Chapter Eighteen
TATE
The Blood Brothers leave the following morning.
Five bikes in the same formation they’d arrived in, cuts on, the road-worn ease of men who know exactly how to cover distance.
I stand outside the clubhouse with Luke and Flame and watch them mount up one by one, the Nevada morning already warm around us, the city going about its business in the background like nothing significant has happened in this lot over the past two days.
Something significant has happened.
Quill is last.
Shaking my hand at the door, he holds it for a moment, those blue eyes that never miss anything and never say more than they need to, looking at me steadily.
“Two weeks.”
“Two weeks.”
He studies me for just a moment longer, the way he sometimes does, like he is checking something, making sure something is properly in place.
“Take care of her.”
Not like a reminder. Not like an instruction. Like something he already knows I am going to do and simply wants to say out loud.
“Yeah.”
Letting go of my hand, he swings onto his bike and leads his club out of the lot and back toward the highway.
The sound of them fades slowly into the Nevada morning, five bikes becoming one sound, that sound becoming a low hum, that hum becoming nothing, becoming desert silence, open road, and the work still ahead of us.
Standing there until I can’t hear them anymore, I think about Tracker, Lawrence in that hacienda, Rhyder’s face at the church table, and the promise I’d made at the edge of the lot.
Then I go inside.