Lockhart sees me.
His gaze drops to my arm—I'm wearing short sleeves and the bruise is visible, four fingerprints in purple and green, and I didn't hide it because hiding it would mean being ashamed and I have nothing to be ashamed of.
The man from Tuesday shifts his weight, but doesn't look at me.
"This is private property, Wade." Earl's hand is on the porch railing. Steady. "You and your boys weren't invited."
"Just a conversation." Lockhart spreads his hands. The picture of reason. "The offer's still on the table. It's a good offer, Earl. Better than you'll get anywhere else. Take it. Enjoy your remaining time without the stress of a property you can't maintain."
Enjoy your remaining time.The cruelty wrapped in concern. The knife in the handshake.
Earl opens his mouth to respond and I see the exhaustion in it—the way his hand grips the railing tighter, the way his jaw works before the words come, the effort of a man fighting on every front at once.
Cancer and Lockhart and grief and the slow erosion of a body that used to be unbreakable.
I step forward. "He said no. He's said no every time. Are you deaf or just arrogant?"
Lockhart looks at me. The smile stays. "You've got a mouth on you, Bexley. I'll give you that." He glances at his men. "But this property has been in Earl's family for three generations. It should be decided by family. Not?—"
He doesn't finish the sentence.
He doesn't have to.
The word hangs in the air between us: outsiders. Strays. People who aren't blood.
I pull out my phone and call Lee.
One ring. One word.
"Now."
The sound starts distant.
A low rumble on the edge of hearing, like thunder rolling across the plains except the sky is clear and the air is still and there's no storm coming from the west.
The rumble builds. Grows teeth. Separates into individual engines—V-twins, the distinctive potato-potato-potato of Harleys running in formation, the sound that means something very specific in this part of Texas.
Lockhart hears it.
His head turns toward the road.
His men straighten—the automatic response of bodies that recognize a threat before the mind has processed it.
The road fills.
They come over the rise in a line.
Phantom at the front—riding the way a president rides, centered, unhurried, the flag bearer of something larger than one man.
Shadow behind him and to his right.
Brothers in formation, two by two, the choreography of men who have ridden together long enough to move like a single organism.
And Lee. At the front beside Phantom. Because this is personal and every man on that road knows it.
The bikes pour into Earl's yard like water filling a basin.
The engine noise is enormous—a physical thing, a wall of sound that pushes against the silver trucks and the men standing beside them and the polite fiction that Wade Lockhart can take anything he wants with a smile and a handshake.
