3. Falcon
Falcon
Vulture doesn't say anything right away. He lets the door click shut behind me, lets me sit down across from him, lets the silence stretch long enough that I start counting seconds just to have somewhere to put my head.
Then, finally: "You know why you're here."
"Yeah."
"Say it anyway."
I could make this easy on myself. Give him the short version, take whatever he hands out, get to Church on time. Some old instinct tells me that's exactly the wrong move, so I don't.
"Because I've been useless for weeks and everybody's noticed except me."
Something shifts behind his eyes, it’s not necessarily approval, but it’s close enough to it that I understand I said the right thing by accident. He leans back.
"The planning meeting on Tuesday. You weren't there. Sterling covered."
"I know."
"The security briefing on Thursday. Zip covered."
"I know that too."
"The supply run on Saturday. Rook and Harrier split your section between them without being asked, because they've gotten used to doing it, which is worse than if I'd had to order them to." He folds his arms. "You want to hear the rest, or do you get the picture?"
"I get it."
"Good. Then here's the part you need to understand.
" He doesn't raise his voice. He's never needed to.
"Every one of those men covering for you thinks they're doing you a favor.
They're not. They're teaching this whole chapter that the VP patch is decorative.
That it means something on the good days and nothing on the bad ones.
If you keep going the way you're going, and it stops being a favor, then it becomes a pattern.
And patterns get people killed, because somewhere down the line a brother's going to need you exactly where you're supposed to be, and you're going to be three towns over on that bike outrunning something you haven't named yet. "
I don't have an answer for that, because I know there isn't a good one.
"I'm not asking you to stop grieving what happened to her," he says, quieter now. "I'm asking whether you're still capable of doing this job while you do it. Because those aren't the same question, and you've been answering the wrong one for a month."
"I don't know," I say, and it costs me more to say out loud than anything else in this room has.
"That’s a fair answer." He studies me for a long moment. "It’s better than the ones you've been giving everyone else."
He leans forward, his forearms resting on the desk, and asks the question plainly, there’s no theater in it at all.
"Are you still my VP?"
"Yes."
"Then act like it." He says it like it's the simplest instruction in the world, which is exactly what makes it land so hard.
"Because I can hand you every ounce of patience this club's got left, Falcon, and I will, because you've earned it more than once over.
But patience isn't the same as forever. You slip again the way you've been slipping, and it stops being a conversation like this one.
It becomes Church, and a vote, and a patch on the table.
I'd rather it never gets there. That's up to you now, not me. "
Now I’m standing outside Church with a headache, too much coffee in my system, and the uncomfortable knowledge that I earned every word of Vulture’s lecture.
Ice Pick leans against the wall beside the door, arms folded across his chest. His gaze tracks me as I cross the hall, wearing the same look he gives anything he thinks might turn dangerous.
“Problem?” I ask, stopping a few feet away.
He pushes off the wall but doesn’t move aside. “Depends.”
“On what?”
“Whether you’re actually planning to go through that door.”
I glance pointedly at it. “Pretty sure that’s why I walked over here.”
“You’ve walked toward plenty of things lately and changed direction at the last minute.” His voice remains flat, without even a trace of humour.
My shoulders tighten. I close the remaining distance between us and stop directly in front of him. “I already got my lecture from Vulture.”
“Good for Vulture.” Ice Pick’s expression doesn’t shift.
A warning creeps into my voice. “Ice.”
"No." He steps closer, dropping his voice as Carrot and another prospect cross the hallway behind us, their arms full of folding chairs for Church. Carrot catches my eye for half a second on the way past, he’s a prospect giving a patched brother a look when he isn't sure if he's allowed to nod first, then decides to anyway.
I nod back without thinking about it. "This isn't me giving you shit for being miserable to live with, though for the record, you have been.
This is me telling you whatever the fuck you're doing has gone past being your problem alone.
" He counts it off. Missed runs. Missed planning meetings.
Two security briefings. Zip checking routes I'm supposed to cover.
Sterling chasing intel that should come through me first. Vulture doing Prez and VP work while I disappear on my bike every time my head gets too loud.
“I said I’d deal with it.”
Ice Pick studies me for a beat. “When?”
I open my mouth, but nothing comes out. I don’t have an answer that isn’t a lie, and from the look on his face, he knows it.
“Sooner or later, somebody’s going to get hurt while you’re figuring out when you feel like being Falcon again.”
The accusation lands exactly where he means it to. My hands curl into fists at my sides. “You giving me orders now?”
“No.” His voice drops, the steel in it giving way to something that sounds more like a brother than an officer. “I’m reminding you who the hell you are, because right now, you seem to have forgotten.”
He steps closer, holding my gaze.
“You ride like you’re trying to kill yourself. You drink like you’re trying to forget you survived. And every time somebody mentions Cara, you look about five seconds away from blowing up the whole compound.”
Heat surges through me. “Leave her out of it.”
“Can’t.” He doesn’t so much as blink. “You made her part of it the second you started bleeding all over the brotherhood because you don’t know what to do with the fact that she’s alive.”
For one dangerous second, I want to hit him.
Ice knows it. He sees it in my clenched fists and the fury crawling beneath my skin, but he doesn’t move or flinch. He simply stands there and waits until I force my fingers to loosen and release the breath burning in my lungs.
“She’s alive, Falcon,” he says, quieter now. “You spent five years believing she was gone. Stop punishing yourself because she came back.”
I stare at him, anger and guilt twisting together in my chest. “You think that’s what I’m doing?”
“I think you don’t know what else to do.”
The words hit too close to the truth for me to argue. I break eye contact and look toward the Church door instead. “You done?”
“For now.” Ice reaches for the handle and pulls the door open. Then he stands aside, leaving the way clear. “Come on, VP.”
This time, I follow.
As soon as I walk through the Church door, the smell hits me.
It’s smells like coffee, leather, and the cigar smoke Vulture swears doesn't come from him despite nobody else in the room smoking cigars.
The table's already filling. Zip's got a laptop open beside Condor, the two of them arguing quietly about something on the screen.
Sterling sits opposite with a notebook and three folders stacked at his elbow.
Rook's flipping through photos while Harrier steals one out of his hand.
"Get your own," Rook says, slapping at him.
"It's a blurry black SUV."
"It's surveillance." Rook rolls his eyes at Harrier.
"Enough," Vulture says, not raising his voice, I always find it amazing how a room full of bikers can go silent when he speaks. I take my seat on his right. VP. For the first time in weeks it feels less like a habit and more like something I need to earn back.
"Falcon. Start us off." Vulture doesn’t look at me.
I open the folder Sterling gave me that morning.
"Condor found movement through one of Castellano's feeder companies. The transport contract renews through a security logistics company, there’s three layers between it and anything we've already tied to him directly. It’s the same corner of the map the Reapers used to run before they came apart. "
Condor turns his laptop so the table can see the web of company names. "The primary's clean on paper. There are two subsidiaries, and an offshore parent. It’s the same accounting firm as before. Two of the drivers show up on old route logs we tied to trafficking."
"Enough to move on?" Rook asks.
"Enough to watch," I say. "Condor keeps digging ownership.
Zip, check route history against the south and east corridors.
Sterling, anything new comes through contacts, it comes to me and Vulture first." I look at Ice Pick.
"You and Rook review security around the compound and the women's house.
Quietly. I don't want the women seeing brothers suddenly carrying twice as many weapons. "
"Got it." Ice Pick answers, respectfully, none of his anger from earlier showing on his face.
"Harrier, supplies. Food, medical, fuel, anything we'd need if the compound goes into lockdown."
He sobers fast enough that I know he understands exactly why I'm asking.
Condor clears his throat before I can move on. "One more thing. Traffic cameras caught the same SUV on the south road twice in the last forty-eight hours. Late at night. Moving slow."
The room shifts, not dramatically, just a fraction, with every man at the table sharpening at once.
"Widen the search," I tell him. "A half-mile radius if you can."
"I can." Condor is already looking at the computer screen and working on it.
"Zip, change patrol times tonight, don't make the pattern obvious. Rook, take north side, Ice Pick takes the south side."
Vulture's gaze stays on me a beat after the others nod. "Falcon. You're taking perimeter rotation oversight this week."