Above, the sky is a blank gray lid.
My phone buzzes in my pocket.
I don’t take it out.
I don’t need to.
My whole body recognizes the vibration pattern as if it’s carved into my bones.
Midnight.
I keep my face blank and climb.
I measure the first row, mark it, and start tearing up shingles with slow, careful violence. The old nails shriek when they come out. Every inch is a negotiation — force versus leverage, time versus effort. I work fast, but not so fast that I lose the rhythm. If you keep your hands busy, your brain can slow down and get its feet under it. The shingles are warm from the sun. A few pebbles scrape under my palm.
When I reach the halfway mark on the first slope, sweat is running down my back and my fingers are stinging from the pull of the pry bar. I stop, wipe my forehead, and risk a glance at my phone.
Three missed calls.
I close my eyes. Up here, with the sky above me and the Devils below, there's nowhere to go. I put the phone back in my pocket and pick up the pry bar.
This is why I’m here.
This is the part nobody sees.
By the time I strip the first slope, my hands are raw and the muscles in my shoulders ache. I sit back on my heels and look out over the lot. The sun is higher now, slicing through the trees and glinting off the bikes in the yard. A few guys have started a card game on the hood of a car. Someone else is welding something near the fence, sparks fanning sideways like it’s the Fourth of July.
Yet every so often, there’s a pause, and I feel it — eyes on me.
I count the faces I can see. Mayhem's unsurprisingly wandered off, but Goldie's still down there, arms crossed, talking to another brother. A woman with dark hair leans out of the clubhouse door and says something that makes the two of them laugh. Normal. Relaxed. The kind of scene that could lull you into thinking you're safe.
But I'm not safe.
I'm a wolf in sheep's clothing, except the sheep have teeth too, and they know how to use them.
I pull another row of shingles; the nails screaming as they come loose. The sound covers the pounding in my chest. Below, a guy in a cut I don't recognize walks the perimeter of the lot, slow and deliberate, like he's checking for cracks in the foundation. His eyes sweep up to the roof, hold for a second, then move on.
They're watching.
They're always watching.
Molly put her name on me. She vouched for me to Claire, to Rabid, to this whole machine of loyalty and violence. She handed them a piece of herself when she did that, and if I fuck this up, she doesn't just lose face — she loses everything she's built here. Every drink she's poured, every test she's studied for, every wall she's built to keep herself standing. She'll lose her life.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Molly
Lunch rush hits The Noble Fir like a wave — boots, denim, hungry locals, a couple of loggers still smelling like cedar and chain oil. Riley’s weaving between tables with a tray like she’s got a motor in her spine, and I’m behind the bar moving on pure muscle memory, while the rest of my memory is working over my course notes and prepping a study guide for my next accounting test.
Slide a whiskey on the rocks to the regular who never tips. Wipe the bar top with a rag that’s probably older than me. Make change. Nod. Listen. Don’t care. Lather, rinse, repeat. It’s supposed to be routine, a safe harbor of habit. Today, it’s a gauntlet, because every time I glance up, the world tilts.
The windows are my enemy.
Through the streaked glass of the front window, I catch flashes of movement on the garage roof across the lot. Evan — my personal hurricane in a hardware-store t-shirt and frayed jeans — peels back shingles in steady increments, muscles outlined like someone sketched him from memory and improved on the original. He’s sunburned along the tops of his shoulders. Sweat beads on his jaw, running a slow path down his neck. He works with a rhythm that says he’s done every kind of man’s-labor in this town, and he might do it all again, just to fill the hours. The sight of him should be boring. It’s not.
I tell myself I don’t care. I tell myself I’mbusy.I tell myself the only reason my eyes keep cutting to the windows is because I’m making sure Mayhem doesn’t “help” him and set the garage on fire. I tell myself I’m not counting the minutes until he comes back in for a water, or a piece of me. I tell myself the only reason I care is because I’m the one who vouched for him, and I have a vested interest in making sure he doesn’t screw up or get himself killed by association.
Lies.
