that makes people trust him before they know his name.
He remembers orders. He remembers faces.
He knows which regulars want extra sauce and which ones want their brisket dry and which ones are going to argue about the coleslaw no matter what he does.
I watch him the way I've been watching him all night. Not obvious. But every time he walks toward the road, every time he rounds the corner of the building, every time he passes near the edge of the lot where the light fades into shadow, my eyes follow him.
Ron is out there somewhere. At a motel room. Or a restaurant. Maybe parked on a side street with his phone in his hand, checking the map, planning his approach. He drove four hours today. He made rounds of bike shops. He didn't drive four hours to check on a motorcycle and go home.
Nine o'clock. Ten. The crowd holds steady. By eleven it finally starts to thin. The regulars linger. The music plays. The grill cools.
Ron didn't come tonight.
I don't know if that's better or worse. Coming would have meant a confrontation, but a confrontation in a lot full of fifty bikers is a confrontation on my terms. Not coming means he's waiting.
Choosing the time. He saw the shops today.
He confirmed the bike isn't anywhere in the system.
He drove past the bar, maybe, saw the full lot, saw the bikes, and decided tonight wasn't the night.
Which means tomorrow might be. Or Sunday. Or Tuesday, when the lot has four trucks instead of fifty bikes and the bar is quiet and the darkness is bigger. A smart man would wait until Tuesday.
We close at midnight. Sheila counts the register. Stormy wipes down the serving station. I clean the grill, cover Bertha and check the lot one last time. Every vehicle accounted for. Every shadow examined. The beach road is empty in both directions.
I lock the front door. Check it twice. I lock the back door. The kitchen door. The side entrance that we've been using for construction access. I throw the deadbolt and slide a two-by-four into the floor brackets that my dad installed after a break-in attempt in 2004.
Sheila watches me do this. She doesn't say anything. She picks up her big ass purse that weighs forty pounds and raises her eyebrows at me. Our conversation happens without words.
"Goodnight, baby," she says to Stormy. She kisses his forehead. She squeezes my arm as she passes. Then she's gone and it's just us.
"Come upstairs with me," I say.
We go up to our room. I head straight to the closet.
Top shelf, behind the winter blankets. The safe is small, black, digital keypad.
I punch in the code and the door swings open.
The gun is where it's been since the hurricane, cleaned and loaded, fifteen rounds in the magazine and one in the chamber.
I take it out and check the magazine. Check the chamber. I carry it to the nightstand and set it down next to the clock.
Stormy is standing by the bed. He's watching me silently. His eyes move from my face to the gun to the nightstand and back to my face.
"Talk to me," he says. "What's going on?"
"Ron's back in town."
The words have exactly the effect the way I knew they would.
I see it move through him—the fear, the stillness.
But it's different than the last time. He doesn't bolt toward the idea of running.
He doesn't say I need to go. He stands by the bed and his hands clench at his sides.
He absorbs it the way a boxer absorbs a body shot.
It hurts, it registers, but he doesn't go down. Not this time.
"When did he get here?"
"Today. Denny called me. Someone spotted him at a bike shop. He's making the rounds, checking shops for the Sportster."
"Why didn't you tell me earlier?"
"I wanted to wait until we were up here. Until I could—"
"I know why. It's okay." He cuts me off. He knows I was protecting him and he's decided to let me. "Does Mickey know?"
"Yes, he's on shift this weekend working Front Beach Road. He'll be close."
Stormy looks at the gun. "You always keep that in the safe."
"That's correct. Now, I'm keeping it here beside me at night."
"Why?"
I sit on the edge of the bed. I owe him the truth, even the parts that are hard to say, because that's the deal.
"We sleep on an upper floor. There's basically one way up and one way down.
Those stairs. If someone gets past all the locks downstairs, we've got nowhere to go.
I'm not getting us trapped up here without a way to defend ourselves. "
He's quiet, evaluating the threat, mapping the exits, calculating the odds. Except now the odds include a loaded handgun on the nightstand and a man he trusts willing to use it.
"Do you know how to use it?" he asks. He's not asking about whether I can shoot. He's asking about whether I'm prepared to shoot a person.
"Yes."
"Have you ever—"
"No, I've never harmed anything except a Coke can with a gun. But I will use it if he comes through that door. Make no mistake about it. If he makes it to the second landing, I will kill him. He's not taking you, Stormy."
Stormy sits on the bed next to me so our shoulders touch. He stares at the gun on the nightstand.
"I don't want you to have to do that," he says quietly.
"Me either. That's not the plan. The plan is Mickey, the bikers, Sheila and the phone call and everything we talked about.
The plan is a parking lot full of people who know his name.
This—" I nod at the gun. "This is the backup.
This is the three-in-the-morning insurance policy for the scenario where none of the rest of it matters.
If he walks up those stairs, this is only ending one way.
And if for any reason, you get caught up here without me, you use it too.
Point and shoot. Just make one hundred percent sure it's him before you do. "
He leans into me and puts his head on my shoulder. My arm goes around him.
"He didn't come tonight," Stormy says.
"No, he didn't. I expected him to."
"He will, though."
"Yeah. I think he will."
"We'll be ready," he says. "I'll be okay."
"You sure will, baby. I'll make sure of it."
I'd do anything in this world to protect him.
We get ready for bed. He settles against my chest, his spot, the place his body knows the way it knows breathing, and I pull the sheet over us.
I reach over to the nightstand. The gun is cool under my fingers. I find the safety with my thumb and click it off.
Stormy's breathing slows against my chest. His hand is on my stomach, his fingers curled loosely, and within minutes he's asleep. Trusting me like a child to keep watch over him.
Ron's still out there.
Somewhere in this town, in a motel room or a parked truck, Ron Jackson is lying awake too. Making his own plans. Deciding when and how he's going to come for what he thinks is his.
Let him come.
I'm awake.
I'm armed.
And Stormy is mine.