3. KNOX
KNOX
My son woke me at five seventeen in the morning by pressing two cold fingers beneath my nose to check if I was breathing.
I opened my eyes and found him standing beside the bed in dinosaur pajamas Sarah must have pulled from the duffel, his dark hair sticking up on one side and his gray eyes narrowed with concentration. He didn’t jump when I caught his wrist. He just looked relieved.
“You’re not dead.”
“Not last time I checked.”
“Mom said quiet people can die in their sleep.”
“Your mom says a lot of cheerful shit before breakfast?”
Noah frowned. “That’s a bad word.”
“Yeah.” I released him and scrubbed a hand over my face. “Probably ain’t gonna be the last one you hear around here.”
Sarah slept on the other side of the bed with her back to us, wearing the shirt she’d ripped open last night.
She had checked on Noah after leaving my bedroom, then returned and lowered herself onto the far edge of the mattress without asking if she could stay.
We hadn’t spoken. We had lain in the dark with a careful foot of space between us until sleep erased it, and sometime during the night she’d rolled close enough that one of her hands rested beside mine on the pillow.
Her throat carried the marks of my fingers.
Nothing had been forgiven, but my body had slept better with hers beside it than it had in nearly five years.
“I’m hungry,” Noah whispered.
I eased out of bed, pulled on a pair of sweatpants, and tucked the blanket over Sarah’s bare legs before I could think too hard about what I was doing. Her eyes stayed closed, but her mouth softened at one corner. She was awake and pretending otherwise.
“Come on, kid. Let’s see what I’ve got.”
The answer was not much. Beer, hot sauce, half a carton of eggs, and cereal that had probably expired before Noah learned to walk. He climbed onto one of the stools and watched me inspect the cupboards as if this were a test I should have studied for.
“Do you like eggs?”
“Sometimes.”
“Useful answer.”
“Mom makes pancakes when we’re sad.”
I looked at the closed bedroom door. “She make a lot of pancakes?”
He shrugged, but his fingers picked at a scratch in the countertop. “We move a lot.”
The casual way he said it landed like a fist. I set the frying pan down before I crushed the handle and crouched in front of him.
“You got any allergies?”
“Strawberries make my tongue itchy.”
Something a father should know. Something I would have known if Sarah had trusted me with the truth. I locked the anger away because none of it belonged on his small shoulders.
“No strawberries,” I said. “Anything else?”
“I don’t like milk if it smells funny.”
“Nobody does.”
That earned me the beginning of a smile. It vanished when footsteps sounded in the hall, and he looked toward the reinforced door before sliding off the stool and moving closer to me.
I hated how practiced he was at being afraid.
“That’s one of my brothers,” I told him. “Nobody gets through that door unless I let them.”
“Are they all my uncles?”
I hadn’t expected the question. “Yeah, I guess they are.”
“That’s a lot of uncles.”
“You’re gonna need most of them.”
The knock came in a pattern I recognized. I checked the camera anyway, saw Diesel holding a plate covered in foil, and opened the door.
He took one look at me shirtless, then at Noah in his dinosaur pajamas, and managed not to make the joke I could see killing him from the inside.
“Eloise said the kid would be hungry.” He held out the plate. “Saved these before the animals cleaned out the kitchen.”
I lifted the foil. Pancakes, bacon, and two pieces of wedding cake.
“Cake ain’t breakfast.”
Diesel looked offended. “Breakfast of kings more like.”
Noah peered around my leg. Diesel crouched, keeping his distance. “You must be Noah. I’m Diesel.”
“Like a truck?”
“Exactly like a truck. Loud, expensive, and a pain in everybody’s ass.”
“Bad word,” Noah informed him.
Diesel looked up at me. “Hell, Knox. Kid’s been here six hours and he’s already judging us.”
“Give him time. He’ll find worse shit to judge.”
Noah’s eyes widened. “You said two.”
Diesel laughed all the way back down the hall.
We ate pancakes at the counter. Noah wanted his cut into equal squares and corrected me when two pieces were bigger than the others. He told me he liked sharks, fire trucks, and a cartoon about dogs with jobs. I filed away every detail as if somebody might test me on them later.
Halfway through his second pancake, he looked at my bare arms. “Why do you have skulls?”
“Because I liked them.”
“Mom doesn’t like skulls.”
“Your mom used to like mine.”
“Still does,” Sarah said from the doorway.
She had changed into clean jeans and a long-sleeved shirt, but nothing hid the faint bruise beneath her jaw. Her gaze held mine long enough to bring last night back in a rush of teeth, anger, and her body clenching around me.
Then Noah turned, and she became his mother again.
“You found breakfast.”
“Diesel brought it,” Noah said. “He has a truck name and says bad words. Dad says more.”
Sarah’s face changed at the word Dad. Only for a second, but I saw the fear and hope collide before she smiled at him. “That sounds about right.”
Noah pushed the cake toward her. “You can have this because you were sad yesterday.”
She kissed the top of his head. “I’m not sad now.”
“Because we found Dad?”
Sarah looked at me over him. “Yes, baby. Because we found him.”
I had to turn away before either of them saw what that did to me.
The security panel sounded before I could answer, one short alert telling me somebody with clearance was at the outer door. Gunner appeared on the screen, grim-faced, carrying Sarah’s duffel and a clear evidence bag.
“Take Noah to meet Eloise,” I told Sarah. “She’s across the hall with Diesel.”
“I’m not leaving while you discuss the people chasing us.”
“And I ain’t having this conversation in front of him.”
“Mom,” Noah said around a mouthful of pancake, “I want to see the truck man.”
Sarah hesitated, then wiped his face and took his hand. At the door, she looked back at me. “You wait for me.”
It was an order, not a request.
Possessive little thing, always had been.
I did as I was told.
Gunner came in once Sarah returned and spread what he’d recovered across my kitchen counter. Her car had been left on its side in the ditch with the driver’s door open. The black SUV was three miles farther north, wiped clean and abandoned behind an old feed store.
“Found this under the passenger seat.” Gunner placed a cheap cell phone between us. “Battery was removed. There’s one number saved and a video file we haven’t opened. Figured you should see it first.”
Sarah stared at the phone. “That isn’t mine.”
“We know.”
I fitted the battery into place. The phone powered up without a passcode, and one contact appeared on the screen.
FINN OAKLAND.
My personal number sat beneath it.
Sarah went pale. “I never gave anyone that.”
“You had it?”
“I memorized it before I left. I never wrote it down.”
The phone rang in my hand.
Gunner reached for the recording equipment clipped to his belt, but I answered before he could connect it and put the call on speaker.
“You went to a lot of trouble to get my attention.”
The man on the other end laughed softly. Sarah gripped the counter so hard her bandaged knuckles whitened.
“That’s him,” she whispered. “That’s the voice.”
“Welcome to fatherhood, Finn,” the caller said. “Shame you missed so much of it.”
“Tell Rafe to come say that to my face.”
“Rafe doesn’t need to come near you. We already proved we can reach the boy anywhere. His school. His bedroom. His mother’s car. Those walls you’re hiding behind won’t change that.”
Every violent instinct I possessed pulled tight, but I kept my voice level. “What does he want?”
“The Bradford south yard. Hawk stops blocking the route, Eloise Bradford signs over unrestricted access, and the Iron Flames look the other way when our trucks pass through tomorrow night.”
Diesel’s wedding had ended less than twelve hours ago, and Rafe was already trying to use my son to drag Eloise back into the deal she had destroyed.
“And if we don’t?”
“You spent four years without your boy. You already know you can survive it.”
Sarah made a broken sound beside me.
I closed my hand around the phone until the plastic casing creaked. “You should’ve killed me before I saw his face.”
The caller went quiet.
“Because now I know exactly what I’m protecting,” I continued, “and there ain’t a road, room, or grave deep enough to hide you from me.”
“Tomorrow. Midnight. Rafe gets the yard, or fatherhood ends early.”
The call disconnected.
For several seconds, none of us spoke. Gunner took the phone and began working through the menus while Sarah stood frozen beside me.
“Finn.”
I turned and caught the back of her neck, pulling her close enough that my forehead met hers. She was shaking, but her eyes stayed dry and furious.
“He isn’t getting Noah,” I said.
“You can’t promise that.”
“I just did.”
“What if the club refuses the deal?”
“It will.”
Fear broke across her face. “Then what happens to our son?”
“Nothing.” I tightened my grip when she tried to pull away. “Listen to me. Rafe wants us frightened enough to make mistakes. He wants me choosing between my patch and my kid because he thinks either choice breaks something.”
“Doesn’t it?”
“No.” I looked directly into her eyes. “Because the Iron Flames don’t abandon family, and Noah became theirs the second he came through that gate. We protect the yard. We protect him. Then I find the bastard who stole four years from us and make sure he never says your name again.”
Gunner looked up from the phone. “Knox, there’s something else. The video file was created yesterday, but the footage is almost five years old.”
He turned the screen toward us.
The image showed Sarah’s old apartment building at night. My bike was parked outside, and the timestamp in the corner matched the final night we had spent together.
Then the camera shifted toward the dark window of her bedroom.
Whoever had forced Sarah to run had been watching us before either of us knew there was a war.