Chapter Eight #2
His mouth curved. That almost-smile she was learning to read, the one that said he was amused but didn't quite know what to do with the feeling.
"The brothers haven't stopped talking about the pie."
"They should be talking about the bread.
The pie was easy. The bread I had to fight that oven for.
" She watched him eat, cataloging the details.
The way his shoulders dropped when he wasn't performing vigilance.
The tired lines around his eyes. The road rash on his left arm catching the last of the light. "You've been planning all day."
"Yeah."
"Roby?"
He glanced at her. "You've been paying attention."
"I've been listening. There's a difference." She shifted against the handlebars, felt the chrome warm against her hip. "The brothers talk when they eat. And they've been eating all day."
"What did you hear?"
"That the Kings' supply runs are still moving. That the man running them is smart enough to reroute after Sims. That you've been staring at maps since noon."
Crossroad set the plate on the gas tank and leaned back, stretching his legs. The bike shifted under him, and Grace felt it through the handlebars—the machine responding to the man the way everything in this club seemed to respond to the man. Easily. Instinctively.
"Roby's the spine," he said. "Sims was the fist, Fitch is the fire, but Roby's the one who keeps the product moving. Without him, the Kings can't supply the drops, can't maintain the routes, can't generate the cash that holds the whole thing together."
"So he's next."
"He's next." His eyes tracked the road beyond the fence. "But he's not Sims. Sims was muscle—you point him at a target and he runs straight. Roby thinks. Plans. He'll have changed every route and every drop point since Sunday."
"Then you'll outthink him."
He looked at her then. Really looked, the way he'd looked at her that first night in the bakery—like she was a road he hadn't mapped yet and he wasn't sure where she led.
"You sound sure about that."
"I've watched you work. You redesigned a truck stop parking lot into a kill zone in four hours. You drove those Kings through Greenville like you were herding cattle." She held his gaze. "Roby plans routes. You are routes. He's bringing a map to a fight with the man who is the map."
Something shifted in his expression. Not the almost-smile—something deeper. Warmer. The look of a man hearing something he needed to hear from the one person whose voice could make it land.
"The compound kitchen's in pretty good shape," she said, changing direction the way she changed direction in her bakery—quick, decisive, already onto the next thing.
"Needs a mixer and a new temperature gauge, but it's workable.
Nora's been helping. The brothers are eating better than they probably have since this place opened. "
"They're eating better than they've ever eaten." His voice had gone soft. "Burial told me the biscuits reminded him of his grandmother's. That's not something Burial says."
"Burial's the quiet one? Scar on his jaw?"
"That's him."
"He ate four." She paused. "Also, the prospect who tried to touch my pie before it set? He's on dish duty for a week. I told Jolene."
"Jolene doesn't run dish duty."
"She does now."
The almost-smile became something closer to an actual smile. Small, quiet, the kind of expression she suspected most people never saw on the Road Captain's face.
They sat in the lot and talked. Not about the war—about nothing.
About the best way to season a cast-iron pan (low heat, patience, don't let anyone tell you different).
About the roads between Clarksdale and Greenville and which gas station had the worst coffee in the Delta (a competition with more entries than expected).
About the sound cicadas made when the temperature dropped below ninety, which in Mississippi was apparently rare enough to be noteworthy.
He told her about a truck stop outside Yazoo City that had the best catfish in the state, and she told him about a diner in Indianola where the waitresses called everyone baby and the pies were better than they had any right to be.
The stars came out. The lot went dark except for the light spilling from the bar. The music inside shifted from loud to low, the kind of blues that lived in the space between Saturday night and Sunday morning.
Grace realized she'd been standing here for two hours.
She realized he hadn't moved.
The man who paced truck stops and checked exits and calculated escape routes before he calculated anything else had been sitting on his bike in a parking lot for two hours because she was leaning against the handlebars.
Something turned over in her chest. Warm. Terrifying.
"I need to be up at three-thirty," she said.
"I know."
"I'm taking over breakfast again. The brothers are going to expect it now, and I don't half-start things."
"I know that too."
She straightened from the handlebars. The chrome was cool now, the heat of the day finally gone. His eyes tracked her the way they always tracked her—careful, watchful, the gaze of a man who was used to reading roads and had found one he couldn't figure out.
"Goodnight, Crossroad."
"Goodnight, Grace."
She walked back toward the compound, feeling his eyes on her the whole way. At the door, she turned.
He was still sitting on his bike. Still not moving. The Road Captain who had never stayed anywhere, parked in a lot, watching a woman walk away like she was the only destination that mattered.
Grace went inside, climbed into her narrow bed, and stared at the water stain on the ceiling that looked like a rabbit.
She thought about a man who spoke softly and planned everything and couldn't sit still unless she was standing next to him.
She thought about three-thirty in the morning, and what it might feel like to not be the only one awake.
She set her alarm and closed her eyes, and the last thing she heard before sleep took her was the distant, familiar sound of a motorcycle engine in the lot.
Still there. Still not moving.
Still.