Chapter 7
EMILY
By noon she knew everyone's names, Clover's full backstory, and the precise hierarchy of which club members were allowed to touch Savage's truck.
The answer to the last one was nobody, a rule that had apparently been violated once by a prospect three years ago and was still being discussed with the energy of a recent wound.
"He keyed it?" Emily asked.
"He leaned on it," Savage said, with the weight of a man recounting a war crime. "With his belt buckle."
"Did the belt buckle leave a mark?"
Savage pointed at her. "The fact that you're asking if it left a mark suggests you don't understand the principle."
"I understand the principle. I just think the punishment of permanent exile from the compound might be—"
"He's not exiled. He just doesn't come near the truck."
"You made him park on the street."
"The street is right there."
Nicole pressed her face into a throw pillow to muffle her laughter. Lily didn't bother muffling anything. Savannah just rolled her eyes.
“My Daddy isn’t as scary as he looks,” Savannah said. “He’s all bark and no bite.”
Emily wasn’t sure if Savannah understood what she’d just said. She outed herself as a little in front of everyone. Looking around, she realized not a single person had noticed. Emily had so many questions. How many of them were littles? Were other Watchmen Daddies?
Emily looked at Savage and at his big, broad, a face that seemed structurally opposed to smiling, and thought that she understood now why Lily had said they're not what you think.
None of them were. Irish was tender under the mountain of him.
Nicole was sharp and warm in equal measure.
Savage cared about his truck the way some men cared about their children, which was, when you got past the surface of it, actually pretty endearing. He definitely loved Savannah.
And Rampage—
Rampage was at the table across the room with his laptop and his coffee, and he'd been there all morning, and he hadn't hovered exactly, but he also hadn't left, and every time she looked up he wasn't looking at her, but she had the distinct and unscientific feeling that he had been a half-second before.
Savannah had pulled her aside earlier, briefly, just to say you can talk to me if you need to.
About anything. Lily and Nicole too. And the way she'd said it, the particular weight she’d put on anything, had made Emily's face go warm.
Was she alluding to the fact that Emily was a little?
Could she know? Was there a little radar?
Savannah dropped onto the couch next to her with a bowl of chips and the energy of someone who had decided they were friends already and was simply waiting for Emily to catch up.
"Can I ask you something?" Savannah said.
"Sure."
"How long have you been in the book club you were telling me about?"
Emily blinked. "About two years? Chloe started it. We all met through a Facebook group for women who liked—" She paused. "Romance novels. Specific kinds of romance novels."
Savannah looked at her with an expression that said she knew exactly what specific kinds meant and was not going to make it weird.
"I like those books too," Savannah said simply. "That's how I found out more about myself. About a lot of us.” She gestured vaguely at the room. At the compound. At herself, curled up on a couch in a Watchmen hoodie eating chips at noon like she'd grown up here.
"Was it scary?" Emily asked. "In the beginning?"
"The scary part wasn't the dynamic. The scary part was admitting I wanted it.
" She popped a chip in her mouth and chewed thoughtfully.
"You spend so long telling yourself it's just something you like to read, you know?
Like it's fine to want it in a book because that's safe.
The second you admit you want it for real, it's—" She made an exploding gesture with her hand.
Emily stared at the middle distance.
"Terrifying," she said.
"Terrifying," Savannah agreed. "And then, when you actually have it—" She stopped. Smiled, private and certain. "Different kind of terrifying. The good kind. The best kind."
Emily looked down at Clover's head on her knee. Ran her thumb through the soft fur between his ears and thought about the books she'd read. The highlighted passages. The thing she and Chloe, drunk on wine, talked about. Like, someone to just handle it. Handle her.
"I don't know what I want," she said. Which was a lie. She knew exactly what she wanted. What she didn't know was what to do with that information.
Savannah looked at her with the patience of someone who'd told herself the same lie and remembered doing it.
"That's okay," she said. "You don't have to know right now."
Across the room, Rampage closed his laptop, picked up his coffee, and walked over.
Emily felt him before she heard him, that specific atmospheric change, the particular quality of attention that arrived with him. Her heart beat faster when he was near. He stopped at the end of the couch.
"Need to talk to you," he said. "When you're ready."
"I'm ready now."
He glanced at Savannah.
"I'm invisible," Savannah said, eating another chip.
"Meeting room," he said, ignoring that. "Five minutes."
He left.
Savannah waited approximately three seconds. "He's never once told anyone to meet him in five minutes. He either talks to you now or he schedules it on the calendar."
"Maybe he wanted to let me finish my—" Emily looked down. She didn't have a drink. "Whatever I was doing."
"Emily."
"Don't."
"I'm just saying."
"Savannah."
"He literally reorganized his schedule to give you five minutes to finish chatting with me. He doesn’t do that. He demands your attention right away when he wants something." She popped another chip in her mouth. "That's basically a sonnet coming from him."
Emily stood up. Clover lifted his head, offended.
"Sorry, baby," she told the dog.
She crossed the room and she was almost to the hallway when she heard Savannah, behind her, quietly and with great satisfaction, say called it.
Rampage was standing at the window in the meeting room's back wall, and he turned when she came in, and she thought for the ten-thousandth time since last night that he was very large and very still and both of those things were, against all reasonable expectation, deeply calming.
"Lucky heard from Phantom," he said. "His federal contact is picking up the Delling case. It's going above our level."
"Okay." She crossed her arms. "What aren't you telling me?"
He looked at her. A pause that was a fraction too long.
"Rampage."
"The profile is connected to two open missing persons cases out of Denver." Even. Careful. "Both women. Same method. We don't know yet if Delling is the primary or one of several."
Emily breathed through that. Let the shape of it settle. "So, this is a network."
"Possibly."
"And I fit whatever they were looking for."
"Emily—"
"I fit it," she said again. Not a question.
He held her gaze. "Yes."
She nodded. Looked at the floor. Back up. "So, what does that mean for right now? Practically. What does my life look like until this is resolved?"
"You stay in Grand Ridge. You don't go anywhere alone. You check in with me."
"Check in how often?"
"When you wake up. When you go somewhere. When something feels wrong."
"That's—" She tilted her head. Is it controlling if it’s for her safety? "That's a lot of check-ins."
"Yes."
"You know I'm an adult who has been managing her own life for—"
"I know," he interrupted. "And right now your life has a threat in it that we don't have the full shape of yet. When we do, we'll reassess. Your safety isn’t negotiable, little girl."
She wanted to argue. The part of her that had been independent by necessity since she was nineteen, the part that paid her own bills and changed her own tires and cried in her car rather than in front of people had a full argument loaded and ready.
But there was another part. Quieter. Standing very still under all that noise. The inner voice she listened to when life got hard. The part of her that had longed for someone to come along and take over.
That part thought about waking up at four in the morning with her hands shaking and no one to call except Chloe who was already scared on her behalf, and she thought about how it had felt when he'd crouched outside her car window in that parking lot, and she thought about good girl said in a voice that left no room for doubt. The little girls and baby pet names. She glanced down at his large, calloused hands and wondered what it would be like to be held in his strong muscular arms. She had a feeling if she asked, he’d open them wide and embrace her.
She wasn’t ready for that yet. But staying here with him and the girls who’d already been so wonderful?
The logistics played in her head. How would she make her rent if she stayed gone too long?
What would happen to her yoga studio? There was a woman she called who would step in for her when she got sick.
She supposed she could call her. She’d have to pay her, of course.
That would take money directly out of her pocket, money she didn’t have an abundance of.
She could pick up a few more freelance bookkeeping jobs.
But… what good would money do her if she was dead?
"Okay," she said.
Something in his face. That same barely-there shift.
"You're going to tell me,” he said slowly, "if something feels wrong. Not after the fact. Not when you've already handled it yourself. When it happens."
"Yes."
"I mean that, Emily."
"I know you do." She met his eyes. "I said yes."
He looked at her for a long moment. Like he was checking something.
"Good girl."
It hit her exactly the same way it had the first time. Right in the center of her chest, warm and solid, a thing she felt rather than heard.
She did not say anything about that.
“I need to know something, Rampage. Tyler explained to me that The Watchmen weren’t a lawless club.
He explained that you all raise money for charities and watch out for the community.
You don’t run weapons or sell drugs or anything like that.
Even in the short time I’ve been here, I can see he was telling the truth. ”
“But?”
“But, all of you have a hardness underneath. Like when Irish was talking to the two men at the gas station. There’s an edge…”
“Yeah. We are all operators. Special forces. That comes with a certain edge.”
She didn’t say anything else, wasn’t sure how to ask what she was thinking.
“You have something else to ask me, I can tell.” Rampage said, taking a step towards her. He placed his thumb under her chin and tilted her head up until she met his gaze. “I won’t lie to you, baby girl. What else do you want to know?”
“I guess… are you guys… like vigilantes? Are you violent?”
He didn’t release her chin but also didn’t answer right away.
Finally, he spoke again. “Society provides a safety net in the form of good men and women who protect the rest of the citizens. Law enforcement, military and sheepdogs who step in to keep everything moving forward. They try to hide as much of the dark underbelly of lawlessness and violence from view as they can. There are evil people who don’t think twice before destroying lives and causing pain.
To stop evil men without moral compasses, good men must embrace violence and rid them from the world.
We can’t hesitate to shine a light on the darkness and eliminate the threat whenever we get a chance. ”
“So, that’s a, yes?”
“Are we violent? Only when absolutely necessary as a form of self-defense or to protect what is ours. We try to apprehend without violence and let the law take care of it. But yes, if the situation demands it, we are violent. We aren’t vigilantes in that we don’t go looking for evil men.
If evil finds us, or messes with what’s ours? Then yes, we get involved.”
“What’s yours?”
“Our brothers and sisters in The Watchmen and on Valhalla, all their loved ones, the entire town of Grand Ridge…” He let go of her chin. “And you. You are under my protection. You’re mine and that means you are protected by all of us. Any other questions?”
“No,” the word came out as a whisper.
She went back to the common room, sat down next to Savannah, and accepted the chip bag she wordlessly held out to her.
"Well?" Savannah asked.
"There's a network of bad guys," Emily said. "And I'm staying until he thinks I’m no longer a threat to them."
Savannah nodded. Didn't push. Then, after a moment: "He called you a good girl, didn't he."
Emily stared straight ahead. "Eat your chips."