Chapter Three
The plywood hit Pitfall wrong the moment he turned onto Main Street.
Mountain Crafts Cooperative had a hand-painted sign and windows that caught morning light just right—he remembered that from last time, three months back when he'd wandered in looking for nothing particular and left with a wood-carved box he still couldn't explain buying.
The windows were why the shop worked. Let you see the crafts from the sidewalk, drew you in before you knew you were moving.
Now one of those windows was a sheet of plywood that didn't match the frame.
He parked his bike at the curb and sat there for a minute, studying the street. Tuesday morning, quiet. A few cars, fewer people. Nothing that screamed trouble, but the plywood kept nagging at him like a splinter he couldn't dig out.
Could be nothing. Accident. Kids with rocks and bad aim.
Could be something else.
The bell chimed when he pushed through the door, and the woman behind the counter looked up with eyes that expected threat before they registered customer. That told him plenty.
"Morning." He kept his voice easy, his hands visible. Prospects learned fast that cuts made civilians nervous, and nervous people didn't talk. "You open?"
"We're open." She straightened, and the wariness didn't leave her face but it shifted, made room for professional courtesy. "Can I help you find something?"
Pitfall let his gaze drift across the shop while his brain cataloged details he'd been trained to notice.
Displays slightly off from where they'd been before.
Gaps where items used to sit. And the woman herself—dark circles under eyes that were sharp despite the exhaustion, hands that gripped the counter edge like she was bracing for impact.
Something had happened here. Something more than broken glass.
"Looking for a basket," he said. "Specific kind. Double-handled, tight weave on the bottom. My grandmother had one she used for apples every fall. Haven't seen another like it until I came in here a few months back."
The tension in her shoulders eased a fraction. Craft talk. Safe ground.
"Mabel Hensley's work." She came around the counter, moving toward a display on the far wall. "She's one of my best weavers. Learned the patterns from her grandmother, same as her grandmother learned from hers. Four generations of muscle memory in every basket."
The way she said it—pride and protection wrapped together—made him pay closer attention. This wasn't just a shopkeeper. This was someone who gave a damn about what she was selling and who made it.
"She got any pieces in right now?"
Something flickered across her face. Pain, maybe. Gone before he could name it.
"A few. We had some... inventory damage recently." She gestured toward the plywood window without looking at it. "I'm still sorting out what's salvageable."
"Inventory damage." He let the words sit between them. "That what we're calling it?"
Her chin came up. "That's what I'm calling it."
Backbone. He liked that. Liked the way she didn't flinch from his question, didn't try to fill the silence with nervous chatter. Most people faced with a man in a Reapers cut would be talking themselves in circles by now.
"Fair enough." He nodded toward the basket display. "Show me what you've got."
She led him to the wall, pointed out three pieces that matched what he was looking for. Her hands moved with care when she touched them, reverent almost, like she was handling something precious. Because she was.
Pitfall picked up the middle one, turned it over in his hands. The weave was tight and even, the handles sturdy, the whole thing solid in a way that mass-produced crap never managed. His grandmother would've approved.
"This one."
"Good choice." She took it to the counter, started wrapping it in tissue paper. Her movements were efficient but stiff, and he noticed the way she winced when the paper edge caught her palm.
Bandages. Small ones, scattered across both hands like she'd been picking glass out of her skin.
"Rough night?" He hadn't meant to ask. The words came out anyway.
Her hands went still. "Excuse me?"
"Your hands." He nodded toward them. "Looks like you've been sweeping up more than dust."
For a long moment, she just stared at him. Measuring. Deciding. He could practically see the calculations running behind her eyes—how much to say, how much to hide, whether a stranger in a motorcycle cut was someone who'd help or someone who'd make things worse.
"Window broke," she said finally. "Accidents happen."
"Accidents." He pulled out his wallet, counted bills onto the counter. "That what that was?"
"That's what I said."
He held her gaze. Didn't push. Didn't back down either.
"My name's Pitfall. I ride with the Mountain Reapers—you probably figured that from the cut." He tapped his chest where the prospect patch sat, still earning its place. "We keep an eye on this area. Businesses, families. People who might need help they can't get from a badge."
"I don't need help."
"Didn't say you did." He picked up the wrapped basket, tucked it under his arm. "Just saying, if that changes, people know how to find us."
Something shifted in her expression. Not softening exactly—this woman didn't seem like the softening type—but the sharp edges of her suspicion rounded out just slightly.
"Nadine," she said. "Nadine Combs. This is my shop."
"Nice place." He meant it. "Shame about the window."
"It'll be fixed by the weekend."
"And whatever broke it?"
She didn't answer. Didn't need to. The set of her jaw said enough.
Pitfall headed for the door, then stopped with his hand on the frame. Turned back.
"Those men who visited yesterday." He watched her face go carefully blank. "The ones who wanted you to stock their merchandise. They come back, you call the compound. Ask for Grit. Tell him Pitfall sent you."
"How do you know about—"
"Small town." He pushed through the door before she could finish the question. "Word travels."
The ride back to the compound took twenty minutes through switchbacks that Pitfall could navigate blindfolded. His mind wasn't on the road, though. It was back in that shop, cataloging everything he'd seen.
Boarded window. Damaged inventory. Bandaged hands. And a woman who looked like she hadn't slept but refused to admit she needed help.
Someone was leaning on her. The kind of pressure that came with threats and follow-through. She'd held her ground—he could see that much in the stubborn set of her shoulders—but holding ground didn't mean much if the enemy kept advancing.
He pulled into the compound garage and cut his engine, sat there for a minute with the basket in his lap. Stupid thing to buy. He didn't need a basket. Didn't have apples to fill it or a kitchen table to set it on. He lived in a room at the compound with a bed, a dresser, and not much else.
But his grandmother's face had flashed through his mind when he'd seen it, and that was enough.
"The hell is that?"
Grit appeared from the workshop, wiping oil from his hands with a rag that was more black than cloth. His eyes dropped to the basket, and one eyebrow lifted in the closest thing to amusement the enforcer ever showed.
"Craft shop in town," Pitfall said, swinging off his bike. "Remembered it from a few months back. Wanted to pick something up."
"A basket."
"It's a good basket."
Grit's expression said he had opinions about prospects buying baskets, but he kept them to himself. "Anything else happen on this shopping trip?"
Pitfall hesitated. This was where it got tricky. He was a prospect—lowest rung on the ladder, still earning trust, still proving he belonged. Bringing problems to patched members meant taking up their time, asking them to care about something that might be nothing.
But the plywood where glass should be kept nagging at him. And the shadows under Nadine Combs's eyes. And the way her hands had shaken, just slightly, when she wrapped his basket.
"Shop's got trouble," he said. "Window boarded up, inventory damaged. Owner says it was an accident, but she's lying."
Grit's hands went still on the rag. "What kind of trouble?"
"Don't know yet. Someone pressuring her, maybe. She's not talking, but she's scared." He paused, chose his next words carefully. "She's also not running. Whatever's happening, she's digging in to fight it."
"Alone?"
"Seems like."
Grit was quiet for a long moment, studying Pitfall with the kind of attention that made lesser men fidget. The prospect held still. Waited.
"You know this woman?"
"Met her once before. Today was the second time." Pitfall shrugged like it didn't matter, even though something in his chest said otherwise. "Just seemed wrong. Thought someone should know."
"Someone knows now." Grit tossed the rag over his shoulder, started back toward the workshop. "Keep your ears open. Anything else surfaces, you bring it to me."
"Yes, sir."
Grit paused at the workshop door. Looked back.
"And Pitfall? That's a nice basket. Your grandmother would've liked it."
He disappeared inside before Pitfall could ask how the hell he knew about his grandmother.
The prospect stood in the garage for a while after, turning the basket over in his hands, thinking about a woman with bandaged palms and a jaw set for war. Whatever was happening at Mountain Crafts Cooperative, it wasn't over. The boarded window was just the opening shot.
He filed the wrongness away in the part of his brain that tracked problems and waited for them to surface. Something told him this one wouldn't stay buried long.
Something also told him he'd be back at that shop before the week was out.
He wasn't sure yet how he felt about that.