1. Falcon #2
She spots me, and for half a second everything else, the room, the noise, my brothers, all of it fades out.
There's just Cara looking at me with the same eyes I remember, except they aren't quite the same.
There's something in them now that wasn't there five years ago, something I'd give almost anything to erase.
But underneath it, there's still a flicker of the woman who used to steal half my pillow and call me an asshole before she'd even brushed her teeth.
Then she looks away, and heads for Sterling's table instead.
That's what she trusts now. Structure. Plans. People who tell her exactly what's going to happen and then do it. Sterling's good at that. He listens while she talks, nodding, not pushing, waiting for Sarah to be ready before he asks her anything.
Zip bumps my shoulder. "Stop staring."
"Wasn't."
"Sure."
"You enjoy being alive?" He’s annoying me today.
"Most days."
I finish my breakfast while Sterling watches me from across the room, and when he finally waves me over, I take my coffee and cross to him.
Cara's still at the table. She steps back as I approach, giving me exactly enough room that the movement feels deliberate.
I hate noticing that. I hate knowing why she does it even more.
"Falcon. Got a minute?" Sterling asks.
That tone means business, so I follow him a few feet off, out of earshot. He slides a folder across the table.
"Condor found something last night. One of the companies connected to the Castellano network renewed a transport contract."
I flip it open. Security logistics, cargo transfer, private freight protection, it’s all clean on paper, and three shells removed from anything obvious.
"Who owns it?"
"That's what Condor's working on at the moment. Trail runs through two states and an offshore parent."
"What makes him think it's connected?" I’m looking through the paperwork, trying to get all the answers.
"Same accounting firm Castellano used. Same warehouse software. Two of the drivers already show up on routes we tied to trafficking."
My appetite disappears somewhere around the second sentence. "You think they're rebuilding?"
"I think we dismantled a major operation. I don't think we were stupid enough to believe one arrest wiped an entire network off the map."
Neither do I. I close the folder. "Does Vulture know?"
"That’s why he called Church."
Of course he did.
Sterling watches me for a second too long before he says the next part. "Whatever you're doing right now. Stop doing it alone."
"There's nothing to do."
"Falcon."
"I'm handling it."
"I didn't ask if you're handling it."
My jaw tightens, because he's not wrong and I don't have anything to say that isn't a lie. I tuck the folder under my arm instead. "Have Condor send me everything. I'll go through it before Church."
I turn to leave, and Cara's standing right behind me. She’s not close enough to trap me against the table, but not far enough that I can pretend she wasn't coming over either.
"Morning," she says.
"Morning." Five years apart and we've apparently regressed to the conversational skills of teenagers.
Her eyes drop to the folder. "Club business?"
"Yeah."
"Something bad?"
"Maybe."
She nods but doesn't push, which throws me more than if she had. The old Cara would've had ten questions lined up before I finished answering the first. I miss that, and then I feel like an asshole for missing a version of her she didn't choose to lose.
"I heard Church is at noon," she says.
"Yeah."
"You're going?"
The question shouldn't needle me, but it does. "I'm the VP."
"I know."
"Then you already know the answer."
"I know what the answer should be."
That shuts me up faster than anything Zip or Sterling managed all morning.
Behind us someone laughs at the bar, a chair scrapes the floor, and the clubhouse keeps moving around us while Cara and I stand in the middle of it having a conversation that feels more dangerous than anything in Sterling's folder.
"You've been disappearing," she says, I barely hear her.
"I'm handling club business."
"Zip says you've been disappearing."
I glance toward the bar. He's suddenly fascinated with his coffee.
"Don't blame him," Cara says. "I asked."
"Why?"
Her eyes come back to mine. "Because I remember you."
Something in my chest goes tight. "That was a long time ago."
"Not as long as you think." She takes a breath before she says the rest. "Back then, when you were hurting, you rode."
"I ride all the time."
"You rode differently." I feel her eyes penetrating my soul.
I don't have an answer for that, because she's right and we both know it. "I don't need you worrying about me."
"I know." It comes so fast it takes the fight straight out of mine. She isn't arguing, and isn't claiming responsibility for me. She's just standing there, waiting.
"I don't need to fix you either," she adds.
That one lands deeper than the first. "Good."
"But I need to know the man keeping those women safe is actually here."
Not Falcon the man she used to love. Falcon the VP. She knows exactly where to put the knife, and I respect it more than it should let me.
"I'll be at Church."
Her shoulders come down half an inch. "Good."
I should leave it there. I don't. "Sarah really slept six hours?"
Her face softens in a way that undoes something in my ribs. "Almost."
"Because of you?"
"Because she's starting to feel safe."
She’s so humble, not take credit for Sarah sleeping. My gaze drifts around the room. Harrier is sliding another plate toward one of the women. Ice Pick is shifting out of the way when someone crosses behind him. Rook is keeping his argument with Hustler quieter than usual.
"The club's trying," I say.
"I know."
"Does it help?"
She follows my eyes around the room. "More than I expected."
Something in my chest shifts, it’s not relief exactly, it’s closer to pride.
We've hurt men, broken laws, buried problems where nobody would find them, and there isn't a decent person alive who'd put half of what we've done on paper.
But women and kids have always been a line we don't cross, and watching Cara understand that shouldn't matter as much as it does.
She wraps both hands around her mug. "The girls notice the little things. Everyone knocking before they come in. Nobody touching them without asking. The men keeping their voices down near the house, and Harrier remembering which one of them can't eat eggs."
"Don't tell him you noticed. He'll be unbearable." I smile at her.
Her mouth curves, it’s barely a smile, but it still punches me straight in the gut. For one second she looks like my Cara. Guilt follows fast enough to make me sick. She isn't mine. Maybe she never will be again.
She catches whatever shows on my face, and her smile fades. "Falcon."
I should walk away. Instead, my hand lifts before I think better of it, my fingers brushing the edge of her sleeve.
It’s barely a touch, but it’s enough that she inhales sharp and sudden, and I freeze right along with her.
There's no fear of me in her eyes, but that would almost be easier.
What's there instead is want, tangled up with memory and everything that happened while I wasn't there to stop it.
I drop my hand. "Sorry."
Her gaze falls to where I touched her. "You don't have to apologize for touching my sleeve."
"I don't know what I've got to apologize for anymore."
There, I said it. It’s too much truth, and I know it the second it's out. Her eyes lift like she might answer, and that's when Vulture's voice cuts through from behind me.
"Falcon."
I close my eyes for one second before I turn. He's standing outside his office, his arms folded, but he doesn’t look angry. Somehow I'd almost prefer angry.
"Eleven fifteen," he says.
I check the clock. Eleven seventeen. "Close enough."
The look on his face tells me that was the wrong thing to say. "Office."
Zip coughs into his fist to hide a laugh badly. I point at him without breaking stride. "You're enjoying this way too much."
"Very much."
I glance back once. There’s something lighter in Cara's eyes, amusement maybe, though I've seen so little of it lately I can't be sure I'm reading it right.
"You'd better go," she says.
"Apparently."
"Falcon."
I stop.
She holds my gaze a second longer. "Show up." It’s only two words. It’s not a demand, or a plea, it feels like someone rooting for me, which is worse, because now I've got one more thing I can fail at.
"I will."
I walk toward Vulture's office with the folder under my arm and my brothers behind me, Cara is twenty feet back, and the weight of the VP patch is heavier on my shoulders than it was when I put it on this morning.
For the first time in weeks, I understand why.
The club doesn't need me to stop hurting.
Cara doesn't need me to become the man I was before all of this.
They all need me present, and maybe that's where I start.
Not fixing five years of damage in one day, and not chasing something I can't punch, shoot, or bury.
I start by walking into my president's office when he calls me. I start by taking my seat at Church. I start by remembering I've got brothers who'll carry the weight the second I stop being too stubborn to hand them some of it.
Vulture's behind his desk when I step inside. He points at the chair across from him.
"Sit down."
I shut the door behind me, and for once, I do exactly what I'm told.