4. Gone #3
Blade slid in and took his seat without a sound.
The sheath at his belt was a different shade of leather than the one he'd carried before.
Logan's work, hand-tooled, hours of somebody's evenings stitched into every seam.
Logan was up in Montana, the last days of his two weeks there, and he'd have been up for hours by now, out with the horses before the sun cleared anything.
Two weeks here, two weeks there, and it worked for them in a way that shouldn't have worked at all.
Trenza. Mateo. Chairs scraped and filled, better than thirty of us in a room built for twenty, and still not the whole club. The ones on gate and perimeter duties stayed at their posts. Voices ran the length of the table and doubled back.
Hawk stood.
The room went quiet. He didn't ask for it. He stood up and the noise fell off, the way it always did, and I watched it land on every face at that table. Respect that sat deeper than rank. For most of us Hawk was the closest thing to a father we'd had. For some of us, the only thing.
"Last night." His voice filled the room without him pushing it anywhere. "Blade, Irish, and Ghost ran a job on intel that put Gravedigger somewhere in the underground fighting circuit working through the valley." His eyes moved down the table. "Ghost went in alone. No comms, no weapon. Eyes only."
He looked at me, and there was something steady in it. I hadn't felt that gaze aimed at me in this room before. I'd given plenty of reports. Over coffee, in the garage, half of them while Blade told me to get to the point. This was Church, and every patch at the table was watching.
Kai knocked his fist against my arm as I got up. Lightly. You've got this.
"Gravedigger's running the circuit." My words came out short and clipped. "It's funded and it's organized. Twelve enforcers working a rotation, real security, a booking operation, a couple hundred paying spectators. He was in the building, watching from a private box up on the mezzanine."
I took them through it. The layout, the crowd, the money moving hand to hand along the front rows. Twice I caught myself sliding into detail about where the enforcers stood and pulled up short. Blade nodded both times, and both nods pushed me another step.
Then I got to Caleb.
This part I couldn't trim.
"There was a fighter. Ring name Monk. Trained martial artist, and he's the best I've ever seen in person, and I'm counting everybody in this room.
" Tank raised an eyebrow. From Tank, that's a standing ovation.
"He won his bout clean. Then the organizers dragged a beaten man into the ring and told him to finish it.
Some kind of test. He said no. Gravedigger named his brother out loud in front of the whole room, gave the hospital and everything, and he said no again. "
My hands had closed at my sides. I left them there.
"They took him backstage and started working him over.
" My words came out flat, which took more work than anything else I said in that room.
My thumbnails had dug into my palms somewhere back around the words he said no, and I kept them there, because the sting gave the rest of it a place to go that wasn't my face.
Nobody at that table said a thing about it.
I didn't stop to ask myself why a guy I'd known for one night had my hands doing that.
"Before I get to the rest of it." I made myself say the next part first, because saying it second would have been a way of hiding it.
"Gravedigger clocked me while Caleb was still standing in that ring.
Doors came down inside a minute. Chains, padlocks, every exit in the building. That's on me. Nobody else."
Nobody at the table moved. Blade's eyes stayed level on me, and that was worse than if he'd looked away.
"So I was already sealed in there with him. I went through the sweep and got him out of that corridor. He didn't need much help either. Took one of them down himself with a kick I still can't explain." My hands unclenched. My palms stung where the nails had been.
"I brought him back here." I made myself slow down.
"Kai treated him last night. His name's Caleb.
Gravedigger's got a hook in him through his brother, Liam, who's lying in a bed at UMC right now, and I think he knows more about how that circuit works from the inside than anybody else we're going to put our hands on.
I think we can trust him. He should be down in the medical ba?—"
The door hit the wall hard enough to leave the handle in the drywall.
Every head at that table turned at once. Rosa stood in the doorway with one hand still on the frame, breathing hard, strands of silver-streaked hair pulled loose across her face.
"Caleb. The fighter Kai patched up. He's gone!"
Nobody moved.
My ears rang. The word went around the inside of my skull and couldn't find anywhere to sit down.
Gone. He'd been one building over, seven hours ago. I put a blanket around his shoulders and told him he was safe here, and he'd looked at me like he wanted to believe it.
Something tore loose low in my stomach. Something new, and it hurt worse than it had any right to, because I'd known this man less than a day and he was out there somewhere barefoot and beaten to hell while Gravedigger knew his name, his brother's name, and which bed at UMC to walk into.
My knee wasn't bouncing. My hands weren't moving. I stood there completely still, and the stillness scared me more than the noise in my head ever had.
"I'm going after him."
Hawk's eyes came to mine.
"Ghost—"
"I'm going after him, Hawk."
The whole table waited. Hawk held my eyes for three full seconds. Then he nodded, once.
I was out the door before he finished the gesture.