Chapter 2 #2
My jeans are on the floor by the bed. My shirt in the hallway. I pull them on in the dark, muscle memory and silence. I've done this so many times I don't make a sound. My boots sit in the hall by the front door where I kicked them off. I crouch and thread the laces.
Holly's face catches the streetlight through the bedroom doorway. Her lips are parted. Her hand still reaches across the sheets where I used to be.
I should put my boots down. I should walk back into that room and get under the covers and let her wake up to the weight of me beside her. I should say the word out loud and let it land where it lands.
Instead, I lace my boots faster and slip out the front door.
The coast highway at 4 a.m. is a black ribbon stitched to the edge of the continent.
No headlights. No taillights. Rain and salt spray and the Pacific hammering the rocks two hundred feet below the guardrail. I open the throttle until the engine screams louder than my head. That's why I ride. Fast enough and there's nothing but the road and the roar and the rain.
I'm fifty miles north of Nightfall Cove when I spot it.
A vehicle at the overlook. The pull-off above the cove where tourists park in summer to photograph the harbour and the lighthouse. No tourist on the planet is up here at 4 a.m. in January in the rain.
Dark SUV. Engine running, exhaust curling white in the cold. No plates. The mounting frame is bare.
The overlook sits below the highway, sloped down toward the cliff edge. They're facing the harbour, backs to the road. They hear my engine—no way they don't—but a single bike passing on a coast highway isn't unusual enough to turn around for. I keep my speed steady and don't look down.
A quarter mile north I take the fire road.
The ridge above the overlook gives me a line of sight from the east, two hundred yards out.
I take my phone out and open the camera app and zoom in.
The photos are grainy as hell in the dark, but I get what I need.
I photograph the SUV—make, model, colour, the bare plate frame.
I photograph the two orcs. One heavyset, bearded, tribal ink on his forearms. The other leaner, the one with the telephoto lens.
I pocket the phone, coast the fire road back to the highway, and ride south with my headlight dark for the first two miles.
Mate. The word rides with me the whole way south. But I've got something solid now—a threat, a target, intel Knox needs. Easier to focus on that than on the woman I left sleeping.
Finn is at the Feral Custom Garage at dawn.
He's got a carburetor spread across the bench, parts laid out in the grid pattern he learned from Knox, bolts left to right, gaskets in sequence, every component accounted for.
His coffee steams on the workbench beside a crescent wrench and a rag that used to be white.
He doesn't look up when I walk in, but I see his nostrils flare.
He's scenting me. Scenting her, bourbon and dark cherries still woven into my clothes, my skin, the leather of my cut.
"You seeing Holly again?"
I don't answer. I grab a shop towel and blot the rain off my jaw.
Finn sets down the gasket he's holding. He leans back against the bench and crosses his arms, taking in the bloodshot eyes, the soaked jacket, the four hours of road and zero hours of sleep I'm wearing all over me.
"You did it again." He shakes his head. "Brother."
"I've got intel." I pull my phone from my jacket. "Scouts at the overlook north of the cove, parked with a telephoto on the harbour."
Finn's arms uncross. The parts are forgotten. "When?"
"Found a dark SUV parked at the overlook at four a.m. with no plates and two orcs running surveillance on the harbour."
He's already reaching for his phone. "Knox needs to hear this."
"I'm headed there now."
I turn for the door. Finn's voice catches me before I clear the frame.
"Rex." I stop. "You're gonna lose her if you keep fucking around."
I don't turn around. I don't argue. I walk to my bike and ride the six blocks to the clubhouse with Finn's voice sitting on my chest like a cinder block.
I find Knox in his office and slide my phone across the desk. He swipes through the shots one at a time, face giving nothing.
I run through it—the overlook, the SUV, no plates, two orcs with a camera on the harbour. Knox swipes back to the lean one with the telephoto lens and stops.
"They've moved from letters to surveillance," I say.
"Yes, it seems that way. I've seen that same SUV twice in the last month—once on the highway south of Gold Beach, once parked outside the trailhead above the ridge. I didn't connect it until tonight."
Knox goes back to the lean orc. "His stance. The way he's set up behind that camera."
"Military or close to it. I clocked it from the ridge."
"That's how Bloodstone works. Never one scout. Always a pair." Knox knows this because he grew up with it. "They're mapping approach routes. Observation points."
He straightens.
"I need you on this. Track their patterns—routes, schedules, how often the SUV shows, whether they rotate personnel. You know every back road in three states. Use it."
"Done."
I turn for the door.
"Rex."
Knox puts the phone down. He's quiet for a minute, and I can see him putting it together—the time of night, the highway, the state of me.
"You were at Holly's again, weren't you?"
I don't move or say anything. My hand stays on the door frame. The wood grain presses into my palm.
"You ride to her most nights and ride away before morning. You think nobody notices?" The rain hits the clubhouse roof in a steady sheet above us. "I can smell it on you, brother. Been able to for months." Knox holds my gaze. "You can't run from the bond. Men before you have tried and failed."
I've got nothing. He's right and we both know it.
"I know," I say.
Knox nods and turns back to what he was doing before I walked in, giving me the out we both know I need.
I walk out and down the hallway and into the rain. My bike sits in the lot where I left it, rain pooling on the seat.
Mate.
The word surfaces. I push it down. I throw a leg over the seat, kick the starter, and ride.