The room was standard issue for the kind of places that rented by the week: cigarette burns in the laminate, a washbasin with two functional settings—lava or ice—and a wall heater that rattled every time the compressor kicked. My duffel was at the foot of the bed, half-zipped, ready for disaster like a first responder’s go-bag.
“Appreciate it, man.” Knox’s tone went brittle and dry. “Don’t be too hard on him, okay? He sounded… lost.”
I shoved one foot into a boot and reached for my wallet. “I’ll be sweet as a lamb. Or at least as sweet as I get at four in the morning.”
He snorted. “Funny. Hey, Jo—”
“What.”
“Just… tell me if he needs more than a ride. Last time he ran, it took us three months to get him back on his feet. And Pa’s in a mood.”
My jaw clenched hard enough to pop. “If your old man lays a finger on Bo, I’ll take the belt to him myself.”
A pause. “That why you haven’t been around, Jo?”
“That, and I hate your mother’s potato salad,” I said, which was true and also not at all the point. “Text the address. I’ll call when I’ve got him.”
Knox’s voice softened a hair. “Thanks, man. You’re—”
I hung up before he could say “family,” because I didn’t need the reminder.
I finished dressing—black thermal under my t-shirt, flannel over that, and the leather jacket from the back of the door. The lining was shot to shit, but it still carried the faint, familiar perfume of motor oil, vinyl, and sweat.
I zipped it up to the neck and checked the pockets: keys, cash, phone, folding knife, the silver lighter with my father’s initials hammered into one side. All present and accounted for.
The mirror in the bathroom was streaked, probably from a thousand guests with worse habits than mine, but I could still make out my reflection in the haze: dark hair half-grown out and tied in a short braid, beard trimmed neat because I hated the way scruff itched under a welding mask, brown eyes underlined with last week’s fatigue. I looked like hell, but I looked steady, and that’s all that mattered.
My phone pinged—text from Knox.“MOT L, Yreka. Room 12. He’s not answering now. If he’s banged up, don’t let him talk you out of the ER again.”
“Copy,”I texted back.“Leaving now.”
It took less than three minutes to check out of the motel. The night clerk didn’t even bother to look up, just slid my deposit back across the scuffed counter and grunted. The world outside was black as diesel smoke, cold enough to make the tip of my nose tingle.
I loaded my duffel into the back seat of the Chevy, started the engine, and let her idle while I scraped frost off the windshield with the edge of my license. The clock on the dash blinked 3:25. I’d make it to Yreka before six if I pushed.
I turned the heater on full blast, let my hands hover above the vents, and pictured Bo: face swollen, knuckles skinned raw, a look in his eyes that said he’d rather chew glass than admit he was scared.
Three years on the run and he still hadn’t learned how to not get owned by his own self-destructive bullshit. Or maybe he had, and that’s what terrified me more than the idea of picking him up from another shithole hospital.
I put the Chevy in drive and pulled onto the main drag. The streets were empty, just a few sodium lamps burning in poolsalong the curb and a single semi growling up the highway in the distance. I hit the on-ramp and settled in, the hum of tires and wind a steady white noise that let my brain switch to background processing.
Every two or three months, I got the call. Different town, different disaster, always the same ending: someone hurt Bo, or he’d hurt himself, or he’d burned out on whatever place he tried to belong to.
Once, it was too many bottles of bourbon; once, a man with a badge; usually, it was the kind of low-rent asshole who smelled weakness and wanted to be the one to finally break him. I never asked about the details. If Bo wanted to spill, he would.
What I cared about was getting him back in one piece, and making sure nobody ever did it twice.
The blue glow from the dash cast shadows on my hands as I gripped the wheel. They were big hands, scarred and inked, good for breaking loose rusted bolts or pinning a man by the throat if it came to that. I flexed them once, imagined wrapping them around the bastard who’d tuned up Bo’s face, and felt a pulse of anger hot enough to boil oil.
But that would wait. First, I had to get him home.
I thought of what Knox said, about Bo sounding lost. It wasn’t news—Bo had always been running from something, and the farther he got, the more it turned into running in circles.
I’d watched him bounce from job to job, state to state, like a pinball powered by nothing but spite and caffeine. Hell, I’d seen him at his best, too: drunk at a bonfire, nineteen years old, singing at the top of his lungs while Ransom played guitar and the rest of us shouted at him to shut the fuck up. That kid was somewhere inside him still, buried under the bruises and bad decisions.
Maybe I could dig him out.
The road stretched ahead, empty except for the tunnel of light from my high beams. The sky was pitch, no stars, no moon. Just me, the truck, and the promise I made to Bo’s brother: bring him home, whole.
