7. Anna
ANNA
Iwoke with my cheek against Riot’s chest and his pistol on the nightstand within reach of his uninjured hand. Gray morning showed around the curtains, and I felt the instant he woke when I moved.
“What time?” he asked.
“Six forty.”
“Hale said before eight.”
Riot sat up and checked the parking lot through a gap in the curtain, his gaze sweeping the door, window, my phone and his weapon before he dressed. Sleep disappeared from him almost instantly.
I used the bathroom, changed into yesterday’s clothes and stopped when I saw grit embedded in one knee of my jeans. Riot stood behind me in the mirror.
“Bag those before you wash them. There’s glass in the fabric.”
“I was planning to.”
A prospect had brought my SUV to the motel before dawn and parked it around back. We left separately, Riot on his bike while I drove the damaged SUV, keeping him in view ahead of me until we reached Crow’s old garage ten minutes before eight.
The low cinder-block building had been Crow’s private workshop before Gravewater bought the trucking warehouse.
He still stored two restored bikes there and kept the office exactly as it had looked twenty years ago, down to a calendar from the year he earned president.
Hale’s truck waited behind the building.
Riot parked beside it.
“He said don’t bring anyone Stone knows,” I said.
“I’ll stay outside until you call.”
It was more concession than I expected. I entered through the rear door alone.
Hale waited beside Crow’s 1972 Shovelhead, the lines around his eyes deeper than I remembered. He’d gone gray over the years, but the exhaustion looked recent.
“You all right?” he asked.
“Riot got me behind cover. Why didn’t you answer the first call?”
“Phone was in my locker. Somebody had it long enough to send those messages and put it back.” He looked toward the rear door. “You bring him?”
“He’s outside.”
Hale exhaled, not pleased but not surprised. “Crow always said that man would ignore a direct order if it came from you.”
“Crow knew more than he admitted.”
“He was president. Knowing things and pretending otherwise was half the job. I should’ve come sooner. Stone put Rusk outside my daughter’s house the week Crow vanished. Never said why. Didn’t have to.”
Hale had been Crow’s sergeant at arms for years. If Stone could make a man with that much standing go quiet by putting eyes on his daughter, the takeover ran deeper than a few new patches around the table.
“Tell me what you know.”
“Crow didn’t leave willingly. I saw him nine days after Stone told church he’d gone off-grid. He was in the back of a black utility truck on the old quarry road, hands bound and blood on his face, but he was alive.”
The garage tilted around me. I caught the workbench. “You saw him alive.”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you stop them?”
“They were already moving, four armed men with Crow in the back. I didn’t know who inside Gravewater I could call without tipping Stone off.” Shame tightened his voice. “I followed them as far as I could. They switched vehicles and I lost them, but I’ve been watching Stone’s men ever since.”
Hale had finally found one useful thread. A worker at a decommissioned county maintenance depot had seen a guarded man with the old raven tattoo Crow wore on his left forearm.
“Crow got that tattoo before Gravewater existed,” I said. “It’s him.”
“That’s what I believe. I want eyes on his face before anybody rides in.” Hale glanced toward a photograph of Crow and me. “Stone put pressure on families and taught good men to keep their mouths shut. It worked on me longer than I can stand.”
“Keeping your daughter alive doesn’t make you loyal to Stone.”
“No. What I do now decides that.”
“Where is he now?”
“A contact at the depot is checking today. If he confirms Crow, I’ll give you the location.”
The fact that Hale was prepared to hand me the location with Riot waiting outside said enough. Stone had pushed Crow’s loyalists far enough that asking a rival club for help no longer sounded impossible.
“There’s something else,” he said. “The old ambush.”
I stopped breathing.
Hale took an old route log from the workbench and opened it to a marked page. “Crow planned to use River Road to the neutral meet. That’s the route Stone’s old report says you told Riot.”
“Stone’s report?”
“Crow pulled the old paperwork apart a few months ago. Stone had written that you admitted giving Riot River Road. What he never put beside it was that River Road closed at four that afternoon after a tanker rolled near the bridge. Crow changed to Canal Cut at four twenty-three.” Hale tapped the time written beside the alteration.
“The shooters were waiting on Canal Cut.”
I stared at the ink. Crow’s handwriting confirmed the original route. Hale’s initials sat beside the change. “Riot couldn’t have given them the route.”
“Not unless he heard about the closure, knew what Crow picked instead and passed it in less than thirty minutes. He didn’t. The changed route was discussed inside church with Crow, Stone, me and two men who are dead now. Once Crow put Stone’s report beside this log, he started digging.”
“Stone knew.”
“Stone suggested Canal Cut.”
The truth arrived without drama. Two roads, one time written in Crow’s hand, and proof that the attackers had been waiting somewhere Riot never knew Crow would be.
For a second I could see the old garage the way it used to be, me sitting on the workbench while Crow swore at a stubborn carburetor and Hale laughed at both of us. Stone had reached back into that life and changed the meaning of a night that should never have belonged to him.
I’d been wrong. Crow had started pulling apart the same evidence I’d accepted, and Riot had told me the truth while I chose Stone’s version of him.
I remembered the night I ended us with painful clarity. Riot standing in my bedroom, jaw locked while I demanded something he couldn’t give me without betraying his club. He hadn’t begged. He hadn’t changed the story to make himself easier to believe. He’d simply told me he didn’t do it.
I’d loved him and still chosen Stone’s evidence because Crow was bleeding and fear wanted a name. The shame of that choice sat heavier than the relief of finally knowing the truth.
I hadn’t been wrong to protect Crow. I’d been wrong about the man I needed to protect him from.
“Crow was going to confront Stone,” Hale said. “Quietly at first. He wanted to know who else was involved. Then he disappeared.”
“Does Stone know this log exists?”
“No. Crow kept it here because he didn’t trust the clubhouse files. Take photographs, but I’m keeping the original hidden until Crow is safe.”
I photographed the pages. Hale would confirm the depot by dark and send the location if his contact saw Crow.
“Send everything to me,” I said.
I wrote Riot’s number on a scrap of paper. “If my phone goes dark again, use this.” Then I left through the back door.
Riot stood beside his bike watching both ends of the alley. He looked at my face and reached for his weapon before stopping himself.
“What happened?”
“He told me the route changed.”
Riot went still.
“The one I told you was River Road. A tanker closed it that afternoon. Crow switched to Canal Cut, and that’s where the shooters were waiting. Stone suggested the changed route.” I held out the phone, but Riot didn’t look at it. “You couldn’t have done it.”
“I know.”
No relief softened him. He’d lived with the truth the whole time. The revelation belonged to me, along with the damage of arriving this late.
“Why didn’t you fight harder?” The question escaped before I could make it fair. “Why did you let me end it?”
His expression closed. “I did fight. I told you the truth, came back after you first told me to leave and told you again. You wanted proof that would’ve exposed my brothers. When I wouldn’t give it to you, you called that proof of guilt.”
“I thought if you loved me…”
“What? I’d betray my club to win you back?” He stepped closer, voice low. “You knew me, Anna. You knew the work I did and the lines I kept, and you still decided I was capable of using you to put Crow under gunfire.”
“I’m sorry.”
Riot looked away toward the street.
“It wasn’t fine. We lost all that time.”
“I know. I can’t give them back.”
“Then don’t ask me to pretend an apology fixes it.”
“I’m not.” I put my phone away. “I can only stop making you pay for what Stone did.”
His gaze came back to mine.
“What I need is simple. When something looks bad, ask me before you decide what it means. If I tell you something belongs to the club, don’t turn the boundary into proof I’m against you.”
“I will.”
I swallowed. “You’ve got every right to still be angry.”
“Good, because I am.” His mouth twisted without humor. “I spent months wondering which part of me you’d never actually believed.”
“That wasn’t fair.”
“No. It wasn’t.”
The answer hurt because he didn’t soften it for me, and for once I didn’t need him to.
“I can’t fix what we lost standing in an alley,” I said. “But I can stop making you prove the same thing over and over.”
Riot watched me for a long moment. “Start there.”
He didn’t touch me. That restraint hurt in a different way now that I understood what my distrust had cost him.
I wanted to close the distance, but an apology wasn’t permission to skip the part where he got to be angry.
“What else did Hale say?”
I told him everything Hale had given me, that Crow had been alive after Stone claimed he vanished, that he might be at the maintenance depot and that a contact was trying to confirm it. This time I didn’t hold anything back and wait for Riot to prove he deserved it.
Riot asked only what mattered, then listened while I worked through the options.
I wasn’t suddenly ready to trust every Serpents Wraith patch I saw. Riot was different because I knew him, and this time I was going to let what he actually did count for more than the story somebody else built around him.
“I could go to Crow’s old guard,” I said. “I could try to build a Gravewater team without Stone knowing, but I don’t know which men are watched or compromised. Hale’s daughter is already leverage.”
“Stone will expect you to use Gravewater.”
“So I’m asking you.” I took one breath. “Help me bring Crow home.”
Riot’s hand closed around the back of my neck, warm and steady.
“I will.”