3. Anna
ANNA
Gravewater’s clubhouse hadn’t changed its walls when Stone took Crow’s chair.
The same black-and-silver emblem covered the old trucking warehouse, the same motorcycles stood beneath the corrugated awning and the same men smoked beside the open bay.
The change was in where they stood and who they watched.
Crow’s old guard used to occupy the tables closest to the main doors. Now younger men loyal to Stone held those places while older brothers kept their conversations low near the repair bays. Men who had bounced me on their knees when I was a kid glanced at Stone’s office before greeting me.
Stone sat at the head of the church table with the door open.
Crow’s chair was taller than the others, the back scarred where his ring had struck the wood during long meetings.
Stone wore ACTING PRESIDENT on his cut as if the word before president was a temporary inconvenience.
Vandal stood at his right in the VP patch Stone had given him.
Neither man invited me inside. I entered anyway and stayed standing.
“You went to the Wraith compound,” Stone said.
“Good afternoon to you too.”
Vandal shut the door. He’d always been broad and loud, but the promotion put a new stillness in him. He used to make noise because he enjoyed it. Now he waited to see whether Stone needed the room intimidated.
“Rusk saw you at the Rail House,” he said.
“Rusk was waiting for me there.”
“We had eyes on you.”
“Why?”
Stone leaned back. “You drove onto Wraith ground alone. We were making sure you returned.”
“Riot managed it.”
Something sharp moved through Vandal’s face. He’d helped Stone threaten his own sister for sleeping with Mace, so I had no intention of discussing my old relationship within these walls.
Stone’s attention sharpened too. “Riot followed you?”
“He wanted me out of their territory.”
“And yet you stopped at the Rail House.”
“I heard someone there saw Crow after the date you say he disappeared.”
Vandal glanced at Stone. Small, but I caught it.
“Who?” Stone asked.
“If you were looking for Crow, you’d know.”
“We’re looking.”
“Where?” I put both palms on the table. “Because I’ve asked for weeks and all you give me is another reason not to cross the county line. If Serpents Wraith took him, show me proof. If they killed him, tell me what Gravewater is doing about it. If you don’t know, say you don’t know.”
Stone’s expression stayed measured. It was one of the things Crow had valued when he made the man vice president. Stone could talk two angry rooms away from gunfire while Crow decided what price the peace required. Now that control felt less like discipline and more like practice.
“Starting a war without certainty won’t bring your brother back,” he said.
“You’ve had time to find certainty.”
“The Wraiths are disciplined. They don’t leave easy proof.”
“Rook looked me in the face and said he didn’t order Crow taken.”
Vandal laughed once. “You believed him?”
“I listened. That’s not the same thing.”
Stone came around the table and stopped beside me. He’d known me since I was twenty-two, long enough to understand that putting a hand on my shoulder would get it removed. He kept both hands at his sides and made concern sound reasonable.
“Anna, Riot got close to you before. You trusted him with information that almost killed Crow and put one of his men in the hospital for a month. Riot denied it because denial costs nothing. Now his club needs to know what you’ve learned about Crow, and suddenly he can’t stay away.”
Riot standing too close in the Rail House parking lot flashed through my head. Stone didn’t know how close we’d come to doing something stupid, and I intended to keep it that way.
“Riot didn’t ask what I learned.”
“He didn’t have to. You’ll tell him once he makes you feel protected.” Stone’s sympathy was worse than accusation. “That’s how he did it last time.”
“Last time I mentioned one route during a private conversation. I didn’t hand him a map.”
“And the ambush was waiting.” Vandal stepped closer. “You came to us wrecked because he refused to prove where he’d been. Don’t forget that because the bastard followed you home and started getting in your head again.”
My head turned. “I didn’t say he followed me home.”
Vandal’s mouth flattened. Stone looked at him. “You had Rusk on her all the way back?”
“Rusk saw enough.”
The answer came half a beat late. Rusk had ridden away before I did, which meant somebody else had picked me up after the Rail House.
“How many men are watching me?” I asked.
“As many as it takes to keep you alive,” Stone replied. “Stop crossing the line. Stop asking about Crow where Wraith ears can hear you, and let the club handle this.”
“Crow is the club.” The room went quiet.
Stone had been careful to call himself acting president in public. Men had started shortening it anyway. My brother’s chair, Stone’s orders, Stone’s VP. Every week Crow stayed gone made the theft harder to reverse.
Vandal moved between me and the door. “You should listen.”
“Or what?”
“You saw what happened to Chelsea when she made herself useful to the Wraiths.”
“Your sister chose a man. You chose a patch.”
His face emptied. For one moment I understood why Chelsea had been afraid of him.
Stone spoke before Vandal could. “Nobody is threatening you. You’re Crow’s sister, and Gravewater will protect you. But protection only works if you stop walking into an enemy club’s reach.”
“If you find something real about Crow, call me.” I went around Vandal instead of waiting for him to move. “Until then, stop sending Rusk after me.”
The main room went quiet when I left church.
Men looked at my face and then away. Hale, Gravewater’s sergeant at arms and one of Crow’s oldest loyalists, stood near the back bay with grease on his hands.
He’d ridden beside Crow for more than fifteen years and once spent a whole winter teaching me to rebuild a carburetor because Crow said I should know the difference between a stranded bike and a broken one.
Hale met my gaze. His thumb touched two fingers once against his thigh.
It was the signal Crow’s old crew used on noisy runs when they needed a private word later. I hadn’t seen it in years.
Before I could react, a Stone loyalist crossed between us carrying a case of beer. Hale turned back to the bike on his lift and said nothing.
I walked to my SUV as if I’d missed the gesture.
Vandal followed me into the yard. “You need to quit pushing him in front of the old men.”
“Stone can’t tolerate a missing man’s sister asking questions?”
“He can’t run a club while you undermine every answer.” Vandal lowered his voice as two prospects rolled a bike toward the garage. “Those old bastards are waiting for an excuse to act like Crow’s coming through the gate tomorrow. He isn’t.”
“You sound certain.”
“I sound realistic.”
“Is that what you told yourself when you watched Rusk drag Chelsea toward a trailer?”
His face changed. “My sister embarrassed me in front of half the clubs in the state and left with an enemy officer.”
“She was afraid of your men, and she chose Mace anyway.”
Vandal took one step closer. The bright VP patch sat where Stone’s had been before Crow vanished. “Chelsea chose. Now she lives with it. You’re about to make the same mistake.”
“Sleeping with Riot was never my mistake.” The admission surprised both of us. “Believing Stone might have been.”
His gaze sharpened. “You think that enforcer following you around gives you some special view of his club? He’ll use you until Rook has what he wants, then remember exactly whose sister you are.”
“That sounds like what Stone did to you. Gave you the patch he wanted you to wear, and now every person you love is less important than proving you deserve it.”
Vandal caught the driver’s door before I could open it. “Careful, Anna.”
“Move your hand.”
For several seconds, the yard watched us without appearing to. A year ago Vandal would’ve stepped back rather than risk Crow hearing he’d blocked my car. Today he looked toward Stone’s office first, and that told me exactly whose approval mattered.
Vandal released the door. “When this goes bad, don’t come to me.”
“I wouldn’t know which version of you’d answer.”
I got in and locked the doors before starting the engine. Hale didn’t look up from the lift, but the blue rag had moved from his workbench to his back pocket, confirmation that he’d find a way to contact me. Vandal returned to the clubhouse without noticing.
Riot’s motorcycle appeared two intersections from the clubhouse.
I considered stopping in the middle of the road and forcing the argument there. Instead, I drove home, parked beneath the carport and carried my bag to the front door without acknowledging him. He stopped across the street.
My house was a narrow brick rental at the edge of an older neighborhood, chosen because the small back room made a good office and neither club owned anything within three blocks.
Riot knew the floor plan. He’d helped me move a bookcase into that office, sworn at the turn in the hallway and stayed three nights after we finished because neither of us wanted to admit moving one piece of furniture had become an excuse.
I unlocked the door. “Go away.”
His boots crossed the road behind me. “How’d the conversation with Stone go?”
I turned on the porch. “Stone knew you followed me from the Rail House.”
Riot checked the street before looking back at me. “Rusk left before you did. Stone had somebody else watching. What’d he say?”
“That you followed me because your club needs to know what I learn.”
“Convenient.”
“He also reminded me that trusting you almost got Crow killed.”
“And there it is.”
“You did follow me, Riot. You cut into a conversation at the Rail House and now you’re outside my house asking what Stone said. If you wanted to look innocent, you chose a strange way to do it.”
“I don’t give a fuck whether I look innocent. I care whether you stay alive long enough to figure out who’s feeding you bullshit.”
“Gravewater has protected me all my life.”
“Crow protected you. Crow is gone.”
“He’s coming back.”
Riot’s restraint finally snapped. “For all you know, your brother’s already fucking dead.”
Everything inside me stopped while the street carried on around us, ordinary and indifferent. A sprinkler clicked two houses down and someone rolled a trash bin along concrete. Riot stared at me as the cruelty of the sentence reached him.
“Anna.”
“Leave.”
“I don’t know he’s dead.” His voice changed, stripped of anger but not made gentle. “Rook doesn’t know. Nobody on our side does. I shouldn’t have said it like that.”
I couldn’t answer without letting the fear through, and I wasn’t giving him that after he’d just used it against me.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
Riot almost never apologized, which was how I knew he meant it. It didn’t make the thought of Crow being dead any easier to hear.
“Go the fuck away Riot,” I said again.
This time he did. He crossed to his motorcycle, started it and rode toward the next block without another word.
Inside, I locked the door and closed every blind, then tried to work and read the same email three times without absorbing a word. Crow might be dead. I’d known that since the first week because I’m not an idiot, but knowing was different from hearing the possibility in Riot’s voice.
An hour later, I looked through the narrow gap beside the front blind. Riot’s motorcycle stood beneath a dead streetlamp near the corner, far enough away to give me the space I had demanded and close enough to watch anyone coming for me.
I should’ve closed the blind. Instead, I left the gap open. He’d given me the space I asked for without actually leaving.