Six-foot-two, leather, ink, and silence.
He's got that look he gets when his hands have been in an engine for a while—steadier. Calmer.
The garage is therapy for Bloodhound, and I'm not one to judge a man's coping mechanisms.
"Wrenleigh doing all right?" he asks, pouring his own coffee.
"She's plotting the murder of whoever invented plaster casts, but she'll survive."
The corner of his mouth twitches. That's as close to a laugh as Bloodhound gets. "Leah said the follow-up looked good. Healing clean."
Leah.
Her name lands in my chest the way it has no business landing.
I think about the hospital—the way she crouched down to Sadie Jo's level, her voice going soft in a room full of stress and fear.
The way she looked at me at the nurses' station with those steady eyes.
The scar through her eyebrow that mirrors mine.
I push it down. Lock the box.
I don't have room for that—not now, not with Nevada plates showing up outside my daughters’ schools.
"Good," I say. "Tell her I appreciate it."
Bloodhound studies me for a beat longer than is comfortable.
Those watchful eyes—the ones that don't miss a damn thing—narrow slightly, and I can see him deciding whether to push.
He doesn't. Not yet. Bloodhound is a patient man, which is the most dangerous kind.
"Ruger said Church in twenty," he says, and disappears back into the garage.
Church is the room where we stop being fathers, husbands, mechanics, or whatever else we are, and become the thing the world outside these walls doesn't want to acknowledge exists.
Ruger sits at the head of the table.
Bald, bearded, built like a wall someone decided to tattoo.
He's thirty-two years old and he runs this club with the kind of authority that most men twice his age can't pull off. He doesn't raise his voice. He doesn't need to.
When Ruger speaks, the room goes still.
Ounce sits to his right. Vice President. Six-five, jet black buzz cut, thick five o'clock shadow with a mustache that connects.
The man moves like smoke—silent, appearing in rooms without anyone hearing him arrive.
Former dealer, which is how he got his road name, and the smartest strategist I've ever sat across a table from.
When Ounce talks, I listen. Everyone does.
Bloodhound takes his seat across from me. Sergeant at Arms. He's already got his arms crossed, which means he's already heard something he doesn't like.
The rest of the officers fill in—Maddox, done with his cereal and now looking like the enforcer he is. Porter, our Treasurer, quiet and numbers-sharp. Bracken, Road Captain, already tapping his ring against the table the way he does when he's restless. Decorum, the Chaplain, steady as Sunday.
Ruger doesn't waste time. He never does.
