Chapter 13
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Spur
I leave Dakota on the back porch of the main house with Marlena's arm around her shoulders and a coffee in her hand she's not drinking, and I walk to the clubhouse with Phantom on my left and Banshee on my right.
It's been two hours since we pulled through the gate of Sharp.
Two hours of Dakota in Marlena's kitchen with Grace pouring coffee and the whole property holding its breath while Phantom let his daughter settle before he called church.
The property is dark except for the porch lights at the main house and the floodlight at the barn.
The cicadas are loud the way they get loud when the air still hasn't cooled from the afternoon heat, and I can smell the mesquite smoke off Banshee's clothes from the patrol fire he kept going at the round pen tonight.
None of us talks for the first stretch of the walk.
Phantom breaks it as we're crossing the gravel between the main house and the clubhouse path. "How is she?"
"Shaking. Tired. Pissed."
"Good. Anger's better than being scared."
Banshee, on his other side, "She rode bareback through that third barrel, Prez. Half the brothers have her run pulled up on their phones already."
"I know they do," Phantom says.
He doesn't slow his stride.
The man walks the way he leads church—steady, unrushed, like the night has all the time he needs.
I match his pace because I always match his pace.
We reach the clubhouse. Floodlight burns over the front door.
Eight to ten brothers are already inside.
The screen door is open to let the heat out, and the kerosene smell of the patrol lanterns is still in the air from sundown.
Phantom walks past me and through the door. Banshee follows him. I'm the last in.
The table is full when I sit down.
Phantom at the head. Blaze on his right. I take the seat on his left.
Bullseye across from me, Thunder beside him, Longhorn at the far end with his hat on the table, Shadow, Blight, Banshee.
Rogue at the end of the table with his laptop open and the screen tilted down so the glow doesn't catch on the wall behind him.
Buckley and the prospects are at the main house with the ladies, standing guard.
Phantom slams the gavel once. The room goes quiet the way it goes quiet when he's about to talk.
"Abilene was a kill attempt," he says. "Cinch was cut three-quarters through, underside of the strap, while Spur's back was turned for ninety seconds at the trailer pad. My daughter rode through the third barrel bareback and finished her run."
A round of low sound from the table—the brothers acknowledging without speaking.
Phantom keeps going. "What we know about him.
He's a man, forties to fifties. Smokes Camel Wides.
Knows our property well enough to get into the hayloft without tripping the dogs.
Knows Dakota's circuit schedule. Has been watching her for at least a month—the photos started in April.
He's been close enough at trailer pads to ask about her schedule and walk away unmade. "
Bullseye sits forward. "What we don't know is the important shit."
Phantom looks at him from across the table. "His name. His connection. Whether he's working alone or for somebody."
Thunder taps the table. "Could be a club. Could be old business."
"It could," Phantom says.
Shadow leans back in his chair, arms crossed. "Could be the Copperhead Kings. Sure, Venom’s dead… but we let some of the stragglers and prospects go. We thought they’d run, never look back. Turns out someone is rebuilding their ranks. Heavier than they were before."
"Like phoenixes rising from the ashes," Phantom answers. "Cash mentioned it last time we talked, said he thought he saw a couple boys running around with some cuts out there. The part that gets me, his guys said he saw them near the city, and crossing over the border. They’re building something."
Thunder taps the table once. "For us?"
"For somebody," Phantom says. "But it's not this. This just feels different. Whoever he is, this man's working alone. Or he wants us to think he is."
Longhorn doesn’t say a word.
Longhorn never says anything in church unless Phantom asks him to, and the table knows it.
The conversation moves through the brothers for a few minutes—theories about old enemies, a name from a deal six years ago, a man Phantom had a beef with in San Antonio that Cash settled.
None of it adds up to us. Phantom listens, but doesn't decide, then he looks at me. "Spur."
"Yes, Prez?"
"You've been holding something. What is it?"
I take a moment before I answer because I've been working on it for two days and I'm not ready to lose the thread by saying it wrong.
"The way the man smokes the cigarette," I tell him. "Two long drags. Then a hold. Then a third drag taken right down to the filter. It's a specific rhythm. I've seen it. I just haven't figured out from where."
"Really? You don’t know where?"
"That's the part I can't get to."
Phantom nods slowly. "Keep thinking it over."
"I am, Prez."
He looks around the table. "Twenty-four-hour patrol stays. Two-man rotations. Family at the main house. Dakota doesn't move without Spur and one other patched member. He’s free to go to their cabin with her, but I’ll have two prospects on the cabin at all times."
I speak up. "I’m more than capable of protecting my woman, Prez."
Phantom shoots daggers at me. "And I gave a goddamn order, so you follow it."
I swallow hard. The last thing I wanted to do was poke the bear. "Yes, Prez."
Phantom clears his throat and gets back to it.
"Holt'll be here at sunup. He's bringing Wells and Tread.
They're staying at Sharp until this bullshit is done.
Cash and his charter are sweeping the southern corridor.
Roan's covering the panhandle with his boys.
The whole state of Texas is closed to him. He just doesn't know it yet."
The whole group nods or grunts in response.
Phantom looks at Rogue. "Anything from the burner?"
Rogue doesn't look up from his screen. "Nothing yet. He hasn't sent another message since the photo. Burner's gone dark. But he'll come back to it. Men like this always come back to the messaging because the messaging is the point. When he sends the next one, I see it."
"How long?"
"Day, two days. He's working up to it. Men like him get off on the fear, on making her scared. He won’t be able to contain himself for too much longer."
"Stay on it."
"Yes, Prez."
Phantom looks at me again. "Spur. I want this man dead inside the week. You're running the hunt. Banshee's running the property. You report to me twice a day until it's done."
"Yes, Prez."
He slams the gavel. "Out."
The brothers stand up. Some go for coffee. Some go for the assignments board on the wall.
Bullseye comes over and puts his hand on my shoulder once and tells me to bring the man home in pieces. Banshee heads out to start his rotation.
I nod at him, not trusting my voice to answer.
Phantom waits until the room has cleared. Then he tilts his head toward the back hall. "Spur, meet me in my office for a minute."
I follow him straight there.
We both take a seat in his leather chairs, and he grabs the bourbon on the corner of the desk.
He pours two fingers in a glass and slides it across the desk to me.
He pours himself a glass as well.
He lifts the glass. "To my daughter, who was a badass who rode bareback through the third barrel and finished her damn run."
"To Dakota."
We drink.
He sets the glass down and looks at me for a long second.
"You know Holt'll be here at sunup," he says. "He's going to want to talk to you in the morning. Privately. Family chat."
Phantom keeps going. "Holt's going to ask you about your intentions toward my daughter. He'll want to hear the same thing I want to hear."
"Which is?"
"That you're going to marry her. That this isn't the rest of a fling. That when this dumb fucker is in the ground, you're going to put a ring on her hand and stand up in front of this club and call her your woman in the way that means something."
I look at him steadily. "Yes, Prez. That's what I'm going to do."
"When?"
"As soon as she'll let me. Which I'm hoping is soon."
He looks at me for a long time.
Then he picks up the bourbon and finishes it in one drink. "Good."
He sets the glass down and looks me up and down. "Get some sleep, Spur. You look like you need it." He almost smiles as he says it, and I walk out.
I cross the property back to the main house in the dark.
Banshee's at the round pen with a thermos and a Glock on his hip, doing the perimeter rotation with one of the prospects.
He raises the thermos at me as I pass. I raise my hand back.
The main house is quiet when I come through the kitchen door.
Marlena is at the sink with a dish towel in her hand, drying a coffee mug. "Spur."
"Ma'am."
"She's in the back bedroom. Grace got her into pajamas. She fell asleep about an hour ago."
"Thank you, ma'am."
"You stayin' with her tonight or going back to the cabin?"
"I'm staying. Doesn’t make much sense to move her back to our place tonight, you know?"
She nods and sets the mug on the rack.
Marlena pulls a plate off the counter that's wrapped in foil and slides it across to me. "You eat. Then you sleep next to her. We're all right tonight."
"Yes, ma'am."
She turns back to the sink and I take the plate.
The back bedroom is dark except for the night light Marlena keeps in the hall plugged in for Cal.
I set the plate on the dresser and stand in the doorway looking at her.
Dakota is asleep on her side facing the door.
Her braid is coming loose on the pillow.
The gauze on her wrist is fresh—Marlena or Grace must have rewrapped it—and her hand is on top of the quilt with the wrap visible in the night-light glow.
Spur in small black letters under the cotton. Her pulse moving slowly under it.
I sit on the floor next to the bed and eat the plate Marlena made me.
Roast chicken, mashed potatoes, green beans she canned herself last summer.